As climate change upends established patterns of life, resilience – the ability of social and ecological systems to mitigate, endure, and adapt to short-term shocks and long-term stressors – has become a buzzword in development and humanitarian circles. [Video Below]

It’s been 14 years since the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 acknowledging women as important agents of change in recovery from conflict and peacebuilding generally. But between 1992 and 2011, only four percent of signatories in 31 major peace processes around the world were women, and only 12 out of 585 peace agreements referred to or made provisions for women’s needs in the reconstruction process.

Imagine an overgrown perennial garden. Impenetrable, shrubby bushes knit themselves together in long rows. Grasses reach chest high. Native hardwood trees hog the perimeter.

At high noon, Devi KC is still deep in the daily chores she started at sunrise: brewing tea and cooking a meal of rice, lentils and spinach for her husband and teenage son; pumping and hauling water from the nearby well; harvesting hay from her field; and sweeping road dirt from her front porch.

In August, armed men stormed an Ebola clinic in Monrovia, Liberia, releasing infected patients and stealing contaminated bedding. The following month, eight health workers were attacked and killed in a Guinean village as they tried to educate residents about the deadly disease; their bodies were found in a village latrine. Days later, Red Cross workers in western Guinea were assaulted as they tried to collect and bury Ebola victims.