The Resilience Institute is a national registered charity with a team that is laser focused on uniting people in strengthening their resilience to climate impacts through participatory informed education, applied research, and adaptation action. Our initiatives can be thought of as ‘readying’ communities for climate action in both mitigation and adaptation.
Our work is focused on strengthening the resilience of small, rural, and Indigenous communities to current- and near-future consequences of climate change. Unique to our work is that we actively weave multiple ways of knowing to advance local change and inspire transformative thinking about systems and approaches to resilience.
Representation of Diverse Values – Diverse representation is essential for robust, community-relevant adaptation and disaster risk responses. We strive to ensure that the values, insights, and perspectives of diverse people and communities are included in our programming, from planning to implementation. Youth, seniors, newcomers to Canada, and diverse cultures can inform and enrich adaptation and disaster planning.
Exploring diverse notions of resilience in the context of climate change.
Through a series of engagement activities, nearly 400 community members in the Canadian Rocky Mountains learned about glaciers and wildfires in the context of climate change.
Fire with Fire is a multi-year, multi-partner initiative aimed at building capacity for climate adaptation by braiding Indigenous, local, and scientific knowledge.
Bringing together farmers and scientists to co-develop on-farm practices to sequester carbon.
Supporting early adoption of beneficial management practices to improve soil health.
Evaluating the ecological role of Sweetgrass and its potential to mitigate climate change.
Developing a community-wide climate risk assessment inclusive of diverse voices.
Building capacity and planning for the reintroduction of buffalo with the Mistawasis First Nation.
Building momentum, skills, and capacity to address climate impacts with the Piikani Nation.
A course delivered to university students and researchers on collaborative research skills.
Flood adaptation in an era of rapid climate change.
Learn about our initiatives bringing communities together to explore the meaning of resilience.
Building on outcomes of our previous work, current initiatives are setting the stage for scaled-up climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction.
The TRI team works locally and globally with diverse partners on education and research initiatives that address climate change.
Dr. Sara Walsh is a disaster risk reduction and climate resilience specialist with more than 15 years of experience spanning Canada, Nepal, the Middle East, and North Africa. Until November 2025, she served as Thematic Lead for Climate and Resilience with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), where she supported Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to strengthen their climate and risk reduction work across the region. Sara currently works as a freelance consultant with the United Nations, governments, and humanitarian organizations on recovery, risk governance, and community-based resilience. She teaches at a Canadian university and holds a PhD in Disaster Risk Reduction. Her work emphasizes anticipatory action, equity, and bridging research with practice to shape more resilient and sustainable futures.
Ice core scientist and high-altitude mountaineer Alison Criscitiello explores the history of climate and sea ice in polar and high-alpine regions using ice core chemistry. Criscitiello’s work also focuses on environmental contaminant histories in ice cores from the Canadian high Arctic and the water towers of the Canadian Rockies. In 2010, she led the first all-women’s ascent of Lingsarmo, a 22,818-foot peak in the Indian Himalaya. Criscitiello has earned three American Alpine Club (AAC) climbing awards, the John Lauchlan and Mugs Stump alpine climbing awards, as well as the first Ph.D. in Glaciology ever conferred by MIT. Criscitiello is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab at the University of Alberta. She is the co-founder of Girls on Ice Canada.
