Resilience, Sustainable development, Adaptive capacity, Transformation, Social-Ecological Systems, Human Wellbeing, Social Welfare, Wealth
Abstract
Many of the failures in natural resource-use systems are due to failure of the ruling management paradigm. This command-and-control approach to management is underlain by four flawed assumptions: i) a focus on average conditions and particular time and space scales; ii) a belief that problems from different sectors in these systems do not interact; iii) an expectation that change will be incremental and linear, and iv) an assumption that keeping the system in some particular state will maximise yield, indefinitely. An alternative approach, based on resilience, assumes instead that social-ecological systems behave as complex adaptive systems with alternate attractors (alternate system regimes). Three attributes of these systems—resilience, adaptability and transformability—determine the topology of the system’s stability landscape, and therefore the likelihood of regime shifts. Resilience governance and management is therefore concerned with learning how to avoid (or to cross) thresholds between alternate regimes and how to influence the positions of the thresholds. Given the enormous uncertainty inherent in these systems, a resilience based approach needs to be complemented by the ability to assess whether, in fact, current or proposed levels and patterns of resource use are sustainable (will avoid regime shifts that lower social welfare). The inclusive wealth approach of Arrow et al. (2003) is suggested as an appropriate measure.
