xiii-xiv Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic
function and structure... Resilience thinking offers a different way of understanding the world around us
and of managing our natural resources. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot resolve our resource issues,
and it offers a constructive alternative that creates options rather than limits them.
Resilience Thinking should appeal to anyone interested in dealing with risk in a
complex world... Anyone with a stake in managing some aspect of that world will benefit from a richer understanding
of resilience and its implications.
p.9 The bottom line for sustainability is that any proposal for sustainable development that does not explicitly
acknowledge a system's resilience is simply not going to keep delivering the goods (or services). The key to sustainability
lies in enhancing the resilience of social-ecological systems, not in optimizing isolated components of the system.
p.9-10 At the heart of resilience thinking is a very simple notion - things change - and to ignore
or resist change is to increase our vulnerability and forego emerging opportunities. In doing so, we limit our options.
Sometimes changes are slow... Unfortunately, we are not so good at responding to things that change
slowly... Resilience thinking presents an approach to managing natural resources that embraces human and natural systems as
complex systems continually adapting through cycles of change.
p.14 Resilience thinking is about understanding and engaging with a changing world. By
understanding how and why the system as a whole is changing, we are better placed to build a capacity to work with change,
as opposed to being a victim of it.
p.34-35 The complexity of the many linkages and feedbacks that make up a social-ecological system
is such that we can never predict with certainty what the exact response will be to any intervention in the system.
Complex adaptive systems have emergent behavior; that is, the emergent behavior of the system cannot be predicted
by understanding the individual mechanics of its component parts or any pair of interactions
p.37 The two concepts we have discussed so far lay down the context of systems thinking. First, systems
are strongly connected... and, second, complex systems behave in nonlinear ways and are largely unpredictable.
They can exist in different regimes (stability domains).
The third concept describes the property of a social-ecological system that an increasing number
of scientists believe is the cornerstone of sustainability - resilience. Resilience is the capacity
of a system to absorb disturbance... A resilient social-ecological system has a greater capacity to avoid unwelcome
surprises... in the face of external disturbances
p.37 Resilience means different things to different people. One interpretation is the
capacity of something or someone to bounce back to a "normal" condition following some shock or disturbance... resilience
is not about the speed of the bounce back so much as the ability to get back... the reef is able to recover
p.38 Key Points on Resilience Thinking
- When considering systems of humans and nature (social-ecological systems) it is important to consider the
system as a whole...
- Social-ecological systems are complex adaptive systems; understanding how their component
parts function doesn't mean you can predict their overall behavior.
- Resilience thinking provides a framework for viewing a social-ecological system as one system operating over
many linked scales of time and space. Its focus is on how the system changes and copes with disturbance. Resilience,
a system's capacity to absorb disturbances without a regime shift, is the key to sustainability.
p.75-76 Understanding the significance of a system's internal connections, its capacity to respond to disturbance,
and how these aspects change from phase to phase contributes to resilience thinking.
p.102 Scenarios are not predictions of what will happen. They are an exploration of what might happen.
They are structured narratives about the possible future paths of a social-ecological system (Peterson et al. 2003b). Rather
than forecasting the future, they involve a group of experts working together with a representative cross section of local
residents to explore what might happen to the region if the current trends are followed.
p.108 scenarios should be considered together, not separately. They should be thought
of as a set that provides us with a range of insights on what makes a region vulnerable and what confers resilience.
Together, they present different dimensions of how things might change
p.114 Resilience thinking is a way of looking at the world. It's about seeing systems,
linkages, thresholds, and cycles in the things that are important to us and in the things that drive them. It's about
understanding and embracing change, as opposed to striving for constancy. It arose from attempts to understand how
and why ecological systems change over time
p.118 In general terms it [resilience thinking] is all about appreciating the social-ecological
system that you are interested in (and are a part of) as a complex adaptive system, and defining
its key attributes. What are the key slow variables that drive this system? As these variables chang[e],
are there thresholds beyond which the system will behave in different ways? If so, what are these thresholds? Thresholds are
defined by changes in feedbacks, so which important feedbacks in the system are likely to change under certain conditions?
What phase of the adaptive cycle is the system moving through? What is happening in the adaptive cycles above and below the
particular scale you are interested in? What are the linkages between scales? ... the very attempt to frame (and then attempt
to answer) these questions is a major step toward defining resilience and sustainability.
p.119 The capacity of the actors in a system to manage the system's resilience is known as adaptability
(also referred to as adaptive capacity).
p.120 When considering how you might manage a system's resilience there is usually an emphasis on
appreciating specific threats to a system. The approach is to define the system in terms of thresholds, and this
means attempting to understand the key slow variables that are configuring it - the ones that might exhibit threshold effects.
p.121 What confers general resilience? Studies of a variety of social-ecological systems...
suggest three factors that probably play an important role in maintaining it are diversity, modularity, and the tightness
of feedbacks
p.121 The more variation available to respond to a shock, the greater the ability to absorb the
shock. Diversity refers to flexibility and keeping your options open... Modularity relates to the manner in which
the components that make up a system are linked. Highly connected systems... means shocks tend to travel rapidly through the
whole system... A degree of modularity in the system allows individual modules to keep functioning when loosely knit modules
fail... Tightness of feedbacks refers to how quickly and strongly the consequences of a change in one part of the system are
felt and responded to in other parts... As feedbacks lengthen, there is an increased chance of crossing a threshold without
detecting it in a timely fashion.
p.124 Key Points on Resilience Thinking
- You don't need a degree in science to apply resilience thinking; you do need a capacity
to look at a socio-ecological system as a whole and from different perspectives and at different scales.
- When managing for resilience you need to consider two types of resilience: resilience to disturbances
that you are aware of (specified resilience), and resilience to disturbances that you haven't even thought
of (general resilience).
- Adaptability describes the capacity of actors in a socio-ecological system to influence the system's
trajectory (relative to a threshold) and the positions of thresholds.
p.140 A resilience approach is about weighing up options, keeping options open, and creating new options
when old ones close.
p.144 By focusing on the resilience of a social-ecological system you create space for safe changes in the
ecosystem because the system can absorb more shocks and disturbances without crossing a threshold into a new regime. A
resilient system has the capacity to change as the world changes while still maintaining its functionality. Resilient systems
are forgiving of management mistakes and miscalculations.
p.147 Resilience thinking is about embracing change and disturbance rather than denying or constraining
it.
p.150-151 Resilience thinking... does, however, provide a foundation for achieving sustainable
patterns of resource use. The thinking it encapsulates is significantly different from the ruling paradigm of maximizing returns
via controlled optimal states in resource management. It encourages us to ask a different set of questions about the
way we manage our resources... Resilience thinking is a work in progress.
