OJEong Resilience Institute

Introduction
Established in 2014, the OJEong Resilience Institute (OJERI) is the center of the Asia resilience research network. OJERI aims to improve ecological resilience for addressing social-ecological changes that threaten the quality of life for humanity, and to contribute to a sustainable society.
OJERI cooperates with a ‘Institute of Environment and Ecology’, a ‘Environmental GIS/RS Center’, a ‘Wild Resource Plant Seed Bank’ and a ‘Korea Biochar Research Center’ to develop new theories and techniques for estimating quantitatively ecological resilience and analyzing impact of the human activities to the ecological resilience. Through this research network, OJERI will become a top-level research institute in the field of sustainability.

Scientific Grounds for a Sustainable Society
This century humanity’s impending problem is represented by the natural changes of huge proportions caused by global warming and human activities that ultimately threaten the quality of life in the future.
The research about the impact of human activities on the resilience of the ecosystem on the regional and global scales is still in its very first stages because of the complexity of its subject.
Understanding ecosystem resilience is a central concept of Korea University’s founding philosophy and corresponds with humanity’s ideal of improving the quality of life and using a limited amount of natural resources.
Korea University’s OJEong Resilience Institute through its fundamental and applied research on ecosystem resilience is prepared to contribute to the attainment of a sustainable society.

Vision and Mission
Modern society has developed through an industrial structure based on mass production and mass consumption. However, this structure is no longer socially or ecologically sustainable. Sustainable development should aim at a social structure in which mankind can utilize natural resources to the extent that it does not degrade ecosystem resilience. To this end, it is necessary to understand a human-centered social system and nature-centered ecosystem, and analyze the impact of human activities on the ecosystem. We also need to understand the benefits that the ecosystem provides to humans, thereby forming a social structure that can preserve, protect, and restore the ecosystem. OJEong Resilience Institute aims to become a world-leading research institute in the field of sustainable development. For the sake of achieving this purpose, OJERI pursues transdisciplinary research on resilience and social-ecological system that contribute to solve various societal problems, and develops new theories and technologies that explore the impact of human activities to the resilience of local to global community.