On September 5, 2024 the National Institute for Strategic Studies organized an international panel discussion “Building Resilience in Uncertain World”. The panel was the part of the agenda of the 33rd Economic Forum in Karpacz (Poland), organized by the Institute of Eastern Studies and Lover-Silesia Voivodship of Poland under the theme “Time of New Leaders – Shaping the Future Together”.
The Economic Forum in Karpacz is the largest and the most important conference in Central and Eastern Europe, gathering political, economic and social leaders from over 60 countries around the world. It serves as a platform owing to which the most important figures in European politics and economy can exchange their views.
The panel was moderated by deputy director, head of the Center for Economic and social studies of NISS Yaroslav Zhalilo.
The participants of the panel were:
- Armands Astukevics, Researcher, Centre for East European Policy Studies, Latvia
- Edwin Bendyk, Chairman of the Board, Stefan Batory Foundation, Poland
- Rady Burduja, Executive director, Euro-Atlantic Institute for Building Resilience, Moldova.
- Carola Frey, Expert, Euro-Atlantic Resilience Center, Romania
- Volodymyr Lupatsii, Co-Founder, National Platform for Resilience and Social Cohesion, Ukraine
Presenting the topic of the discussion, Yaroslav Zhalilo mentioned that combined uncertainty of modern global challenges requires the complementary policies of resilience - as a capacity to be continuous in uncertainty. Interacting of actors/stakeholders and instruments: political, economic, organizational, technologic, civic etc. is required. Individual resilience can create the illusion of possibility to survive for a limited period of time. But in order to develop in long-term prospective the joint efforts are preferrable.
The majority of modern changes and threats is irreversible. Means, it’s no possibility to come back to Business as Usual. Players in uncertain world have to be resilient, adapting. To persuade them to do this, is a primary political goal.
Limiting resilience building by imposing new stricter regulations based on some voluntary imperative visions, allows to keep the resistance inside the actual model. In order of getting the real resilience, we should reach the capacities to change the model by proper decentralized decision-making – and appropriate actions of the stakeholders. Building this capacity, is the primary institutional goal.
Finalizing, Yaroslav Zhalilo stated, that the toolset of resilience building matters, as it determines the prospective and directly depends on the shape of our desired future. Democracy, freedom, entrepreneurship and global cooperation as our basic values should provide the advantages in reaching resilience in uncertain world.
Discussing the agenda, the participants presented their visions of the essence of resilience in uncertain world. In particular, stressing on the aspects of common vision of the future, capacity of continuous system building, multidimensionality.
Edwin Bendyk distinguished the capacity of self-organization of communities faced the challenges and threats.
Volodymyr Lupatsii stressed on the architecture of Ukrainian resilience in full-scale war, that encompasses embedded values of democracy, culture of self-organization, capacity of self-defense, high social cohesion and developed participative democracy, implemented social innovations.
Rady Burduja mentioned the complementarity of spheres of resilience – military force does not work alone, and building resilience requires institutional organization of shared responsibility for resilience in practical policy.
Armands Astukevics stressed upon the trend of weaponization of non-military threats. This requires moving to decentralized understanding on defense and resilience via building appropriate networks.
Carola Frey mentioned the importance of applied technological approach to resilience building, which supposes proper understanding of risk phenomena by constant monitoring, analysis of points of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, thus, choosing the appropriate toolset for resilience building.
The panelists agreed that the desired future consists in “democratic resilience”, based on harmonized policies, cohesion of global and national level resilience goals, capacity development to reveal the energy of freedom and democracy.