8. Empowering agency unlocks resilience

Resilience depends on empowered action

Agency is the capacity to make decisions and act on them. Exercising agency means having the freedom to access and effectively use knowledge and resources. Agency can be used at all levels of society—by individuals and households as well as communities, civil society groups, businesses, and governments.

For individuals, agency means believing you have the ability to act and the ability to influence change. In a collective context, agency manifests itself through shared visions, community organisation, and coordinated actions. Agency takes many forms—farmers proactively adopting new practices, communities organising for climate justice, or city councils investing in nature-based solutions.

Agency makes the capacities of coping, adapting, and transforming possible (see Must-Know #2). The stronger the agency, the greater the ability to act early, collectively, and intentionally. Believing in their power to act enables people and institutions to respond proactively—not just reactively—to disruption and change. They are able to choose when and how to cope, adapt, or transform.

With agency, people and institutions can prepare for floods, survive droughts, or transition away from declining livelihoods or outdated practices and legislation. For example, farmers can come together in cooperative arrangements to negotiate prices and conditions with retailers and thus increase their decision-making capacities within global supply chains. In times of geopolitical crisis, strong agency can help governments, businesses, and industries coordinate responses and adapt to disruption. However, when agency is concentrated in the hands of powerful actors, decisions may be skewed in their favour, thus highlighting the need to anticipate trade-offs and ensure inclusive, equitable responses (see Must-Know #7). Together, such expressions of agency enable people and institutions not just to cope with change but to shape it.

How to support agency

Agency does not automatically emerge— it must be supported. This often requires structural changes, power shifts, and policies that ensure equitable access to education, income, and other infrastructure resources (see Must-Know #2 and #9).

People and institutions cannot make good decisions and act upon them if they are disempowered, excluded, or constrained. Even where agency exists, this should not be used as an excuse for inaction. Some institutions cite strong community agency as a reason not to invest in them, assuming they are already resilient. But this logic is flawed. Strong agency should be recognised and supported, not left to carry the burden alone.

Agency is strengthened through relationships

Agency is strengthened through relationships and networks (see Must-Know #6). Being well-connected—socially or professionally—can greatly boost people’s confidence in their decision-making capacities and their ability to make a difference. This is especially important for excluded groups, such as young people, the disabled, women, or Indigenous communities.

Many important relationships are built through informal systems: local knowledge networks, social safety nets, or Indigenous governance structures. These systems are central to agency and resilience. If they are sidelined or weakened, the system’s overall capacity to respond is reduced.

Hence, collective agency—organising for joint decision-making and action—is an important feature of resilience. Communities with high levels of autonomy, self-organisation, and local leadership recover from disasters more rapidly because they adapt more readily and are better able to drive transformative change.

Be aware of agency dynamics

Agency is not always distributed fairly. Internal inequalities—based on gender, wealth, ethnicity, religion, or age—can be exploited by powerful actors to serve their own interests. This can shift decision-making away from those most affected by social and ecological disruption and weaken resilience. If not carefully designed, resilience initiatives can unintentionally reinforce these inequities rather than resolve them (see Must-Know #9).

External actors can also erode local agency. For example, international mining or forestry companies may hold more sway with national authorities than local communities. When control over land is taken from local people, their ability to act is diminished.

Recognising these risks is essential to prevent conflict and ensure that agency leads to sustainable and just resilience.