21. Vulnerability, Resilience and Adaptation Chair: Sander van der Leeuw, School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University, USA Carl Folke, The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden Panel members: Emily Boyd, Centre for the Environment, Oxford Universiy and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden Beatrice Crona, School of Human Evolution and Social Change & The Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, Arizona State University, USA and Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden Graeme Cumming, Percy FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa Fiona Miller, School of Resource Management and Geography, The University of Melbourne, Australia Don Nelson, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, UK Description: In the winter of 2005, at the initiative of Elinor Ostrom and the International Human Dimensions Program on global environmental change (IHDP) Scientific Committee, IHDP organized a meeting at Arizona State University on the theme "Vulnerability, Resilience and Adaptation". The papers presented at the meeting were published in the autumn of 2006 in a special issue (vol 16:3) of Global Environmental Change, edited by Elinor Ostrom and Marco Janssen. Several meetings on the theme have been organized since than by for example the Tyndall Centre/UEA, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Stockholm Resilience Centre and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). The Resilience Alliance and the IHDP are starting a joint initiative on the important cross-cutting theme vulnerability, resilience and adaptation. In this context, it has been proposed to further develop the theme from three existing research centers heavily involved in working on the issue: the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tyndall Centre (Norwich and Oxford, U.K.) and Arizona State University (U.S.A.). In effect, these are among the centers most involved in both IHDP and the Resilience Alliance, with members in both organizations. This panel will discuss the current status and challenges of the cross-cutting vulnerability, resilience, adaptation theme.