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p.4 The Concept of Resilience
This paper will address the challenge using recent work related to the
concept of resilience in complex adaptive systems (Holling 1986, 1996, 2001). Resilience provides the capacity to
absorb shocks while maintaining function. When change occurs, resilience provides the components for renewal and
reorganisation (Gunderson and Holling 2002, Berkes et al. 2002). Vulnerability is the flip side of resilience:
when a social or ecological system loses resilience it becomes vulnerable to change that previously could be absorbed (Kasperson
and Kasperson 2001a). In a resilient system, change has the potential to create opportunity for development, novelty
and innovation. In a vulnerable system even small changes may be devastating. The concept of resilience shifts policies
from those that aspire to control change in systems assumed to be stable, to managing the capacity of social-ecological systems
to cope with, adapt to, and shape change. Managing for resilience enhances the likelihood of sustaining development
in changing environments where the future is unpredictable and surprise is likely (Levin et al. 1998, Holling 2001).
The Resilience Alliance (www.resalliance.org) defines resilience as applied to integrated systems of people and nature as (a) the
amount of disturbance a system can absorb and still remain within the same state or domain of attraction (b) the
degree to which the system is capable of self-organization (versus lack of organization, or organization forced by
external factors) and c) the degree to which the system can build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation
(Carpenter et al. 2001a).
The antonym of resilience is often denoted vulnerability. Vulnerability refers to the propensity
of social and ecological system to suffer harm from exposure to external stresses and shocks. It involves exposure to events
and stresses, sensitivity to such exposures (which may result in adverse effects and consequences), and resilience owing to
adaptive measures to anticipate and reduce future harm (Kasperson et al. 1995). Coping capacity is important, at all stages,
to alter these major dimensions. The less resilient the system, the lower is the capacity of institutions and societies
to adapt to and shape change. Managing for resilience is therefore not only an issue of sustaining capacity and options
for development, now and in the future, but also an issue of environmental, social and economic security (Germany Advisory
Council on Global Change 2000, Adger et al. 2001).
p.15-16 ecosystems with low resilience may still maintain function and
generate resources and ecosystem services - i.e. may seem to be in good shape - but when subject to disturbances and
stochastic events, they may exceed a critical threshold and change to a less desirable state. These shifts are sometimes
irreversible and in other cases the costs (in time and resources) of reversal are so large that reversal is impractical. Such
shifts may significantly constrain options for social and economic development, reduce options for livelihoods, and create
environmental refugees as a consequence of the impact on ecosystem life-support.
Erosion of resilience causing vulnerability in livelihoods
Reducing resilience increases vulnerability. Increasing vulnerability places a region on
a trajectory of greater risk to the panoply of stresses and shocks that occur over time. And the process is a cumulative one,
in which sequences of shocks and stresses punctuate the trends, and the inability to replenish coping resources propels a
region and its people to increasing criticality (Kasperson et al. 1995, 1996).
p.20 Resilience measures differ from most existing sustainability indicators... Management that monitors,
clarifies, and redirects underlying, fundamental variables may succeed in building resilience, and thereby adaptive capacity.
Stochastic events... that trigger shifts between states cannot be predicted with much certainty. Therefore, building resilience
of desired ecosystem states is the most pragmatic and effective way to manage ecosystems in the face of increasing ... change
p.22-23 Building adaptive capacity in linked social-ecological systems to respond to change now
and in the future is a prerequisite for sustainability in a world of rapid transformations (Gunderson and Holling
2002, Raskin et al. 2002). In addition to scientific information, it requires the involvement of resource users, decision-makers
and other interest groups in resource management (Ostrom et al. 1999, Berkes et al. 2002). Ecological knowledge and
understanding of resource and ecosystem dynamics among resource users and other interest groups,
its incorporation into resource-use practices and institutions, its temporal and spatial transmission and transformation,
and its re-creation through cycles of crises and re-organization needs to be nurtured to counteract the creation of
social-ecological vulnerability.
p.23 Two useful tools for resilience-building in complex, unpredictable systems are structured scenarios
and active adaptive management. Structured scenarios attempt to envision alternative futures in ways that
expose fundamental variables and branch points that may be collectively manipulated to evoke change. Active adaptive management
seeks a set of structured management experiments designed to reveal fundamental variables and system potential. These
techniques should be encouraged and expanded to help increase capacity to build resilience.
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