A Pacific community resilience framework: Exploring a holistic perspective through a strengths‐based approach and systems thinking

Abstract

The impacts of climate change in the Pacific and worldwide have prompted researchers and practitioners to find ways to define, assess and support community resilience. This paper presents a community resilience framework to help meet this challenge. While traditional framings of resilience in scholarship are often based on deficit models that focus on vulnerability and gaps, this framework draws on strengths‐based principles and systems thinking approaches to support a holistic and integrated perspective of community resilience. Pacific community resilience literature underpins the framework, which values and prioritises diverse community insights to support locally defined pathways towards adaptation and resilience building. We offer examples of future application of the framework in a range of contexts such as research, programme design, strategic policy, programme implementation or evaluation.