Resilience

Author(s):  
Carl Folke

Resilience thinking in relation to the environment has emerged as a lens of inquiry that serves a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. Resilience is about cultivating the capacity to sustain development in the face of expected and surprising change and diverse pathways of development and potential thresholds between them. The evolution of resilience thinking is coupled to social-ecological systems and a truly intertwined human-environment planet. Resilience as persistence, adaptability and, transformability of complex adaptive social-ecological systems is the focus, clarifying the dynamic and forward-looking nature of the concept. Resilience thinking emphasizes that social-ecological systems, from the individual, to community, to society as a whole, are embedded in the biosphere. The biosphere connection is an essential observation if sustainability is to be taken seriously. In the continuous advancement of resilience thinking there are efforts aimed at capturing resilience of social-ecological systems and finding ways for people and institutions to govern social-ecological dynamics for improved human well-being, at the local, across levels and scales, to the global. Consequently, in resilience thinking, development issues for human well-being, for people and planet, are framed in a context of understanding and governing complex social-ecological dynamics for sustainability as part of a dynamic biosphere.

Author(s):  
Dustin Eirdosh ◽  
Susan Hanisch

Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) examines the emergence and persistence of complex adaptive systems, including human social-ecological systems. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to empower students with the skills to develop and sustain human social-ecological systems that reflect the shared values of our species. The aims of EvoS and ESD have clear overlaps, and yet these two fields remain as distant islands of thought with few academic bridges between them. This chapter explores the connections between EvoS and ESD from historical, theoretical, and applied perspectives and presents the value of an integrated approach. The authors argue the strengths of this approach include its cumulative evidence base from wide-ranging disciplines, its explanatory power, and its overall simplicity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa A. Masterson ◽  
Susanne Vetter ◽  
Tomas Chaigneau ◽  
Tim M. Daw ◽  
Odirilwe Selomane ◽  
...  

Non-technical summaryWe argue that the ways in which we as humans derive well-being from nature – for example by harvesting firewood, selling fish or enjoying natural beauty – feed back into how we behave towards the environment. This feedback is mediated by institutions (rules, regulations) and by individual capacities to act. Understanding these relationships can guide better interventions for sustainably improving well-being and alleviating poverty. However, more attention needs to be paid to how experience-related benefits from nature influence attitudes and actions towards the environment, and how these relationships can be reflected in more environmentally sustainable development projects.


2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (9) ◽  
pp. 2298-2308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Melbourne-Thomas ◽  
Andrew J Constable ◽  
Elizabeth A Fulton ◽  
Stuart P Corney ◽  
Rowan Trebilco ◽  
...  

Abstract Policy- and decision-makers require assessments of status and trends for marine species, habitats, and ecosystems to understand if human activities in the marine environment are sustainable, particularly in the face of global change. Central to many assessments are statistical and dynamical models of populations, communities, ecosystems, and their socioeconomic systems and management frameworks. The establishment of a national system that could facilitate the development of such model-based assessments has been identified as a priority for addressing management challenges for Australia’s marine environment. Given that most assessments require cross-scale information, individual models cannot capture all of the spatial, temporal, biological, and socioeconomic scales that are typically needed. Coupling or integrating models across scales and domains can expand the scope for developing comprehensive and internally consistent, system-level assessments, including higher-level feedbacks in social–ecological systems. In this article, we summarize: (i) integrated modelling for marine systems currently being undertaken in Australia, (ii) methods used for integration and comparison of models, and (iii) improvements to facilitate further integration, particularly with respect to standards and specifications. We consider future needs for integrated modelling of marine social–ecological systems in Australia and provide a set of recommendations for priority focus areas in the development of a national approach to integrated modelling. These recommendations draw on—and have broader relevance for—international efforts around integrated modelling to inform decision-making for marine systems.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte K. Whitney ◽  
Nathan Bennett ◽  
Natalie Ban ◽  
Edward H. Allison ◽  
Derek Armitage ◽  
...  

Because of the complexity and speed of environmental, climatic, and socio-political change in coastal marine social-ecological systems, there is significant academic and applied interest in assessing and fostering the adaptive capacity of coastal communities. Adaptive capacity refers to the latent ability of a system to respond proactively and positively to stressors or opportunities. A variety of qualitative, quantitative, and participatory approaches have been developed and applied to understand and assess adaptive capacity, each with different benefits, drawbacks, insights, and implications. Drawing on case studies of coastal communities from around the globe, we describe and compare 11 approaches that are often used to study adaptive capacity of social and ecological systems in the face of social, environmental, and climatic change. We synthesize lessons from a series of case studies to present important considerations to frame research and to choose an assessment approach, key challenges to analyze adaptive capacity in linked social-ecological systems, and good practices to link results to action to foster adaptive capacity. We suggest that more attention be given to integrated social-ecological assessments and that greater effort be placed on evaluation and monitoring of adaptive capacity over time and across scales. Overall, although sustainability science holds a promise of providing solutions to real world problems, we found that too few assessments seem to lead to tangible outcomes or actions to foster adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa A. Masterson ◽  
Susanne Vetter ◽  
Tomas Chaigneau ◽  
Tim M. Daw ◽  
Odirilwe Selomane ◽  
...  

Non-technical summary We argue that the ways in which we as humans derive well-being from nature – for example by harvesting firewood, selling fish or enjoying natural beauty – feed back into how we behave towards the environment. This feedback is mediated by institutions (rules, regulations) and by individual capacities to act. Understanding these relationships can guide better interventions for sustainably improving well-being and alleviating poverty. However, more attention needs to be paid to how experience-related benefits from nature influence attitudes and actions towards the environment, and how these relationships can be reflected in more environmentally sustainable development projects.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
FLORIANE CLEMENT

SUMMARYOvercoming the ‘panacea problem’ has been a major challenge for scholars devoted to the study of social-ecological systems (SESs). Panaceas are overly simplified institutional prescriptions, which have recurrently misguided natural resource policies across the world. To address this challenge, SES-scholars have focused their efforts on identifying the right institutional fit for a particular system, and a major initiative to refine the analysis of human-environment interaction has been the development of a multi-tiered interdisciplinary framework, called the SES framework. SES studies and analytical frameworks need to go beyond their current focus on finding the right institutional fit by positing power and discourses as key components of the analysis of SESs.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Levin ◽  
Tasos Xepapadeas ◽  
Anne-Sophie Crépin ◽  
Jon Norberg ◽  
Aart de Zeeuw ◽  
...  

AbstractSystems linking people and nature, known as social-ecological systems, are increasingly understood as complex adaptive systems. Essential features of these complex adaptive systems – such as nonlinear feedbacks, strategic interactions, individual and spatial heterogeneity, and varying time scales – pose substantial challenges for modeling. However, ignoring these characteristics can distort our picture of how these systems work, causing policies to be less effective or even counterproductive. In this paper we present recent developments in modeling social-ecological systems, illustrate some of these challenges with examples related to coral reefs and grasslands, and identify the implications for economic and policy analysis.


Author(s):  
Luisa E. Delgado ◽  
Iskra Alejandra Rojo Negrete ◽  
Marcela Torres-Gómez ◽  
Amanda Alfonso ◽  
Francisco Zorondo-Rodríguez

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