Can Sustainability Co-exist with Resilience?

Although sustainability and resilience are widely seen as two major complementary global goals, we question whether the quest for resilience is in fact inimical to sustainability. We do so by viewing development (both human and physical) on the one hand, and durability or longevity on the other as proxies for resilience. We argue that flourishing may need to be tempered with deprivation in order for humans to survive. However, drawing on the structural mechanics roots of the term “resilience”, we demonstrate how the concept of “ductility” could provide a model for resilience to co-exist with sustainability. Ductility is analogous to dealing with unforeseen stress through a change in behavior – typically the acceptance of a temporary loss of service or even permanent change in state, rather than the provision of spare capacity.