Resource-Dependent Rural Community Sustainability and Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

Recent years have seen the popularization of the community resilience concept as a framework for understanding and enhancing the sustainability of resource-dependent communities in the face of climate change impacts and other drivers of change. The community resilience concept refers to the capacity of community members to respond to drivers of change in a manner that improves upon or maintains community well-being. Resilient communities are those that have the capacity to cope, adapt, and transform in response to drivers of change, and this capacity is generally linked to the availability of capital assets and effective institutions. A number of factors account for the increasing focus on community resilience by scientists and policy makers: recognition of the shortfalls of narrow economic measures of community well-being and the need for multi-dimensional measures; a shift from a static and homogenous conceptualization of communities towards a more dynamic view of communities as complex social-ecological systems that are characterized by change and uncertainties; and a shift from top-down approaches to community development towards more inclusive bottom-up approaches that recognize the agency of communities in responding to various threats and opportunities. In spite of its appeal, there is the need for further refinement of existing conceptual and methodological tools for community resilience in order to enhance their adoption in policy and practice.

The scope of this Special Issue on resource-dependent community sustainability and resilience includes theory-driven manuscripts that advance current understandings on the mechanisms of community response to drivers of change, manuscripts that offer new methodological insights on the assessment of community sustainability and resilience, as well as manuscripts that address the institutional requirements for enhancing sustainable and resilient communities. All types of articles, including literature reviews, research articles, case studies, and perspectives are welcome in this Special Issue.

Dr. Kofi Akamani
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• adaptive capacity
• capital assets
• community capacity
• community resilience
• drivers of change
• institutions
• social-ecological systems
• vulnerability
• well-being