Sustainable intensification in drylands: What resilience and vulnerability can tell us

• We apply concepts from vulnerability and resilience to sustainable intensification in drylands.
• We challenge the predominant “security-versus-intensification hypothesis”.
• Some forms of intensification can increase vulnerability and are therefore unsustainable.
• Agricultural intensity is not the inverse of extensivity.
• Sustainable intensification intensifies the most extensive systems, as extensive systems.