Obura2009-IUCN Congress report - Resilience sessions

Workshop Discussion and Findings
Left photo A degraded reef with low resilience to disturbance. Although recruitment on to the dead coral
framework is occurring, coral recruits such as this Acropora are quickly predated, giving little chance for the coral
community to recover. By Jerker Tamelander, IUCN Global Marine Programme.
Right photo: This reef had been heavily impacted by a bleaching event, but exhibits robust recovery of branching
and plating corals and the potential for high resilience to disturbance. By Jerker Tamelander, IUCN Global Marine
Programme.
Monitoring resilience
Recommendations and comments that relate to improving the science and assessment of resilience
were made, and summarized below. In addition, discussion covered using the knowledge for ACTION
– such as in identifying management actions that alter the drivers of resilience (fig. 2) to achieve the
desired outcome of increased reef health. In addition, with the broader focus of sustainable resource
use and interactions between people and reef environments, using knowledge about resilience drivers
to identify ADAPTATION actions by people, that both maintain/increase reef resilience AND provide
sustainable ecosystem goods and services to dependent people.
Due to the complexity of interactions on coral reefs, resilience assessments are most powerful where
considerable monitoring information has already been collected and/or research has already identified
key aspects of local reef ecology and use. These provide a critical historical and temporal context for
interpreting the state and process indicators quantified in the resilience assessment.
Management to minimize threats and maximize resilience can take many forms, depending on the
processes being targeted by interventions (fig. 2). Thus reserves can mitigate some stresses (e.g.
fishing), but classically have not dealt with others (e.g. thermal stress), and may even increase others
(e.g. tourism and coastal development). Thus a holistic view of threats and resilience can be used to
broaden the scope of management interventions under consideration to improve the efficacy of
mitigating climate threats as well as others.
The analysis of strong resilience drivers also provides opportunities to prioritize management actions,
and determine which ones are amenable to management. Through site-based assessments,
management can be tailored to individual locations and the pressures they face.
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