Climate resilience refers to the capacity of social, economic, and ecosystems to cope with hazardous events or trends caused by climate change. It is the ability to recover from or mitigate vulnerability to climate-related shocks such as floods, droughts, and other extreme weather events. Climate resilience is a political process that strengthens the ability of all to mitigate vulnerability to risks from, and adapt to changing patterns in, climate hazards and variability.

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report defines climate resilience as the capacity of social, economic, and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain their essential function, identity, and structure as well as biodiversity in case of ecosystems while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning, and transformation.

Climate resilience is a useful concept because it speaks across sectors and disciplines, but this also makes it open to interpretation resulting in differing, and at times competing, definitions. Building climate resilience requires a holistic and multi-dimensional approach to enhance communities’ social, human, natural, physical, and financial capacities to cope with and recover from the impacts of climate change.

To achieve climate resilience, it is necessary to cut the heat-trapping emissions that drive climate change while adapting to the changes that are unavoidable in ways that make the world more equitable and just. Governments have an important role to play in updating infrastructure and helping communities cope with extreme weather, sea-level rise, and other climate impacts. Climate-resilient water services (or climate-resilient WASH) are services that provide access to high-quality drinking water during all seasons and even during extreme weather events.