Agency, Capacity, and Resilience to Environmental Change: Lessons from Human Development, Well-Being, and Disasters

TLDR

Human agency is a key determinant of how individuals and societies respond to environmental change. The article synthesizes agency, capacity, and resilience literature to support integrated, human‑centered approaches to environmental change. It identifies shared agreements and key contestations across human development, well‑being, and disaster fields, outlining how subjective and relational factors shape capacity. The synthesis shows that capacity must be viewed as reflexive, dynamic, socially and temporally differentiated, enabling clearer distinctions among coping, adaptation, and transformation responses.

Abstract

Human agency is considered a key factor in determining how individuals and society respond to environmental change. This article synthesizes knowledge on agency, capacity, and resilience across human development, well-being, and disasters literature to provide insights to support more integrated and human-centered approaches to understanding environmental change. It draws out the key areas of agreement across these diverse fields and identifies the main points of contestation and uncertainty. This highlights the need to consider subjective and relational factors in addition to objective measures of capacity and to view these as reflexive and dynamic, as well as differentiated socially and temporally. These findings can help distinguish between coping, adaptation, and transformation as responses to environmental and other stressors.