Capacity development is crucial for enduring conservation success. Recent scholarship has called for a systems perspective based on input from local stakeholders to better understand and develop conservation capacity. However, few studies have adopted such an approach to explore interactions among capacities or how capacity development needs and priorities evolve. We address this gap through a case study from Bhutan, centred on perceptions from 52 local conservation practitioners, planners, funders and community members. We use mixed methods to identify which capacities have been important for conservation success, which capacities are needed for future success, which capacities are foundational and how capacities interact. We find that capacity needs have shifted from individual-level knowledge and skills to community- and societal-level capacities in response to changing political and economic dynamics. Participants identified political support and leadership, reliable and sufficient funding, strengthening the research base, and increasing community awareness and engagement as critical future needs. Investing in these capacities holds the promise of further augmenting capacity development, thus increasing the value of limited resources. Our results demonstrate that capacity development should be viewed as a dynamic process and supported by strategic investment even in countries with track records of conservation success.

The COVID-19 pandemic raised the importance of adaptive capacity and preparedness when engaging historically marginalized populations in research and practice. The Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics in Underserved Populations’ COVID-19 Equity Evidence Academy Series (RADx-UP EA) is a virtual, national, interactive conference model designed to support and engage community-academic partnerships in a collaborative effort to improve practices that overcome disparities in SARS-CoV-2 testing and testing technologies. The RADx-UP EA promotes information sharing, critical reflection and discussion, and creation of translatable strategies for health equity. Staff and faculty from the RADx-UP Coordination and Data Collection Center developed three EA events with diverse geographic, racial, and ethnic representation of attendees from RADx-UP community-academic project teams: February 2021 (n = 319); November 2021 (n = 242); and September 2022 (n = 254). Each EA event included a data profile; 2-day, virtual event; event summary report; community dissemination product; and an evaluation strategy. Operational and translational delivery processes were iteratively adapted for each EA across one or more of five adaptive capacity domains: assets, knowledge and learning, social organization, flexibility, and innovation. The RADx-UP EA model can be generalized beyond RADx-UP and tailored by community and academic input to respond to local or national health emergencies.

Farmers around the world are increasingly vulnerable: climate variability is identified as the primary stressor, but unfavorable biophysical circumstances and disturbances in the socioeconomic domain (labor dynamics and price volatility) also affect farm management and production. To deal with these disturbances, adaptations are recognized as essential. Antifragility acknowledges that adaptations and volatility are inherent characteristics of complex systems and abandons the idea of returning to the pre-disturbance system state. Instead, antifragility recognizes that disturbances can trigger reorganization, enabling selection and removal of weaker system features and allowing the system to evolve toward a better state. In this study, we assessed the vulnerability of different types of smallholder farms in Bihar, India, and explored the scope for more antifragile farming systems that can ‘bounce back better’ after disturbances. Accumulation of stocks, creation of optionality (i.e., having multiple options for innovation) and strengthening of farmer autonomy were identified as criteria for antifragility. We had focus group discussions with in total 92 farmers and found that most expressed themselves to be vulnerable: they experienced challenges but had limited adaptive capacity to change their situation. They mostly made short-term decisions to cope with or mitigate urgent challenges but did not engage in strategic planning driven by longer-term objectives. Instead, they waited for governmental support to improve their livelihoods. Despite being confronted with similar challenges, four positive deviant farmers showed to be more antifragile: their diverse farming systems were abundant in stocks and optionality, and the farmers were distinguished in terms of their autonomy, competence, and connectedness to peers, the community, and markets. To support antifragility among regular farmers, adaptations at policy level may be required, for example, by shifting from a top-down toward a bottom-up adaptation and innovation regime where initiative and cooperation are encouraged. With a more autonomous orientation, farmers’ intrinsic motivation is expected to increase, enabling transitions at the farm level. In this way, connected systems can be developed which are socioeconomically and biophysically adaptive. When practices, knowledge, and skills are continuously developed, an antifragile system with ample stocks and optionality may evolve over time.

Translational science is, by definition, groundbreaking; however, without an emphasis on quality and efficiency, some innovations in healthcare may translate into unnecessary risk, suboptimal solutions, and potentially loss of well-being and even lives. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Clinical and Translational Sciences Award Consortium’s response created an opportunity for quality and efficiency to be better defined, expediently and thoughtfully addressed, and further studied as central foundations in the translational science mission. This paper presents findings of an environmental scan of adaptive capacity and preparedness to illuminate the assets, institutional environment, knowledge, and forward-looking decision-making needed to optimize and sustain research quality and efficiency.

This paper is part of the Environmental Scan of Adaptive Capacity and Preparedness of Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs, illuminating challenges, practices, and lessons learned related to CTSA hubs’ efforts of engaging community partners to reduce the spread of the virus, address barriers to COVID-19 testing, identify treatments to improve health outcomes, and advance community participation in research. CTSA researchers, staff, and community partners collaborated to develop evidence-based, inclusive, accessible, and culturally appropriate strategies and resources helping community members stay healthy, informed, and connected during the pandemic. CTSA institutions have used various mechanisms to advance co-learning and co-sharing of knowledge, resources, tools, and experiences between academic professionals, patients, community partners, and other stakeholders. Forward-looking and adaptive decision-making structures are those that prioritize sustained relationships, mutual trust and commitment, ongoing communication, proactive identification of community concerns and needs, shared goals and decision making, as well as ample appreciation of community members and their contributions to translational research. There is a strong need for further community-engaged research and workforce training on how to build our collective and individual adaptive capacity to sustain and improve processes and outcomes of engagement with and by communities—in all aspects of translational science.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated health disparities and rendered them acutely more visible. Special and underrepresented populations need to be fully integrated into the translational research process from the very beginning and all the way through. This article presents findings and rapid analysis mini-case studies from the Environmental Scan (E-Scan) of adaptive capacity and preparedness of Clinical and Translational Science Award hubs, specific to the goal of integrating special and vulnerable populations in different institutional research settings. In our discussion of the findings and case studies, we flexibly apply local adaptive capacity framework concepts and characteristics, and, whenever possible, we present ideas on how to enhance capacity in those areas, based on the challenges and practices identified through the E-Scan. Although the past year has recorded incredible achievements in vaccine development, clinical trials, diagnostics, and overall biomedical research, these successes continue to be hampered by our inability to turn them into achievements equally available and accessible to all populations.

COVID-19 reinforced the need for effective leadership and administration within Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program hubs in response to a public health crisis. The speed, scale, and persistent evolution of the pandemic forced CTSA hubs to act quickly and remain nimble. The switch to virtual environments paired with supporting program operations, while ensuring the safety and well-being of their team, highlight the critical support role provided by leadership and administration. The pandemic also illustrated the value of emergency planning in supporting organizations’ ability to quickly pivot and adapt. Lessons learned from the pandemic and from other cases of adaptive capacity and preparedness can aid program hubs in promoting and sustaining the overall capabilities of their organizations to prepare for future events.

As the USA and the rest of the world raced to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, years of investments from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences allowed for informatics services and resources at CTSA hubs to play a significant role in addressing the crisis. CTSA hubs partnered with local and regional partners to collect data on the pandemic, provide access to relevant patient data, and produce data dashboards to support decision-making. Coordinated efforts, like the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), helped to aggregate and harmonize clinical data nationwide. Even with significant informatics investments, some CTSA hubs felt unprepared in their ability to respond to the fast-moving public health crisis. Many hubs were forced to quickly evolve to meet local needs. Informatics teams expanded critical support at their institutions which included an engagement platform for clinical research, COVID-19 awareness and education activities in the community, and COVID-19 data dashboards. Continued investments in informatics resources will aid in ensuring that tools, resources, practices, and policies are aligned to meet local and national public health needs.

The ability of research networks and individual institutions to effectively and efficiently prepare, respond, and adapt to emergent challenges is essential for the biomedical research enterprise. At the beginning of 2021, a special Working Group was formed by individuals in the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) consortium and approved by the CTSA Steering Committee to explore “Adaptive Capacity and Preparedness (AC&P) of CTSA Hubs.” The AC&P Working Group took a pragmatic Environmental Scan (E-Scan) approach of utilizing the diverse data that had been collected through existing mechanisms. The Local Adaptive Capacity framework was adapted to illustrate the interconnectedness of CTSA programs and services, while exposing how the demands of the pandemic forced them to quickly pivot and adapt. This paper presents a synopsis of the themes and lessons learned that emerged from individual sections of the E-Scan. Lessons learned from this study may improve our understanding of adaptive capacity and preparedness at different levels, as well as help strengthen the core service models, strategies, and foster innovation in clinical and translational science research.

Human–wildlife interactions (HWIs) occur in many rural African communities, with potential impacts on livelihood vulnerability. High livelihood vulnerability may force communities to employ strategies that increase the risk of negative HWIs, yet the extent to which HWIs drive or are driven by vulnerability is unclear. We hypothesized that more vulnerable households are more likely to be exposed to wildlife and experience negative interactions. To test this hypothesis, we calculated the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) of rural households in and around Quirimbas National Park (north-eastern Mozambique) and assessed whether there is a link between livelihood vulnerability and HWIs. We found a two-way association between LVI and HWIs, with more vulnerable households indeed taking greater risks and encountering wildlife when fetching water from rivers, whereas less vulnerable households tended not to employ strategies likely to increase wildlife encounters. We also observed that HWIs exert a strong effect on livelihood vulnerability, suggesting that HWIs should be included as an exposure factor in vulnerability assessments for rural households. We recommend that livelihood strategies and community vulnerability should be considered when designing HWI mitigation schemes and implementing conservation measures.

Throughout the past two decades, the number of studies examining the adaptive capacity of Arctic communities in the context of climate change has been increasing; however, little is known about Arctic communities’ ability to adapt to certain emerging changes, such as increased shipping activity. To address this knowledge gap, this study systematically analyses published scientific articles on community adaptive capacity in circumpolar Arctic, including articles published in Russian which may not be captured in English-only reviews. Throughout this review, the study focuses on three areas: the development of the adaptive capacity framework; the conditions that enable community adaption abilities; and the extent to which shipping developments are addressed in the literature. This study demonstrates that the adaptive capacity framework has been significantly developed both theoretically and methodologically and is broadly used to address new types of climatic and non-climatic changes. Though the impacts from the shipping development are discussed in some studies, there is a clear need for further examination of coastal communities’ ability to adapt to such changes. Additionally, the study reveals limitations in the application of the Western conceptual terminology when exploring community-based research by Russian scholars.

Increasingly chaotic business environments of today demand organizations to be more resilient. While the concept of resilience is widely discussed in disaster (e.g., Wildavsky, 1991) and crisis management literatures (e.g., Manyena, 2006), the literature on organizational resilience is developing disjointedly in organizational studies. The literature review suggests that some factors that are suggested in the literature as components of organizational resilience are sources contributing to the emergence of resilience in organizations. This study proposes an integrative framework for organizational resilience and introduces a new outcome concept of organizational evolvability, emphasizing the heightened sensitivity and increased wisdom of the post-event organization. In this model, sources of organizational resilience are categorized as perceptual stance, contextual integrity, strategic capacity and strategic acting, and organizational resilience leads to organizational evolvability as its outcome. The proposed organizational resilience framework attempts to provide a synthesis of the divergent literature on resilience and aims to strengthen organizational resilience research for richer theoretical and empirical progress.

Northern First Nations in Canada have experienced environmental change throughout history, adapting to these changes based on personal experience interacting with their environment. Community members of Fort Albany First Nation of northern Ontario, Canada, have voiced their concern that their youths’ connection to the land is diminishing, making this generation more vulnerable to environmental change. Community members previously identified the collaborative-geomatics informatics tool as potentially useful for fostering intergenerational knowledge transfer. In this article, we assess the potential of the informatics tool to reconnect youth with the surrounding land in order to strengthen the adaptive capacity of Fort Albany First Nation. The tool was introduced to students in an environmental-outreach camp that included traditional activities. Students used global positioning systems and geo-tagged photographs that were loaded onto the informatics tool. Semi-directed interviews revealed that the students enjoyed the visual and spatial capabilities of the system, and recognised its potential to be used in conjunction with traditional activities. This pilot study suggests that the tool has the potential to be used by youth to provide an opportunity for the intergenerational transfer of Indigenous knowledge, but further evaluation is required.