ABSTRACT
Climate change is not just about modeling and understanding hazards or weather. Societal resilience has to consider wider systemic dynamics and to explore how risks interact for going beyond the existing approaches to adaptation. It is a matter of understanding the root causes of problems, promoting strategic efforts that could be efficient and feasible. This chapter offers a reference point for scholars and practitioners who are approaching the management of complex systems and are willing to explore the implications for business as usual. At the same time, it builds evidence to support experienced readers in going beyond silo thinking and conventional wisdom. Examples and theories are used together to propose that climate-resilient societies need shifting toward the understanding of common points of failures between different threats and promoting effective multi-sectoral partnerships. The sections are developed to progress in complementary steps. Are there any lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that could be applied for promoting climate-resilient societies? What is cascading risk and how does it relate to concurrent and compounding events? What can be learned from the field? Are there differences between remote and urban areas? The discussion proposes a reflection on how limitations in timescales, budgets, and operational capacity could affect resilience, offering an approach to move beyond the status quo and promoting societal resilience. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.