Volume 20 Issue 4

David Lynch is known to have once said: “What a great time to be alive if you love the theatre of the absurd.” And what absurd times these are.

In December last year, members of CRJ’s editorial team travelled to Colombo, Sri Lanka, to attend a symposium focused on climate, adaptation, and resilience. People working in the literal thick of things spoke openly about what we're doing wrong, what some are trying to do right, and everything in between.

Two days later, Cyclone Ditwah hit the country, collapsing theory into lived reality. The theatre of the absurd, but without the show or the spectacle. I report on the Cyclone and Sri Lankan community resilience on p88.

There has rarely been a more urgent moment to revisit systemic failure. From energy and security, to logistics and supply chains, parts of the world are running at full speed on fractured, underfunded systems. Elsewhere, people have adapted to there being no structured systems. On p54, Stephen Arundell and David McClory examine how resilience approaches continue to miss the bigger picture, while Jeannie Barr (p71) looks at what eroding trust means for emergency planning in the UK.

Several articles explore Europe’s growing energy vulnerability – from climate stressors (p26) to over-reliance on Russian gas (Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, p20). Others examine how digitisation, cyber risk, and cascading outages are reshaping what resilience now requires for communities and businesses alike.

We started the new year with few things that feel genuinely new. What runs through this issue, however, is a growing unease with performative resilience – metrics that reassure, exercises that simulate without pressure, and strategies that privilege central control over local judgement.

Perhaps the most absurd of all is hope. We continue to work on solutions amid a melting pot of problems. And as is customary for CRJ authors, contributors throughout this edition challenge us to rethink preparedness as something lived, practised, and trusted rather than merely documented.