agency, capacity, and resilience to environmental change: lessons from human development,...

EG36CH13-Brown ARI 19 September 2011 8:5

Agency, Capacity, andResilience to EnvironmentalChange: Lessons from HumanDevelopment, Well-Being,and DisastersKatrina Brown and Elizabeth WestawaySchool of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ,United Kingdom; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2011. 36:321–42

First published online as a Review in Advance onAugust 23, 2011

The Annual Review of Environment and Resourcesis online at environ.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-052610-092905

Copyright c© 2011 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

1543-5938/11/1121-0321$20.00

Keywords

adaptive capacity, psychosocial factors, adaptation, transformation

Abstract

Human agency is considered a key factor in determining how individualsand society respond to environmental change. This article synthesizesknowledge on agency, capacity, and resilience across human develop-ment, well-being, and disasters literature to provide insights to supportmore integrated and human-centered approaches to understanding en-vironmental change. It draws out the key areas of agreement across thesediverse fields and identifies the main points of contestation and uncer-tainty. This highlights the need to consider subjective and relationalfactors in addition to objective measures of capacity and to view theseas reflexive and dynamic, as well as differentiated socially and tempo-rally. These findings can help distinguish between coping, adaptation,and transformation as responses to environmental and other stressors.

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Capacity: the abilityto generate anoutcome or perform atask and also to learn,and the potential forgrowth anddevelopment

Humandevelopment: refersto anthropological,sociological,psychological, andbiological approachesto examining humandevelopment incontext

Well-being: is morethan the absence ofillness or pathology.It has subjective andobjective dimensionsand can be measuredfor individuals orsociety

Adaptive capacity:the preconditionsnecessary to enableadaptation to takeplace, it is a latentcharacteristic thatmust be activated toeffect adaptation

Contents

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322AGENCY AND CAPACITY IN THE

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGELITERATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

RESILIENCE IN HUMANDEVELOPMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326

WELL-BEING ANDDEVELOPMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

DISASTERS AND COMMUNITYRESILIENCE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

CONCLUSION: AGENCY ANDCAPACITY AND THE CASEFOR TRANSFORMATION . . . . . . 335

INTRODUCTION

In the environmental change literature, humanagency is often highlighted as a critical factorin determining how individuals, households,and communities can respond to different typesof environmental stressors. Yet most analysesand certainly most policy approaches putan emphasis on resources and infrastructureto support adaptation and do not unpackagency. Generally, psychosocial factors andhow they affect people’s capacity to respond toenvironmental stressors are poorly understoodand are rarely accounted for in integratedanalyses. However, there is a rich literaturein the fields of child psychology, humandevelopment, well-being and developmentstudies, and disaster studies which documentsfactors affecting people’s ability to cope, adapt,and transform in response to different types ofchanges, including sudden shocks or crises.

This article synthesizes knowledge on re-silience, adaptation, and coping with risks andcontingencies across these fields and links themwith insights on social-ecological systems toadvance an understanding of the role of agencyin responding to multiple stressors associatedwith environmental change. Although researchand policy highlight the need to understandsubjective human factors in determining

adaptive capacity, these are seldom integratedinto current models and frameworks. Our anal-ysis identifies the key insights from broadly de-fined human development that can inform therole of agency in responding to environmentalchange. These include individual, family, andcommunity characteristics that build resilience,and what characterizes the so-called healthyfunctioning adaptive systems that supportthem. These have resonance with the conceptsdeveloped from resilience thinking applied tosocial-ecological systems, not just because ofthe terminology, but particularly in relationto understanding the dynamics of change, itsmulti- and cross-scale nature, the potentialrole of transitions, and the possibility of crisesproviding windows of opportunity. In bringingtogether the literature from well-being and de-velopment, the review presents a more holisticperspective that moves beyond a view of capac-ity or capabilities and well-being as determinedprimarily by assets or resources, infrastructureor outside interventions, and hence poten-tially overturns simplistic assumptions aboutrelationships between poverty and adaptivecapacity. Insights from the disasters field revealthe links between individual and community-scale factors in preparedness, responses, andrecovery from shocks and, increasingly, the im-pacts of multiple stressors of well-being from ahuman security perspective. These findings il-luminate the reflexive interplay between differ-ent factors which influence human agency andits role in responding to environmental change.

AGENCY AND CAPACITYIN THE ENVIRONMENTALCHANGE LITERATURE

Agency is generally understood to mean the ca-pacity of individuals to act independently tomake their own free choices. A more detaileddefinition provided by McLaughlin & Dietz (1,p. 105) is “the capacity of individuals and cor-porate actors, with the diverse cultural mean-ings that they espouse, to play an independentcausal role in history,” which importantly ex-tends agency to mean collective action. One key

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argument for emphasizing agency is that it helpsto overcome the view of people as powerlessvictims of environmental change; it recognizesthat humans are never just passive in the face ofenvironmental threats (1). Fabricius et al. (2),for example, provide an analysis of communi-ties in ecosystem management in the face ofrapid change as “powerless spectators,” “cop-ing actors,” or “adaptive comanagers” on thebasis of their adaptive capacity and governancecapacity. Agency is clearly related to adaptivecapacity, which is a central focus of literatureon environmental change. It is also a conceptthat links a number of different fields: social-ecological systems, sustainability sciences, haz-ards and disasters, vulnerability, and resilience.Adaptive capacity provides a bridge betweenadaptation literature on environmental changeand climate change and that concerned morecentrally with human motivation, behavior, andresponses.

Adaptive capacity comprises the necessaryresources for systems to adapt and learn. Dif-ferent fields within environmental change andother literatures emphasize various compo-nents or dimensions of adaptive capacity, anda number of studies have measured adaptive ca-pacity empirically at a range of scales. Nelsonet al. (3) define adaptive capacity as the pre-conditions necessary to enable adaptation, in-cluding social and physical elements, and theability to mobilize these elements. Indeed, theliterature on environmental change and social-ecological systems defines adaptive capacity asa source of resilience (4–6). Gallopın (7, p. 300)notes that “adaptability (or adaptive capacity)was originally defined in biology to mean anability to become adapted to a certain rangeof environmental contingencies.” Adaptednessin human systems includes the viability of so-cial and economic activities and the quality ofhuman life. Hence, “adaptability or [the] adap-tive capacity of human systems also can be de-fined as the capacity of any human system fromthe individual to humankind to increase (or atleast maintain) the quality of life of its individ-ual members in a given environment or rangeof environments” (7, p. 300). The relations be-

Capabilities: thealternativecombinations offunctionings a personis feasibly able toachieve. A capabilitiesapproach emphasizesfunctional capabilitiesand understandspoverty as capabilitydeprivation

Human security: astate that is achievedwhen individuals andcommunities are ableto end, mitigate, oradapt to threats totheir human,environmental, andsocial rights

tween adaptive capacity and resilience are di-versely interpreted, as summarized by Gallopın(7), and some authors equate adaptive capacitywith resilience and social resilience. Gunderson(8) defines adaptive capacity as system robust-ness to changes in resilience, and Carpenter &Gunderson (9) use adaptive capacity as a com-ponent of resilience that reflects the learningaspect of a system of behavior in response to dis-turbance, each of these authors seeing adaptivecapacity as a system characteristic. However,Walker et al. (10) define adaptability as the col-lective capacity of the human actors in a social-ecological system to manage resilience, andChapin et al. (11) view adaptive capacity as thecapacity of actors, both individuals and groups,to respond to, create, and shape variability andchange in the state of the system. These viewsidentify adaptive capacity as a characteristic of(usually) human actors and recognize that hu-mans, uniquely, have the capacity to anticipateand plan for the future and take reflexive ac-tions, which take account of cause and effect andwhich consider the impact of one’s own actions.

Thus, the environmental change literaturepresents adaptive capacity, resilience, andvulnerability as related and intertwined in anumber of key ways (12). Cutter et al. (13)illustrate the relationships diagrammatically,showing the different conceptualizationsacross subfields. Chapin et al. (11) identifyfour key components of adaptive capacity:(a) biological, economic, and cultural diversity;(b) social learning concerning the systemand how it changes; (c) experimentation andinnovation; and (d ) selection, communication,and implementing appropriate solutions. Folkeet al. (14) identify four key factors that interactacross temporal and spatial scales as necessaryfor social-ecological systems to deal withdynamics and change. These are shown inTable 1. These factors apply to both humanand nonhumans in the system, and the factorsprovide a good overview of how adaptivecapacity and resilience are understood in theenvironmental change literature.

This view resonates strongly with theclimate change adaptation literature, which

www.annualreviews.org • Agency, Capacity, and Resilience 323

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Table 1 Building resilience and adaptive capacity in social-ecologicalsystems (14, p. 355)

Learning to live with change and uncertaintyEvoking disturbanceLearning from crisesExpecting the unexpectedNurturing diversity for reorganization and renewalNurturing ecological memorySustaining social memoryEnhancing social-ecological memoryCombining different types of knowledge for learningCombining experimental and experiential knowledgeExpanding from knowledge of structure to knowledge of functionBuilding process knowledge into institutionsFostering complementarity of different knowledge systemsCreating opportunity for self-organizationRecognizing interplay between diversity and disturbanceDealing with cross-scale dynamicsMatching scales of ecosystems and governanceAccounting for external drivers

defines adaptive capacity as a set of latentcharacteristics, or the potential, needed toadapt to climate change and the ability to beactively involved in processes of change (15).Adaptive capacity here is seen as an attributeof people: individuals, households, and com-munities. Adaptive capacity depends on bothtangible assets, such as financial and naturalresources, and less tangible elements, such asskills and opportunities to implement changesin livelihoods or lifestyles. Smit & Wandel’sreview (16) suggests that the determinantsof adaptive capacity include assets—financial,technological, and informational—and thecontext in which these are held, meaning theinfrastructure and institutional environment,kinship, social networks, and political support.

Within human development literature,adaptive capacity is defined in different ways.In evolutionary theory, adaptive capacity is

the ability of an organism or a social systemto cope with a wide range of environmentalconditions, physical or social . . . it involvesthe capacity of the system to attain its goals

in the face of a variegated and changingenvironment . . . means more than passiveadjustment; it also means that the system isrelatively autonomous vis-a-vis its environ-ment. It has the capacity to change aspects ofthe environment in accordance with needs ofthe system, as well as to adapt to those aspectsthat it cannot change. (17, pp. 271–72)

This definition is directly related to those fromthe environmental change literature outlined inthe paragraphs above. But there is no consen-sus about what constitutes adaptive functioning,and definitions of successful adaptation varyin regard to different historical, cultural, anddevelopmental contexts (18–21). Some stud-ies look at the absence of psychopathology,whereas others require more positive stage-salient developmental tasks through the adap-tive use of personal and contextual resources(20, 22). A “positive adaptation” is one thatis substantially better than what is expectedgiven exposure to the risk circumstances be-ing studied (23, p. 515). Hence, the definitionshould also reflect the seriousness of the risksunder consideration (24–26). Nevertheless,Masten (20) considers that, in the majority ofcases, resilience results from ordinary adaptiveprocesses rather than extraordinary ones, whichshe refers to as “ordinary magic.”

Depending on the context, these factors maybe manifest and can potentially be assessedthrough a range of indicators. This understand-ing of adaptive capacity leads to a set of ap-plications, normative policy recommendations,and measures of adaptive capacity applied todifferent phenomena and at different scales.Systems—both ecological and social as well aslinked social-ecological—and individuals, com-munities, and even nation states can thus beseen to have these characteristics, which makeup their adaptive capacity.

In summary, adaptive capacity will dependon the following:

1. recognition of the need to adapt;2. a belief that adaptation is possible and

desirable;3. the willingness to undertake adaptation;


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4. the availability of resources necessary forimplementation of adaptation measures;

5. the ability to deploy resources in an ap-propriate way; and

6. external constraints, barriers and enablersof implementation.

Adaptive capacity has been examined at mul-tiple scales, ranging from the individual tocommunity, institutional, national, and cross-national scales (6, 16, 27–31). Adaptive capac-ity is determined by complex interrelationshipsof a range of factors at different scales, whichalso interact across temporal and spatial scales,including the “panarchy of cross-scale dynam-ics and interplay between a set of nested adap-tive cycles” (6, p. 258). Adaptive capacity andsocial vulnerability have been shown to havesimilar causes and consequences, i.e., a coun-try or household having low adaptive capacityis likely to have high vulnerability. Similarly,households with a high degree of dependency(i.e., through children, the elderly, or illness)are more likely to have less adaptive capacity(30). It is important to examine the context andthe ways in which the driving forces of adap-tive capacity manifest themselves at differentscales. For example, work on entitlements andfood security (32) has demonstrated how theadaptive capacity of individuals or householdsis shaped and constrained by social, political,and economic processes at higher scales. Mostindicators of adaptive capacity highlight onlythe potential for adaptation to occur: Whetheror not adaptive capacity is drawn upon to bringabout adaptation depends on a further set ofuncertainties (30).

In general, in the environmental changeliterature, the multiple components of adaptivecapacity can be seen to correspond to threedimensions that are loosely aligned with re-sources, structure, and agency. Most scholarlywork has identified resource constraints as themost significant determinants of adaptation(33). Adger (34) argues that the capacity ofindividuals to adapt to climate change is a func-tion of their access to resources. Some authorsnote that the influence of resources operatesthrough access to information (35); however,

others suggest that resources alone are ofdebatable importance (36, 37). Grothmann& Patt (33, p. 206) state: “Assessments ofvulnerability to climate change—in most casesconducted on the level of nations—very oftentake GDP as one or the only determinant ofadaptive capacity and adaptation.” However,they consider that while GDP is less usefulfor understanding the process of adaptation, itmay be useful to more effectively promote it.

Structural aspects—factors such as socialclass, religion, gender, ethnicity, and customs—are also widely cited, and it is broadly acceptedthat good governance and institutional struc-tures are important for adaptive capacity (30).Analysis has also highlighted the role of so-cial capital and networks in supporting adap-tive capacity (34, 38). But increasingly schol-ars emphasize the role played by one’s agencyin adaptive capacity. Hence, agency refers tothe capacity of an individual to act indepen-dently and to make one’s own free choices.One’s agency is one’s independent capabilityor ability to act on one’s will. This ability isaffected by the cognitive belief structure thatone has formed through one’s experiences, theperceptions held by the society and the indi-vidual, and the structures and circumstances ofthe environment one is in. Grothmann & Patt(33) claim there has been little analysis of thesepsychological dimensions of adaptation. Theyobserve that “outside of climate change, a largeliterature dealing with human decision-makingand action suggests that motivation and per-ceived abilities are important determinants ofhuman action” (33, p. 208). Hence, they arguethat models of adaptation and adaptive capacityought to include sociocognitive variables. Theirsuggestion of how these variables can be inte-grated into understanding adaptation and adap-tive capacity is shown below in Figure 1. This isbased on Protection Motivation Theory, whichwas originally developed to explain behavior inresponse to health threats.

However, despite these attempts to betterintegrate social aspects, Grothmann & Patt(33, p. 201) claim there is “a failure of commu-nication between different disciplines: those


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Climate change risk appraisal:perceptions of probability and severity

Adaptation appraisal:perceptions ofadaptation efficacy,self-efficacy, and adaptation costs

Avoidant maladaptations:fatalism,denial,wishful thinking

Intention

Reliance onpublic

adaptation

Riskexperienceappraisal

Cognitivebiases

Adaptation

Objective adaptive capacity resources such as time, money, knowledge, and entitlements

Social discourse on climate change risks and adaptation Incentives

Figure 1A model of private proactive adaptation to climate change. Notes: the gray boxes indicate where issues ofagency are especially important. Adapted with permission from Grothmann & Patt (33).

Self-efficacy: thebelief in one’s ownability to perform atask and to manageprospective situations

concerned with climate change adaptation, onthe one hand, and those concerned with humanagency and social decision-making processeson the other.” This omission of decision-making at the public, private, and individuallevels has led to an emphasis on financial,technical, and institutional constraints as theprimary determinants of adaptive capacity.Although more recent analyses highlight therole of self-efficacy, articulated with respect topower/powerlessness and self-belief in one’sown capacity (39–42) or social identity (43)in adaptive capacity, agency remains a “blackbox” in much environmental change literature.Although it is hinted at and suggested thatissues such as self-efficacy, empowerment,optimism, self-esteem, innovative thinking,decision-making, and perceptions may be ofprimary importance in determining whichas well as how and whether people copewith shock, disturbances, and other types ofstressors or change, there is no systematicinterrogation or analysis of these dimensions.This is precisely where the human development

literature on resilience, outlined in the follow-ing section, can inform conceptualizations andunderstandings of adaptive capacity and hencehuman and societal responses to environmentalchange.

RESILIENCE IN HUMANDEVELOPMENT

What then can we learn from our understand-ings of resilience and adaptation in humandevelopment to inform the role of agencyand psychosocial factors in adaptive capacity?The overarching theoretical framework forresilience research with children emerged fromdevelopmental systems theory (44), develop-mental psychopathology (24), and ecologicalsystems theory (45, 46). In human developmentliterature, individual resilience is defined asthe “dynamic process wherein individualsdisplay positive adaptation despite experiencesof significant adversity or trauma” (47, p. 858).Resilience arises from interactive processesacross multiple levels of functioning, including


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Table 2 Attributes of individuals and their contexts associated with resilience (118, p. 13)

Individual differencesCognitive abilities: IQ scores, attentional skills, executive functioning skillsSelf-perceptions of competence, worth, confidence: self-efficacy, self-esteemTemperament and personality: adaptability, sociabilitySelf-regulation skills: impulse control, affect and arousal regulationPositive outlook on life: hopefulness, belief that life has meaning, faithRelationshipsParenting quality: warmth, structure and monitoring, expectationsClose relationships with competent adults: parents, relatives, mentorsConnections to prosocial and rule-abiding peers (among older children)Community resources and opportunitiesGood schoolsConnections to prosocial organizations (such as clubs or religious groups)Neighborhood quality: public safety, collective supervision, libraries, recreation centersQuality of social services and health care

social interactions with family, peers, school,and community systems (48). Risk or adversitycan comprise biological, psychological, genetic,environmental, or socioeconomic factors thatare associated with an increased probabilityof maladjustment/negative outcome (49). Re-silience has been used to refer to (a) positive out-come despite the experience of adversity (beat-ing the odds, better than predicted); (b) contin-ued positive or effective functioning in adversecircumstances (stress resistance, coping); and(c) recovery after a significant trauma (bounc-ing back, self-righting) or severe deprivation(normalization) (50). Recently, the possibilityof positive transformation following adversityhas been highlighted, which leads to positivereorganization of systems, with adaptive func-tioning being better than it was previously (48,51). This “fourth phase” of resilience (51) con-verges with current thinking in environmentalchange and social-ecological systems.

In human development, resilience is nowrecognized as a dynamic process that resultsfrom ongoing transactions between a childor individual and the environment (23, 52).The central objectives of resilience researchersare to identify vulnerability and protectivefactors that might modify the negative effectsof adverse life circumstances and, having

accomplished this, to identify mechanisms orprocesses that might underlie the associationsfound (24). Table 2 summarizes the keyattributes of individuals and their environmentthat have been found to be associated withresilience.

As in environmental change and social-ecological systems thinking, human devel-opment literature portrays resilience as adynamic, multidimensional, and multiscalecharacteristic. Resilience research shows thatchildren have different vulnerabilities andprotective systems at different stages in theirdevelopment (49, 53). Protective factors arecharacteristics of the individual, family, andcommunity, referred to as the triarchic frame-work of resilience (18), that modify the effectsof adversity on child outcomes in a positivedirection (24, 25), which Werner (54, p. 82)notes “appear to transcend ethnic, social class,and geographic boundaries.” This consistencyin findings was first noted by Garmezy (55)and suggests a common set of broad correlatesof better adaptation among children at riskfor a variety of reasons, which Masten (20)referred to as “the short list.” These factors areidentified at individual, family, and communityscales, reflecting the fundamental adaptivesystems supporting human development.


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Locus of control: theextent to whichindividuals believe thatthey can control eventsthat affect them

Findings in relation to individual protectivefactors provide insights into the role of differ-ent aspects of agency. In high-risk contexts,children with high IQs may possess effectiveinformation processing and problem-solvingskills to contend with stresses and challenges(24). Fullan & Loubser (17) argue that variationin mental processes (e.g., cognitive capacitiesfor information retrieval and flexible thinking,including both originality and range of ideas),openness to new experiences, and selectiveretention (i.e., ability to analyze and reasonlogically) are crucial aspects of adaptive capac-ity to develop individuals as flexible, positive,creative, and innovative thinkers. Locus ofcontrol, appraisal, and coping skills have beenstudied in older children with a range of positiveoutcomes. Feeling they have greater control,children respond less negatively to difficultsituations and are better equipped to problemsolve, such as reaching out for social support(52). Because resilience is never an “across-the-board” phenomenon, at-risk children candisplay remarkable strengths in one domain butat the same time show deficits in others (24).

But beyond individual factors, familyprotective factors include the presence of acaregiver to provide various resources, such asnutrition, shelter, love, nurturance, and a senseof safety and security, as well as supervision (20,56). A high-quality parent-child relationship,characterized by high levels of warmth andopenness and low levels of conflict, is associatedwith positive outcomes across levels of riskand stages of development (52) and in thesocial, emotional, and academic domains (25).There is also a strong link between mother’seducational attainment and children’s eventualeducational attainment, with implications foropportunity and well-being (57).

Protective factors from the community havebeen less extensively studied; however, theyare important for childhood outcomes, e.g.,neighborhood quality, neighborhood cohe-sion, youth community organizations, qualityof school environment, and after-school envi-ronment (52). Bronfenbrenner (46) has writtenon community-level or exosystem factors,

which can affect the child directly (throughtheir own experience) or indirectly (throughinfluences of parents and the family). Also, theeffects of neighborhoods are considered to beparticularly significant in inner-city settingscharacterized by poverty, crime, and violence(58). Werner (54, p. 83) shows that there “aresupport systems in the community that rein-force and reward the competencies of resilientchildren and provide them with positive rolemodels: caring neighbors, teachers, elder men-tors, youth workers and peers.” Characteristicsof the school environment also play a signif-icant role in fostering adaptive development,and positive community forces are important,such as emotional needs for closeness, “supportand cohesion among neighbors and a sense ofbelonging to the community” (25, p. 14).

Indeed, Schoon (25, p. 15) views individual,family, and community protective factors aspsychosocial resources that support or promoteadaptive development. Individuals who candraw on many, or high levels of personaland social, resources are more effective incoping with adversity than individuals withfewer (or lower-level) resources. However, inacknowledging that resilience is a function ofthese protective systems, it is noted that moresophisticated models are required to under-stand the complex processes involved (53).An ecological, transactional system approachhas a broader focus encompassing family andcommunity relational networks (51, 59), andin a recent review of resilience studies, Luthar(24, p. 780) concludes that “resilience rests,fundamentally, on relationships.” An ecologicaltransactional system approach more adequatelyreflects “individual differences in developmen-tal pathways and contextual variation withinfamilies, communities, societies, cultures, andhistorical periods” (53, p. 26). A transactionalmodel also provides an opportunity to focus ontransitions and turning points in individuals’lives that can shape the nature and course offuture adaptation, such as entering school,adolescence, or early adulthood (19, 25, 60).

However, “there are potentially damagingconsequences of viewing resilience as an


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individual trait,” according to O’Doughertyet al. (53, p. 29). Particularly when childrendo not adapt successfully, they are viewed aspersonally to blame for not being able to copewith adversity (25, 61). Children face manysocial stressors and chronic adversities that arecontextually determined. O’Dougherty et al.(53, p. 29) note that “adaptation is embeddedwithin a context of multiple systems of inter-actions, such as family, school, neighborhood,community and culture, [so] a child’s resilienceis dependent upon other people and othersystems of influence.” They note that oftenthe same forces that can constrain the child’sdevelopment—poverty, discrimination, inade-quate medical care, or exposure to communityviolence—also often impact and constrain theentire family. Ungar (62, p. 446) reports that“resilience is as much dependent on the struc-tural conditions, relationships and access tosocial justice that children experience as it is anyindividual capacities.” This reflects an ongoingdiscussion of the influence of structure andagency, which we return to in sections below.So, resilience is not simply the sum of a set ofcharacteristics; the literature reveals a complexset of linkages and relationships across scalesthat have thresholds, cycles, and nonlinearrelationships—similar to the resilience storytold in social-ecological systems literature.

The movement away from individuallybased conceptualizations of resilience toward acontextually situated framework has been wel-comed by cross-cultural researchers (cf. 21, 63–65). For various cultural/ethnic groups, therecan be a great deal of difference in the rela-tive importance placed on individualism, col-lectivism, and familism, and these dimensionsmight mediate resilience in different ways fordifferent groups (53). Similarly, how particularcultural groups define and manage risk may varyaccording to whether they attribute outcomesto fate, supernatural forces, or human agency(64). Again, this is important for understandingadaptive capacity (reflected in the gray boxes inFigure 1) and the likely responses to differenttypes of change, including environmental andclimate change.

In recent years, resilience research hasadvanced many models of positive develop-ment and strength-based models (51), whichacknowledge children as competent socialagents and capture their subjective experiences(26). Schoon (25) presents a developmental-contextual systems model for the empiricalstudy of adaptations in context and time, whichemphasizes multiple interrelated and interde-pendent spheres of influence, and a life coursetheory, shown in Figure 2. The model advo-cates a systems view to resilience, incorporatingmultilevel person-context interactions. Schoon(25) suggests that the model also captures thetransactional nature of development over time,including the reciprocal interactions betweenrisk experiences and individual adjustmentembedded in the wider sociohistorical context.The model shows transitions and turningpoints, as well as the role of human agency andbounded agency. It thus has close parallels withdiscussions of adaptation from the environ-mental change and social-ecological systemsliterature, emphasizing multiscale and dynamicprocesses, feedbacks, and possible transitionsand thresholds. It bears a remarkable resem-blance to ideas of “panarchy” presented byGunderson & Holling (66).

Other work also stresses these multiple-scaleinteractions. Sheridan et al. (67), for example,explore family resilience, defined by Patterson(68, p. 352) as “the processes by which familiesare able to adapt and function competentlyfollowing exposure to significant adversity orcrisis.” McCubbin & McCubbin (69) havedeveloped a family resilience framework for thestudy of families of different ethnicities, cul-tures, and social contexts. The model exploreshow ethnic identity and culture, independentlyor in combination with other moderating ormediating factors, have the greatest impact andvalue in promoting recovery, family adaptationand transformation. Cook & du Toit (70) dis-cuss a developmental child rights framework,which combines socially grounded researchpractice in child development, communityempowerment, good governance, and humanrights with a culturally sensitive approach to


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Sociohistorical context

Institutions

Neighborhoods

Family

Individual

AdjustmentAdjustment

Adjustment

Adjustment

RiskRisk

Risk

Risk

Birth Adulthood

Figure 2A developmental-contextual model of resilience. Adapted with permission from Schoon (25).

working in the collective African context. Thisrelates directly to the discussion of how well-being in different contexts is understood, andhow ideas about agency, resilience, adaptation,capacity, and capabilities are applied withinthe context of human, social, and internationaldevelopment.

WELL-BEING ANDDEVELOPMENT

As Camfield et al. (71, p. 398) note, “Well-being has become firmly embedded in academicand policy discourse in recent years and isincreasingly popular as an integrative conceptin diverse fields of social policy, internationaldevelopment and more recently child devel-opment.” The concept of well-being has rootsin research on social indicators, quality of life,and multidimensional conceptions of poverty(72). However, well-being is a broad, contestedconcept, and its definitions are variable andoften confused. White (73) provides an over-arching framework of well-being concepts,distinguishing between having a good life

(material welfare and living standards), livinga good life (values and ideals), and locatingone’s life (experience and subjectivity), butresearchers note that the terms life satisfaction,happiness, quality of life, and well-being areoften used interchangeably (74, 75).

In the context of developing countries,attempts to understand well-being across dif-ferent languages, cultures, and socioeconomiccontexts have highlighted the need for local un-derstandings of “the good life” (21, 63–65, 76).Camfield et al. (77) claim that these concernsare part of a paradigm shift within developmentand child indicators research, similar to thattraced in the previous section on humandevelopment, from a deficit view that focuseson survival to one that acknowledges people’sresources, agency, and pursuit of well-being.But Camfield & McGregor (78) found that theconcept of life satisfaction can be extremelyculturally specific and has different relevancein individualist or collectivist societies. Impor-tantly, agency is seen as determined not onlyby the physical capacity of an individual butalso by the extent to which that is supported


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by relationships with others and their ownperceptions of the extent to which they canexercise agency, in other words, self-efficacy.Research highlights “the diversity of resourcesthat people use to maintain resilience andthe significance of nonmaterial resources inaversive environments” (78, p. 202).

Again, much of this work on well-being anddevelopment has focused on children, linkingwith concepts of resilience and risk exposurereviewed in the previous section. In develop-ing countries, children (defined as people un-der 18 years of age) represent a large propor-tion of the population, and the majority livesin poverty; hence, child well-being is an impor-tant research and policy concern. Furthermore,childhood provides opportunities for disrupt-ing intergenerational transfer of poverty (79),and this is reflected by the inclusion of earlychildhood health and education in the Millen-nium Development Goals. The “new sociol-ogy of childhood” has influenced experiences ofchildren living in poverty, with agency playinga key role in mitigating the intergenerationaltransfer of poverty (80). Ben-Arieh & George(81) note the greater emphasis on wider dimen-sions of well-being and a more positive view ofchildren’s capacities and resilience, which ac-knowledges people’s resources and agency, andhow coping with adversity can enhance com-petence and well-being (26, 78). Boyden et al.(82) propose nine principles of child well-beingand development for use when undertaking re-search on child well-being to ensure “best in-terests.” They emphasize that children’s devel-opment and well-being is mediated by personaland environmental factors, such as relationshipsand individual capacities, as well as cultural val-ues and expectations (82).

Well-being has traditionally been measuredusing objective approaches, which are indica-tor based and include national and internationalsurveys; however, the paradigm shift led to thedevelopment of subjective approaches, usingparticipatory methods, and, more recently, tothe use of integrative approaches within lon-gitudinal research (71). Participatory methodsare used to illustrate the complex dynamics

behind poverty and well-being and to iden-tify local understandings of the concept by be-ing “experience-near” (77, p. 11). In addition,participatory methods can address psychoso-cial and subjective well-being. Hence, the actof participating in research enhances children’scompetencies, such as self-efficacy, which leadto a greater sense of control over one’s life anda greater sense of well-being.

An early example of participatory researchis the study by Johnson et al. (83), with workingchildren growing up in rural communitiesof Nepal, to understand children’s roleswithin households in the context of changingenvironments around them. Other importantstudies include Woodhead (84) on child labor,Boyden & de Berry (85) on child combatants,and Ennew & Plateau (86) on physical andemotional punishment. Ungar (21) highlightsa number of participatory studies that look atchild resilience. Cook & du Toit (70) focuson a community capacity–building project thatadopts culturally sensitive action research as anintervention supporting child and communityresilience within HIV- and AIDS-affectedcommunities in South Africa. Another par-ticipatory study focusing upon resilience isthe International Resilience Project (87),which explores how young people “grow upwell” in 14 challenging environments, despiteexposure to atypical levels of risk. The studyidentifies 32 domains that children fromdifferent developed and developing countriesconsider important for resilience at cultural,community, relationship, and individual levels.

In summary, well-being is a process as wellas an outcome: It is characterized as “a stateof being with others, where human needs aremet, where one can act meaningfully to pursueone’s goals, and where one enjoys a satisfactoryquality of life” (88). Sumner (89, p. 1066)considers that “well-being is 3-dimensional: ittakes account of material well-being, subjectivewell-being and relational well-being and theirdynamic and evolving interaction.” Althoughwell-being approaches are often accused ofneglecting political economy, Sumner arguesthat a focus on the perceptual and relational is


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Getting by Getting (back) at

Getting out Getting organized

Everyday

Collective/citizenship

Strategic

Personal

Figure 3A taxonomy of agency. Adapted with permission from Lister (91).

inherently political, as it is about agency. Childand adult agency are key determinants of inter-generational poverty transmission (90). Sumnerapplied Lister’s (91) taxonomy of agency exer-cised by those in poverty; this taxonomy recog-nizes that adults’ and children’s agency can begood/progressive and bad/regressive, as shownin Figure 3. Hence, the 3D model promotedby Sumner differentiates between actions poorpeople take to improve their situation in boththe short- and long-term, such as “getting by,”“getting back at,” “getting out,” and “gettingorganized” in Lister’s taxonomy. This modelis helpful if we apply it to how agency can beexercised in response to environmental change,and it may help in distinguishing betweencoping, adaptation, and transformative re-sponses, as discussed in the conclusion section,below.

A recent Young Lives policy brief addressesprogress toward the Millennium Develop-ment Goals and discusses how a range ofshocks, from economic to environmental,affect children in different families and howthey cope (92). It shows clearly that poorerhouseholds in each country are more likely toexperience such shocks, although other shocks,such as illness and family changes, are moreevenly distributed. This explicitly links the

multidimensional analysis of well-being andparticularly children’s well-being to the experi-ences of different shocks. Scheper-Hughes (93)in contrast highlights the role of “everyday re-silience” as a means of coping with the hardship,violence, and insecurity characterizing povertyin the shantytowns in northeastern Brazil.Thus, the range of chronic and acute stressorsexperienced by poor people and their relationto well-being, adaptation, and resilience canbe understood with respect to individual andcollective capacities, agency, and resilience.

Understanding of these dynamics and thedifferentiated capacities of individuals, house-holds, and communities to respond to multipleand linked stressors (94) has been strongly in-fluenced by Sen’s capabilities approach. In De-velopment as Freedom (95), Sen presents povertyas deprivation of capabilities, where capabili-ties refer to a set of resources—physical, men-tal, and social—that a person might command,which give rise to various “functionings”—thethings a person values doing or being. Sen’swork has informed the evolution of well-beingdebates and their translation into policy, as wellas understandings of the impacts of famines andother disasters in poor countries. A human se-curity approach, based on the concept of free-dom from fear and freedom from want, extendsthis reasoning; the definition of human security,developed through the Global EnvironmentalChange and Human Security program (96), fo-cuses specifically on the freedom to take actionon one’s own behalf in response to changing en-vironmental conditions, again making agencyand capacity of central importance.

DISASTERS AND COMMUNITYRESILIENCE

This section looks at how the literature ondisasters has integrated ideas about agency, re-silience, and capacities, as well as at the interfacebetween the individual and collective analysisof cognition, risk, and decision-making. Oneinteresting aspect of this literature concerns theinteraction of individual traits with collectiveor community-based responses; ideas about


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community resilience are prevalent in these dis-cussions. Resilience, risk, and vulnerability arethe key terms used in interdisciplinary analysisof hazards and disasters. Again we observe thatthe literature has evolved from a perspectivecentering on objective analysis of risk, hazards,and natural disasters to a more integratedand holistic understanding of how subjectiveunderstandings of risk, and the socially differ-entiated experience of disasters, relate to socialvulnerability and to structure and agency (97,98). Sarewitz et al. (99) discuss this in relationto the distinction between risk reductionand vulnerability approaches in public policyresponses to extreme events, arguing that thetwo are quite distinct. A vulnerability approachprovides an alternative perspective that widensdiscussion of disasters to consider context,human rights, and security more centrally.McLaughlin & Dietz (1) provide a synthesis offive different perspectives on human vulnera-bility to environmental change; this synthesisindicates the extent to which different perspec-tives relate to metatheoretical and ontologicalviews of the relationship between nature andsociety and, in turn, how these perspectivessee the roles of social structure, human agency,and the environment. Their analysis clearlyshows how conventional biophysical, humanecology and political economy perspectives onunderstanding vulnerability underplay agency.A constructivist approach stresses agency andculture, for example, in shaping definitionsof an exposure to risk, but in most cases, thisapproach fails to recognize the environment ashaving any causal role. Berkes (100) suggeststhat resilience thinking can help to provide amore integrated, dynamic systems approach tounderstanding hazards [see also the distinctionsmade by Nelson et al. (3)]. However, Bahaduret al.’s review (101) of 16 conceptualizationsof resilience, applied to understanding climatechange and disasters, shows that there islittle consensus in relation to agency andcapacity. The social dimensions of resilienceare generally poorly specified: They includesocial values and structures, learning, equity,community involvement, local knowledge,

and effective governance. A core notion inthe vulnerability literature is that the capacityto manage risk and to adapt to changes isunevenly distributed across nations, regions,communities, and households. Furthermore,the poor are especially vulnerable and liable tobecome trapped in vicious cycles of decline as aresult of stressors; the poverty and vulnerabilitytrap means that recovery to predisaster levelsof well-being becomes increasingly difficult(98, 102).

An important strand in the disasters litera-ture focuses on community resilience. Cutteret al.’s DROP (Disaster Resilience of Place)model (13), for example, emphasizes social re-silience as important for disaster preparedness,response, and postevent learning. “Communitycompetence” is indicated by local understand-ings of risk, counseling services, absence of psy-chopathologies (alcohol, drug, spousal abuse),health, wellness, and quality of life. Norriset al.’s (103) view of community resilience todisasters as a set of capacities is important hereand is shown diagrammatically in Figure 4.Their framework is closely allied to perspec-tives from public health encompassing twodimensions of capacity: The first includes thecharacteristics of communities that affect theirability to identify, modify, and mobilize; andthe second is the cultivation and use of transfer-able knowledge, skills, systems, and resourcesthat affect community and individual changes(103). Thus, for Norris et al., capacities becomeadaptive capacities when they are “robust, re-dundant or rapidly accessible and thus able tooffset a new stressor, danger or surprise” (103,p. 136).

There is an increasing emphasis on re-silience rather than vulnerability in thedisasters and hazards literature (104). Manyena(105) notes that, in the past decade, workon disasters has increasingly focused on thecapacity of affected communities to recover,with or without external assistance. However,he cautions that disaster resilience could beviewed as a “new phrase describing the desiredoutcome of a disaster risk reduction program;but it does not deal with the unique condition


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Economic development

Fairness of risk and vulnerability

to hazards

Level and diversity of economic resources

Equity of resource

distributions

Social capitalReceived

(extracted) social support

Perceived (expected) social

supportSocial

embeddedness(informal ties)

Sense of community

Organizational linkages and cooperation

Citizen participation, leadership, and

rules (formal ties)

Attachments to place

Information and communication

Narratives

Responsible media

Skills and infrastructure

Trusted sources of information

Community competence

Community action

Flexibility and creativity

Political partnerships

Collective efficacy,

empowerment

Critical reflective and problem-solving skills

Figure 4Community resilience as networked set of capacities. The four circles represent different areas of capacity. Adapted with permissionfrom Norris et al. (103).

itself” (105, p. 436), concluding that resilienceis too vague a concept to be useful in informingthe disaster risk reduction agenda. Conversely,Masten & Obradovic (48) use the findings fromresearch in human development to argue fora resilience framework for disaster planning.Here, agency and self-efficacy are seen asimportant attributes that enable individualsand communities to plan, persist, and adaptin the face of disasters and other events.Almedom (106), from a health and social careperspective, charts a progressive paradigm shiftfrom the disease-driven inquiries on risk andvulnerability to health-centered approaches tobuilding disasters and preventing vulnerabilityto disease, social dysfunction, and human andenvironmental resource depletion (106). Thesechanges can also be observed in the operationsof major development and humanitarian

organizations—for example the Red Cross andRed Crescent Movement, Christian Aid, andOxfam (107–109). The emphasis on commu-nity resilience is also a focus of disaster riskreduction initiatives related to climate change,for example, the Community Resilience Ini-tiative [see Community Regional ResilienceInstitute (110)]. Much of this writing resonateswith earlier research on social capital (34, 38),assuming positive relationships between socialcapital and resilience. In a review by Rolfe(111), community resilience is related to socialcohesion, i.e., in terms of social and supportnetworks, social participation, and communityengagement; social cohesion is thus a combi-nation of social support and social capital.

This literature thus adds collective andcommunity perspectives to understanding dif-ferentiated capacities to respond to shocks and


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disturbances. Chaskin (112) analyzes com-munity resilience in three different forms—as regrouping, as redevelopment, and asresistance—and relates this to communitycapacity that manifests as the interactionof human capital, organizational resources,and social capital, which can be leveraged toimprove or maintain the well-being of a givencommunity.

CONCLUSION: AGENCY ANDCAPACITY AND THE CASEFOR TRANSFORMATION

The literature on human development, well-being, and disasters brings valuable insightsinto understanding responses to environmen-tal change. It elucidates issues concerningindividual and collective resilience, as well asthe interplay between agency and structurein determining how people might undertakeadaptation and other actions. Synthesis ofthese literatures strengthens and broadensunderstanding of linkages between povertyand well-being, and also how they relate toresponse capacity in different cultural contexts;it highlights the importance of perceivedadaptive capacity and possible maladaptations,questions whose capacity and who is responsi-ble for initiating change, and thus contributesto defining and shaping governance and pos-sibilities for transformation. This knowledgecan help in developing a more human-centeredand integrated analysis of the meanings of, andpossible actions in response to, environmentalchange and how this links to longer-termwell-being and poverty alleviation.

Three significant parallel movements, orevolution, in these diverse fields of knowledgein the social and natural sciences are revealedby the review. First, there has been a shift awayfrom the notion that the central concepts—adaptive capacity, resilience, and well-being—can be objectively measured by a set of quan-tifiable indicators to a much more complex,nuanced view that understands them as com-prising subjective, relational as well as objec-tive aspects. Second, in each field, there is

recognition that dynamic systems approaches—including ecological or social-ecological in itsbroadest sense—and cross-scale perspectivesare necessary. This is exemplified by Schoon’smultidimensional dynamic model of resiliencepresented in Figure 3 but also in the social-ecological systems concept of panarchy put for-ward by Gunderson & Holling (66). Third, inthe human development, well-being, and dis-asters fields, there is a move away from deficitmodels to ideas about assets and capacities (e.g.,22, 113).

This review also identifies some importantareas of uncertainty, where empirical testing orevidence is lacking and where significant gapsin knowledge or contradictions in literature areapparent. There are questions raised about therelationship between resilience and resistanceand how this might reflect the emphasisbetween structure and agency (114). There arealso gaps in understanding how cross-scale dy-namics between the individual and communityor other groups operate and affect responses tochange in different ways and in different con-texts, as well as in the role of agency in collectiveaction (115). These issues have important im-plications for interventions, for example inclimate change adaptation. Chaskin (112)discusses these issues in relation to communitydevelopment and capacity building, whetherefforts are targeted toward people or places,and the dilemmas this raises. Furthermore, ifindeed we see agency as important and if weaccept, in contrast to conventional vulnerabilityand political economy perspectives, that poorpeople are actually resilient and that they havewell-being, then why do anything? Do we needto change structures? In the climate changeand development arenas, Brown (116) showsthat resilience is often used to bolster policiespromoting a business-as-usual approach ratherthan to challenge existing structures and bringabout fundamental changes to systems.

Thus, the findings from this review acrossknowledge domains have implications forassigning responsibility for managing changeto individuals, communities, governments,or other sets of social actors. This directly


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Coping Self-help

Adaptation Transformation

Everyday

Collective/citizenship

Strategic

Personal

Figure 5A taxonomy of responses to climate change.

addresses a central criticism of how ideas ofresilience are used in the environmental changeand social-ecological systems literature, i.e.,that the analysis is depoliticized and lacksconsideration of agency. These issues are alsodebated in the human development literature.Bottrell (114) provides important insights intothese contested issues, arguing that mainstreamresilience theory may be readily incorporatedinto neoliberal policy with an emphasis onindividual responsibility for coping, compe-tence, and success, largely defined in terms ofenterprise and contribution to economic ratherthan social well-being, and thus “may shift theemphasis from positive adaptation despite ad-versity to positive adaptation to adversity” (114,p. 334). Furthermore, “at the policy level thereneeds to be a question of limits—to what extentwill adversity be tolerated, on the assumptionthat resilient individuals can and do cope? Howmuch adversity should resilient individualsendure before social arrangements rather thanindividuals are targeted for intervention? Inthis context there is a need for continuing en-gagement of research and practice with policyand its structuring effects” (114, p. 335). Thisagain finds parallels in discussions in climatechange adaptation literature about whether an

emphasis on community and individual capac-ity to adapt detracts from state responsibility tosupport mitigation. Once more, it raises ques-tions about who are the main agents of change,the interplay between structure and agency,and who defines resilience of what and forwhom (22). Bottrell (114, p. 337) notes that “in-cluding resistances in the conceptualization ofresilience suggests the need for change in posi-tioned perspectives, structured inequalities andthe distribution of resources for strengtheningresilience,” in other words, transformativechange. Applying the conceptualization ofagency presented in Figure 3 could help un-derstand the distinctions and linkages betweencoping, adaptation, and transformation. Weposit one application in Figure 5. This adds tothe environmental change literature by rootingthe distinctions between different responsesto climate change according to various formsof agency. In this respect, a greater synthesisof findings from human development could inparticular help define what constitutes transfor-mative capacity as opposed to adaptive capacity.

The Future Issues section highlights somepotential avenues for further research providedby this review. These include, for example, howideas of resilience relate to the multidimen-sional concepts of well-being, perhaps withregard to emerging field of positive psychologydefined by Linley et al. (117, p. 8) as the“scientific study of optimal human function-ing”? How do the personal and collectivedimensions interact in terms of identity? Astrong sense of social identity is often assumedas important for social capital, resilience, and,hence, adaptive capacity. Some scholars, no-tably Bottrell (114), put forward a “social theoryof resilience” and indicate transformationalchange may require rejection of a prescribedidentity. Synthesizing and extending knowl-edge at the interface of these diverse fields canhelp to develop a more human-centered andintegrated analysis of the meanings of, andpossible actions in response to, environmentalchange and to identify important areas forfurther research and action.


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SUMMARY POINTS

1. Environmental change analysis, although recognizing the significance of human agency,tends to aggregate psychosocial factors and rarely unpacks the multiple and diverse di-mensions of agency and capacity.

2. Knowledge domains across social and natural sciences, including human developmentsciences, well-being and development, and disasters and natural hazards, can theoreti-cally, conceptually, and empirically enrich understandings of the human dimensions ofenvironmental change.

3. Adaptive capacity can be seen as a meeting point between these knowledge domains, withrelated concepts of resilience, well-being, capacity, and capabilities informing a dynamicand nuanced view of agency in environmental change.

4. Each of these fields has undergone paradigm shifts to integrate the subjective and rela-tional aspects with more conventional and objective measures of change.

5. These multidisciplinary insights into agency can help distinguish different responses toenvironmental change, including coping, adaptation, and transformation.

FUTURE ISSUES

1. How is transformative capacity distinguished from adaptive capacity and coping withregard to agency?

2. How is resilience defined across different cultures? What is the emphasis given, forexample, to individual and collective responsibility and to agency?

3. How do ideas of resilience relate to the multidimensional concepts of well-being, perhapswith regard to emerging field of positive psychology?

4. How does social identity affect adaptive capacity and possible transformation?

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings thatmight be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was partly funded by Katrina Brown’s Economic and Social Research CouncilProfessorial Fellowship “Resilient Development in Social-Ecological Systems.” All views anderrors remain the responsibility of the authors. The authors wish to thank Charlotte Morgan forher assistance in drawing diagrams and compiling references.

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EG36-FrontMatter ARI 7 September 2011 14:34

Annual Review ofEnvironmentand Resources

Volume 36, 2011 Contents

Preface � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �v

Who Should Read This Series? � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �vii

I. Earth’s Life Support Systems

Improving Societal Outcomes of Extreme Weather in a ChangingClimate: An Integrated PerspectiveRebecca E. Morss, Olga V. Wilhelmi, Gerald A. Meehl, and Lisa Dilling � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Ocean Circulations, Heat Budgets, and Future Commitmentto Climate ChangeDavid W. Pierce, Tim P. Barnett, and Peter J. Gleckler � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �27

Aerosol Impacts on Climate and BiogeochemistryNatalie Mahowald, Daniel S. Ward, Silvia Kloster, Mark G. Flanner,

Colette L. Heald, Nicholas G. Heavens, Peter G. Hess, Jean-Francois Lamarque,and Patrick Y. Chuang � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �45

State of the World’s Freshwater Ecosystems: Physical, Chemical,and Biological ChangesStephen R. Carpenter, Emily H. Stanley, and M. Jake Vander Zanden � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �75

II. Human Use of Environment and Resources

Coal Power Impacts, Technology, and Policy: Connecting the DotsAnanth P. Chikkatur, Ankur Chaudhary, and Ambuj D. Sagar � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 101

Energy PovertyLakshman Guruswamy � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 139

Water and Energy InteractionsJames E. McMahon and Sarah K. Price � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 163

Agroecology: A Review from a Global-Change PerspectiveThomas P. Tomich, Sonja Brodt, Howard Ferris, Ryan Galt, William R. Horwath,

Ermias Kebreab, Johan H.J. Leveau, Daniel Liptzin, Mark Lubell, Pierre Merel,Richard Michelmore, Todd Rosenstock, Kate Scow, Johan Six, Neal Williams,and Louie Yang � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 193

viii

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EG36-FrontMatter ARI 7 September 2011 14:34

Energy Intensity of Agriculture and Food SystemsNathan Pelletier, Eric Audsley, Sonja Brodt, Tara Garnett, Patrik Henriksson,

Alissa Kendall, Klaas Jan Kramer, David Murphy, Thomas Nemecek,and Max Troell � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 223

Transportation and the EnvironmentDavid Banister, Karen Anderton, David Bonilla, Moshe Givoni,

and Tim Schwanen � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 247

Green Chemistry and Green Engineering: A Framework forSustainable Technology DevelopmentMartin J. Mulvihill, Evan S. Beach, Julie B. Zimmerman, and Paul T. Anastas � � � � � 271

The Political Ecology of Land DegradationElina Andersson, Sara Brogaard, and Lennart Olsson � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 295

III. Management, Guidance, and Governance of Resources and Environment

Agency, Capacity, and Resilience to Environmental Change:Lessons from Human Development, Well-Being, and DisastersKatrina Brown and Elizabeth Westaway � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 321

Global Forest Transition: Prospects for an End to DeforestationPatrick Meyfroidt and Eric F. Lambin � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 343

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest DegradationArun Agrawal, Daniel Nepstad, and Ashwini Chhatre � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 373

Tourism and EnvironmentRalf Buckley � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 397

Literature and EnvironmentLawrence Buell, Ursula K. Heise, and Karen Thornber � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 417

Religion and EnvironmentWillis Jenkins and Christopher Key Chapple � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 441

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 465

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 469

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Environment and Resources articles maybe found at http://environ.annualreviews.org

Contents ix

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AnnuAl Reviewsit’s about time. Your time. it’s time well spent.

AnnuAl Reviews | Connect with Our expertsTel: 800.523.8635 (us/can) | Tel: 650.493.4400 | Fax: 650.424.0910 | Email: [email protected]

New From Annual Reviews:

Annual Review of Statistics and Its ApplicationVolume 1 • Online January 2014 • http://statistics.annualreviews.org

Editor: Stephen E. Fienberg, Carnegie Mellon UniversityAssociate Editors: Nancy Reid, University of Toronto

Stephen M. Stigler, University of ChicagoThe Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application aims to inform statisticians and quantitative methodologists, as well as all scientists and users of statistics about major methodological advances and the computational tools that allow for their implementation. It will include developments in the field of statistics, including theoretical statistical underpinnings of new methodology, as well as developments in specific application domains such as biostatistics and bioinformatics, economics, machine learning, psychology, sociology, and aspects of the physical sciences.

Complimentary online access to the first volume will be available until January 2015. table of contents:•What Is Statistics? Stephen E. Fienberg•A Systematic Statistical Approach to Evaluating Evidence

from Observational Studies, David Madigan, Paul E. Stang, Jesse A. Berlin, Martijn Schuemie, J. Marc Overhage, Marc A. Suchard, Bill Dumouchel, Abraham G. Hartzema, Patrick B. Ryan

•The Role of Statistics in the Discovery of a Higgs Boson, David A. van Dyk

•Brain Imaging Analysis, F. DuBois Bowman•Statistics and Climate, Peter Guttorp•Climate Simulators and Climate Projections,

Jonathan Rougier, Michael Goldstein•Probabilistic Forecasting, Tilmann Gneiting,

Matthias Katzfuss•Bayesian Computational Tools, Christian P. Robert•Bayesian Computation Via Markov Chain Monte Carlo,

Radu V. Craiu, Jeffrey S. Rosenthal•Build, Compute, Critique, Repeat: Data Analysis with Latent

Variable Models, David M. Blei•Structured Regularizers for High-Dimensional Problems:

Statistical and Computational Issues, Martin J. Wainwright

•High-Dimensional Statistics with a View Toward Applications in Biology, Peter Bühlmann, Markus Kalisch, Lukas Meier

•Next-Generation Statistical Genetics: Modeling, Penalization, and Optimization in High-Dimensional Data, Kenneth Lange, Jeanette C. Papp, Janet S. Sinsheimer, Eric M. Sobel

•Breaking Bad: Two Decades of Life-Course Data Analysis in Criminology, Developmental Psychology, and Beyond, Elena A. Erosheva, Ross L. Matsueda, Donatello Telesca

•Event History Analysis, Niels Keiding•StatisticalEvaluationofForensicDNAProfileEvidence,

Christopher D. Steele, David J. Balding•Using League Table Rankings in Public Policy Formation:

Statistical Issues, Harvey Goldstein•Statistical Ecology, Ruth King•Estimating the Number of Species in Microbial Diversity

Studies, John Bunge, Amy Willis, Fiona Walsh•Dynamic Treatment Regimes, Bibhas Chakraborty,

Susan A. Murphy•Statistics and Related Topics in Single-Molecule Biophysics,

Hong Qian, S.C. Kou•Statistics and Quantitative Risk Management for Banking

and Insurance, Paul Embrechts, Marius Hofert

Access this and all other Annual Reviews journals via your institution at www.annualreviews.org.

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agency, capacity, and resilience to environmental change: lessons from human development,...

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