A Preface for "Resilience:Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Science ...

©2010 Editor and Author/sA SOCIAL-ECOLOGICALPERSPECTIVE OF RESILIENCEBrian Walker 1Interest in the topic of resilience isrising rapidly, in academic circles,amongst practitioners and in policydevelopment. The rise is occurring inresponse to increasing uneasinessabout potential looming shocks thatwould sorely test the coping capacitiesof countries, regions and the world as awhole. Climate change, economicuncertainty, new pandemics, foodshortages, water „wars‟ and otherworrying developments are comingtogether in a way that evokesconsiderable concern, akin to the moodWinston Churchill described as „thegathering storm‟ (the title of his firstvolume on the history of the SecondWorld War). The spectre of being hitby serious double or even triple„whammies‟ has raised the notion ofresilience high on the agendas of manygovernments, corporations andorganisations.The rising popularity of resilience hasled to a plethora of papers withdifferent interpretations of what itmeans. Some are tightly defined,others loose and ambiguous.Particularly across disciplinary fieldsthere are different interpretations withconsequent misunderstandings. Thereis a need for a better understanding ofthe processes involved in resilience1 Research Fellow in Australia’sCommonwealth Scientific and IndustrialResearch Organisation, Division ofSustainable Ecosystems, and in theStockholm Resilience Centre, University ofStockholm; Chair of the Board of theResilience Alliance, an internationalresearch group working on sustainability ofsocial-ecological systems.http://www.resalliance.org/1.phpdynamics and more rigour in the use ofthe term, and this puts a specialemphasis on cross-disciplinary studiesand learning. The initiation of this newcross-disciplinary journal is thereforevery welcome.Arising out of ecological work acommon definition of resilience(Walker et al 2004) is “the capacity ofa system to absorb disturbance and toreorganize while undergoing change soas to still retain essentially the samefunction, structure, feedbacks and,therefore, identity.” The ecological andsocial aspects of resilience cometogether in the study of linked systemsof people and nature – socialecologicalsystems, like fisheries andagricultural systems. For too longnatural systems have been seen as apartfrom human systems, behaving inlinear and predictable ways. Now weincreasingly understand that nature andsociety are intrinsically connected, insocial-ecological systems, and presentcomplex dynamics with alternate stablestates, tipping points and regime shifts.The problems can no longer beconsidered as environmental issuesalone. We have to consider the earthsystem as a fully coupled system ofnatural and social sub-systems, inwhich the continued provision ofecosystem goods and services isfundamental to human wellbeing.Ecologists have come to realize thatunderstanding the resilience of justecosystems is inadequate forcontributing solutions to the problemsof resource use and sustainability.Because ecological and social systemsare strongly interlinked, at multiplescales, contributing viable solutions tothe problems we face requires bringingtogether the understanding that hasdeveloped in the areas of psychology,social science and ecology.Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Science and Humanitarianism, Volume 1, March 2010i

©2010 Editor and Author/sThe word “identity” in the definitionabove is important. It implies that thesystem can have the same identitywhile undergoing changes, but only upto a point. If change exceeds somecritical amount then the system is nolonger able to self-organise in the samekind of way, and it changes to someother way of functioning, with adifferent structure and differentregulating feedbacks – and it developsa different identity (Cumming et al2005).It was this word „identity‟ thattriggered the initial interaction betweenme and Astier Almedom (the initiatorof this Journal). She, too, had focussedon identity as the defining feature thatcaptured critical change in thepsychosocial transition people make inthe aftermath of disasters (Almedom,2004; Almedom and Tumwine 2008).Resilience of individuals, families,communities and institutions isdetermined by their capacity tomaintain their identity whileundergoing transformations (adaptingto adversity) through persistence withroutine functions and rituals whichmake them who they are as people,communities, cultures, nations and/orinstitutions. Human agency anddeliberate action to maintain one‟sintegrity is where we differ in thinkingabout identity. An ecosystem‟s identityis described by the functions andcontrols that distinguish it, whilehuman identity is imbued with agency,customs, rituals, and deliberate action.Ecosystems and people are selforganising,complex adaptive systemswith non-linear dynamics. They canexist in multiple (alternate) stabilitydomains, or „regimes‟, and the shiftfrom one to another is triggered whenthey cross some critical threshold. Anda crucial point is that the positions ofsuch thresholds are not fixed. What wedo to ecosystems, and the kinds ofnatural and social environments thatpeople live in, influence how muchthey can change before they reach athreshold, which is a measure of theirresilience.If there is no possibility of „regimeshifts‟ (cf Scheffer and Carpenter2003), no possibility of „tipping points‟in human behaviour, or thresholdeffects in ecosystems, then there is nofundamental problem in resourcemanagement or in human welfarebecause the system is always smoothlyreversible. It is globally stable andrecovery is always possible withoutmajor interventions. In non-linearsystems, however, the likelihood ofalternate system regimes is high and ashift (intended or unintended) from oneto the other can be irreversible, or veryhard to reverse. Resiliencemanagement therefore places anemphasis on identifying alternateregimes and what determines thethresholds between them.I conclude with a few observations,emerging from comparative analysesof resilience in various regions of theworld (see, for example, Walker et al2006), on actions that can build orreduce resilience.Probing the boundaries of resilienceKeeping things constant reducesresilience. A common objective ofpolicies aimed at optimizing someparticular product or outcome is toidentify an „optimal‟ state of thesystem, and then to somehow try andkeep it in that particular state. In fact,keeping a system in one particular stateleads to self-organized changes thatmake the system less and less resilient.As an example, preventing fire in aforest in an attempt to keep it in itsResilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Science and Humanitarianism, Volume 1, March 2010ii

©2010 Editor and Author/spresent state leads eventually to theloss of species able to withstand fire.To keep a forest resilient to fire it isnecessary to periodically burn it.Pushing problems up-scaleIncreasing resilience at one scale canreduce resilience at other scales. Acommon problem is that attempts toincrease resilience at small scales (forexample, individual farmers) leads tothe system at a higher scale (thefarming system as a whole) becomingless resilient. The European “ButterMountain” and the Australian “WoolMountain” were examples of this.Pursuing efficiency, narrowlydefinedShort term cost cutting frequentlyresults in getting rid of „redundancies‟,which later turn out to have beenalternate ways of doing things inresponse to shocks. Response diversityis a key part of being resilient.Secondary, unintended effects oftenoccur across scales and across domains(social, economic, ecological),triggering threshold effects where theywere not expected. You cannotunderstand or manage a socialecologicalsystem by focusing at onlyone scale and on one domain.The need for both general andspecified resilienceChanneling all attention and effort intomanaging for particular aspects ofresilience and associated thresholdscan inadvertently reduce resilience inother ways. There is therefore a need toconsider both general and specifiedresilience. General resilience involvessuch things as diversity, tightness offeedbacks and modularity. While it isreasonably straightforward to estimatethe costs of maintaining generalresilience (some form of foregoneextra yield or profit that it entails), it ismuch harder to estimate the costs ofnot maintaining it (since it isunspecified).Enhancing resilience vs.transformationIf a threshold has been crossed, orcrossing it is inevitable, further effortsat adaptation amount to „digging thehole deeper‟. In such cases the need isto transform into a different kind ofsystem, with different ways of makinga living.The question facing policy makers andplanners will increasingly become:“which parts of our (locality, region,country) need enhanced resilience inorder to ensure their present states cancontinue, and which parts need to betransformed?”REFERENCESAlmedom, A.M. “Factors that mitigate warinducedanxiety and mental distress.” Journalof Biosocial Science (2004): 445-461. Print.Almedom, A. M. and Tumwine, J. K.“Resilience to Disasters: A Paradigm Shiftfrom Vulnerability to Strength.” AfricanHealth Sciences Special Issue on Resilience(2008) 8: S1-S4. Print.Cumming, G. S. et al., “An exploratoryframework for the empirical measurement ofresilience.” Ecosystems (2005): 975–987.Print.Scheffer, M. and Carpenter S. R. “Catastrophicregime shifts in ecosystems: linking theory toobservation.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution(2003): 648-656. Print.Walker, B. H. et al., “Resilience, adaptabilityand transformability in social-ecologicalsystems.” Ecology and Society (2004): 3. Web.Walker, B. H. et al., “Exploring resilience insocial-ecological systems through comparativestudies and theory development: Introductionto the Special Issue.” Ecology and Society(2006): 12. Web.Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Science and Humanitarianism, Volume 1, March 2010iii