The ABN defines resilience as ‘the ability of a community to withstand negative internal and external pressures and threats. Resilience enables adaptation and strength, coherence and intergenerational learning. Communities can be resilient when they are empowered and clear about their future and can act together to protect their rights’.

The route to resilience is developed through intergenerational learning to revive indigenous ecological knowledge; the creation and use of eco-maps and calendars to facilitate agreement of land and biodiversity governance and control, first within communities, and then with local government; and community dialogues to analyse and strengthen relevant traditional ecological knowledge and practices, and build community ecological governance capacity. All of these methods promote dialogue, analysis, and negotiation to identify, agree, and implement local solutions that increase local control and protection of ecosystems and community rights and responsibilities.