Many of the world’s chronically poor and malnourished people live in increasingly volatile settings. Although most of the world has enjoyed unprecedented progress against poverty and food insecurity, the dangerous interface of climate change, demographic transition, conflict, and food-price spikes has already pushed several poor regions into permanent crisis. Festering crises in these regions are increasingly becoming crucibles in which broader societal insecurity erupts. This disturbing state of affairs, along with our expanded knowledge of the intimate interactions between short-term shocks and long-term development, has sparked widespread interest in “building resilience,” meaning the capacity to resist and recover from both natural and man-made disasters. While resilience offers a very promising lens through which to strategically address global food security issues, the concept remains ill-defined and its implications for science and policy under-developed. How might the global policy and science communities effectively deploy an emerging resilience framework to overcome these challenges?

This paper was debated at the ISGP conference Food Safety, Security, and Defense: Focus on Food and the Environment, convened in partnership with Cornell University in October 2014.