Resilience and adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems:

the good, the bad and the trendy

Christo Fabricius

ResilienceAlliance

Here it is…

from Ostrom 2009. Science 235: 420

Social-ecological systems

• The ability to absorb disturbances • Capacity of the system to be changed

– and then to re-organise – and still retain the same basic structure and ways of

functioning

• Declining resilience -> declining magnitude of shocks from which system cannot recover

resilience

Time

Resilience

The Resilience of the Earth System

Cundill & Fabricius 2009 in Exploring Sustainability Science: a Southern African perspective, pp. 537-568.

The slippery slope of resilience loss

Adaptive renewal cycle

• Several possible states

• Crucial role of disturbance

• Irregular cycles of ‘capital’ accumulation, release and re-organization

• Feedbacks between and within scales

Lock-in traps

• An undesirable state from which ‘escape’ is difficult

• The system has become locked in

• Characterized by • low potential for change • rigidity • high resistance to change

• Sources of novelty and innovation have been eliminated

Allison, H. E. and R. J. Hobbs. 2004. Ecology and Society 9(1): 3.

Thresholds and regime shifts

The problem with resilience..

• What if the system is not in a good place?

– would adapting and ‘bouncing back’ be enough?

• Some untenable situations can be very resilient

• Elements of adaptive capacity, e.g.

– traditions, sense of place, identity

• might inhibit meaningful change

• Response: reduce resilience?

A ‘resilience’ approach to development..

Transfer of vulnerability

Building resilience in one context sometimes creates vulnerabilities in another

Transformation • Transformability: “The capacity to create a

fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social (including political) conditions make the existing system untenable”

www.resalliance.org

Walker et al. 2004. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5.

“can we innovate sufficiently rapidly and with

sufficient intelligence to transform our system

out of a destructive pathway….”

Westley et al. 2011. Ambio 40: 762-789

Processes of transformation

• Institutional entrepreneurs

• Behind the scenes’ innovations

• Shadow networks

• Bridging agents • Connectors • Communities of

practice

• Earth stewardship • Incentives • Monitoring • Adaptive management • Repair & restoration

www.stockholmresilience.su.se

Transformation through knowledge sharing & interrogating conventional beliefs

Transformation through creating new awareness

Transformation through learning

Forming alliances and knowledge networks

Transformation through institutional renewal

Leadership: the importance of ‘key individuals’ or ‘stewards’

Transformation through linkages and alliances

Transformation through repair of ecosystem services

A few research questions

• What can we learn from existing self-organizing transformations? – the role of citizen’s science

• Which social-ecological processes promote and inhibit transformation?

• What are the long term impacts of adaptation vs. transformation?

• Challenges: – hold our frameworks loosely – embrace multiple epistemologies – be prepared to tread ‘where angels fear to go’