Philip Arthur

Calls to make ecological systems, organizations, and people “resilient” have become central to sustainability science. However, resilience is a broad term that sometimes means returning to the status quo. In a disruptive world, characterized by interconnected crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemics, returning to the status quo may be neither feasible nor desirable. In this Overview article we suggest an alternative framework, antifragility, whereby the explicit goal is to improve after stress. We position antifragility not as a replacement for resilience, but as a complement to this concept, which is indispensable to sustainability science. This orientation leads to embracing key features of antifragile systems, including decentralization, optionality, and a proactive approach to stressors. We explore case studies in water, energy, and food systems to demonstrate how an antifragile approach applies to satisfying human needs in the real world. We then discuss trade-offs inherent in an antifragile approach, such as who bears the costs when systems learn from stress. Finally, we outline a future research agenda to make antifragility testable and accountable.

This review article provides a new perspective on the ethics of green nudging. We advance a new model for assessing the ethical permissibility of green nudges (GNs). On this model, which provides normative guidance for policymakers, a GN is ethically permissible when the intervention is (1) efficacious, (2) cost-effective, and (3) the advantages of the GN (i.e. reducing the environmental harm) are not outweighed by countervailing costs/harms (i.e. for nudgees). While traditional ethical objections to nudges (paternalism, etc.) remain potential normative costs associated with GNs, any such costs must be weighed against the injunction to reduce environmental harm to third parties.