From theory to practice: Operationalising resilience in

social-ecological systems

Brian WalkerOctober ‘07

Number of publications on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation in a sample of international journals (Janssen, M. 2007. Ecology and Society)

Four propositions

1.

You cannot understand or manage a social-ecological system (SES) by focussing at only one scale.

You need AT LEAST three scales– the focal scale - at least one above and one below

2.

You cannot understand or successfully manage a SES with solutions that are only ecological, or social, or economic.

partial solutions are rife - a major reason for failures in SESs.

3.

All SESs are self-organising systems within limits, beyond which they self-organise along a different trajectory (towards a different ‘attractor’)

The limits (thresholds) occur because of changes in feedbacks, mostly across scales and between domains (ecological, social, economic)

4.

Therefore, sustainable use and development rests on three capacities of social-ecological systems :

- resilience- adaptability- transformability

Two uses of the term resilience:

1.Speed of return to an equilibrium state‘engineering’ resilience (neat mathematical

solutions, but no account of thresholds or limits)

2.Ability to recover‘ecological’ resilience

NO

YES

Resilience“The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and re-organise so as to retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks – to have the same identity”

(remain in the same system regime)

GRASS

SH

RU

BS

GRASS

SH

RU

BS

AdaptabilityThe capacity of actors in the system (people, in SESs) to manage resilience :

(i) change the positions of thresholds between alternate regimes

(ii) control the trajectory of the system – avoid crossing a threshold (or engineer such a crossing)

TransformabilityThe capacity to become a fundamentally different system when ecological, social and/or economic conditions make the existing system untenable.

“DESIRABLE” AND “UNDESIRABLE”SYSTEM REGIMES

Desirable for whom?

Intra- and inter- generational perspectives

Three challenges :

- If the SES is in a desirable regime : how to enhance resilience and adaptability

- If it’s already in an undesirable regime: how to reduce resilience, and enhance the resilience of the alternate regime

- If an undesirable regime shift is inevitable, and recovery is not possible: how to transform to become a different, new system

Undesirable system regimes come about due to:-changing external conditions (climate, markets, social preferences, ethics)-internal changes (loss of resilience through secondary effects of management)

As the undesirable basin of attraction deepens, societal response often makes it deeper- more efficient use of a scarce resource (less flexibility)- subsidies to carry on in the same way- loss of other critical capital assets (human, built, etc)

Resilience places an emphasis on thresholds between alternate regimes

Kinds of thresholds and “tipping points”No threshold effect threshold, no alternate attractors

threshold, alternate stable states

Underlying (controlling) variable

(a) (b)

(c)

Stat

e of

cap

ital s

tock

(fast

var

iabl

e)

(d) irreversible threshold changereversible, with hysteresis

Re-vegetation

30% critical level

A threshold occurs where there is a change in feedbacks

Feedback changes involved in regime shiftscontrollingvariable associated feedback changesRainfall – evapotranspiration; leaching; water table levelTemperature – soil moisture (E/T); germination (microclimate);

symbiosis (coral bleaching)Nutrients – O2 in water (decomposition); competition (plant

species) Acidification - calcification (diatoms) Vegetation - water interception (cloud forests); infiltration rates;

water tables; nutrients (legumes); soil temp (insulation) Landscape cover - immigration/emigration rates; reproduction;

survival Herbivory - regeneration; competition; fire (fuel)Harvesting - recruitment (depensation); E/T (forests)Frequency - seed bank viability; regeneration time(fires, fallows)

Predation - recovery (depensation); herbivore behaviour (spiders, wolves)

The economy - income:cost ratios; debt:income ratios(markets)

Social preference - subsidies / taxes (often after a change in government)

Feedback changes involved in regime shiftscontrollingvariable associated feedback changesRainfall – evapotranspiration; leaching; water table levelTemperature – soil moisture (E/T); germination (microclimate);

symbiosis (coral bleaching)Nutrients – O2 in water (decomposition); competition (plant

species) Acidification - calcification (diatoms) Vegetation - water interception (cloud forests); infiltration rates;

water tables; nutrients (legumes); soil temp (insulation) Landscape cover - immigration/emigration rates; reproduction;

survival Herbivory - regeneration; competition; fire (fuel)Harvesting - recruitment (depensation); E/T (forests)Frequency - seed bank viability; regeneration time(fires, fallows)

Predation - recovery (depensation); herbivore behaviour (spiders, wolves)

The economy - income:cost ratios; debt:income ratios(markets)

Social preference - subsidies / taxes (often after a change in government)(a tipping point)

Resilience is NOT about staying the same. It is not about preventing change. Preventing change leads to a decline in resilience

“Vulnerability” is a static concept, resilience is very much dynamic.

Maintaining resilience requires probing its boundaries; it is all about how to keep changing so as to keep functioning in the same way.

N

Goulburn Broken Catchment - Victoria

Clearing native vegetation caused rising water tables

Water brings salt up with it

Both waterlogging and salinity are bad for agriculture

Water table fluctuates with annual rainfall

A threshold effect occurs at 2m below surface

% vegcleared in lower catchment

equilibrium water table stable & below surface

equilibrium water table stable at surfaceequilibrium water table stable & at surface

Simulated clearing history

% veg cleared in upper catchment

N

Goulburn Broken Catchment - Victoria

2m

0m

C2

c.30m

% clearing of natural vegetation

Dep

th to

wat

er ta

ble

resilience

C1

Equilibrium level of the water table in relation to vegetation cover in the Goulburn-Broken catchment

Including pumping

2m

0m

c.30m

Equilibrium level of salinity (decadal time scale)

% clearing of natural vegetation

Dep

th to

sal

ine

wat

er ta

ble

(=A

mou

nt o

f fer

tile

soil)

% vegetation cleared in upper catchment

% vegn. cleared in lower catchment

equilibrium water table stable & below surface

equilibrium water table stable at surface

equilibrium water table stable & at surface

revegetationwater table below surface with pumping

Can this occur before a wet period shock Brings the water table above 2m?

The planning / management challenge for all the partners

“with climate change, salinity is yesterday’s problem”

- climate change models suggest increased variance in both directions of rainfall

(Causse Mejan in France, a catchment in SE Australia, southern Madagascar, Western Australia wheatbelt)

Multiple, interacting thresholds

Dom

ain

Ecological

Economic

Social/Cultural

Scale

Patch Farm Region Extra-regional

Kinzig et al (2006) in “Exploring Resilience” - Special Issue of Ecology & Society

Multiple, interacting thresholds in the Goulburn-Broken catchment

Dom

ain

Ecological

Economic

Social/Cultural

Scale

Patch Farm Region Extra-regional

Social preference for environment : agricultureDairy industry “collapse”

salinity

farm viability

biodiversity

9 interacting thresholds in the Goulburn-Broken catchment

Farm/ landscape Landscape/catchment Region/ nation

biop

hysi

cal

econ

omic

soci

al

Shocks and slow drivers

Values (e.g. environment vs. agriculture) – water allocations

Farm financial viability

Size of dairy & fruitprocessing sectors

Water table depth

Area salinized

Water infrastructure state

Riverine ecosystemcondition

Native veg cover and biodiversity

Tree cover and water tableequilibrium (E/T)

climate change

long run energy cost

technology

markets

population (demand)diseases

governance

the “HOT” model (J. Doyle, SFI)

general vs. specified resilience resilience of what, to what?

general resilience

- diversity - modularity (connectedness)- tightness of feedbacks- openness – immigration, inflows, outflows- reserves and other reservoirs (seedbanks,

nutrient pools, memory)- overlapping institutions - polycentric governance

There is a cost to resilience

short term cost of foregone extra ‘yield’vs.

cost of being in an alternate regime(cost x prob. of a regime shift)

cost of maintaining resilience (relatively easy to estimate)

vs.cost of not maintaining it (difficult to estimate)

“The Collapse of Complex Societies” (J. Tainter)

As societies grow and develop they confront problems that need to be solved

In solving them, they increase complexity

Complexity costs

When the costs exceed the benefits of the solutions, societies collapse

The adaptive cyclein ecosystems, social systems and SESs

αα ΩΩrr

KK

Transaction costs rise during a K phase

-in ecosystems, the proportion of production used for metabolism (respiration) increases

-in social systems, the proportion of energy, time and inputs used for running the system increases (transaction costs increase)

How much of a system’s intake (income) is being used for metabolism?

Dangers of K-phase behaviour

- increases in “efficiency” (remove apparent redundancies, OSFA solutions)

- subsidies not to change (rather than to change)- sunk costs effects- increased command-and-control (less and less flexibility)- pre-occupation with process (more and more rules)- novelty suppressed, little support for experimentation- rising transaction costs- increasing consequences of partial solutions

resilience declines

Panarchy – hierarchies of linked adaptive cycles

Adaptive cycles and ‘panarchy’key points:

-The ‘cycle’ isn’t always a cycle, but the four phases are repeatedly observed- Cross-scale effects are frequently the cause of inability to cope- Persisting with the status quo (the “K” phase) leads to big losses in system capitals (and therefore human wellbeing)- They are important becausei) they strongly influence when and how to intervene in a SESii) there is a tendency in SESs to prolong the K phaseiii) the re-organisation phase (alpha) is when new things can happen

resilience

adaptabilitytransformability

What determines Adaptability?

– social capitalleadershiptrust

- effective networks- human capital (skills, education, health)- financial resources- natural capital

- ongoing learning- overlapping institutions- polycentric governance with evolving rules

Leadership, trust, effective networks, learning- all need to operate across and within scales

In Australia – how effective is the “water network” across DAF, DEW, NWC, CSIRO?how well does it communicate and interact with the catchment networks?

Transformability

Attributes of transformability

three classes:

- preparedness to change - capacity to change- options for change

How to operationalise a resilience approach?

1) Climate change

2) What to do about water?

3) Sustainability in regional Australia

1) Climate change

- influencing climate change – depends on global, international action

- adapting to climate change = sustainability in regional Australia

2) WaterI. 3 levels:1) Resilience of the sources of water (rivers, natural reservoirs

(lakes, wetlands), dams 2) Resilience of the water supply systems – rivers, canals, 3) Resilience of the “user systems”

i) Are there critical thresholds in system function in regard to rainfall patterns and water abundance

- can we identify known and possible thresholds?- can we influence where the thresholds are (manage them)?

ii) Is increasing efficiency of use causing a decrease in resilience? How to compensate for this?

iii) Increasing resilience at one scale often reduces resilience at other scales (resilience of an irrigation system, vs. resilience of the wider region of irrigation + dryland agriculture + other enterprises)

II. Trade-offs between bundles of interacting ecosystem services, focussing on water

Why “bundles”? Because unbundling the services is what has led to the big problems

The Millenium ecosystem assessment

Thresholds in the green boxes, and thresholds on the arrows?

biophysica

l bundles

(from Resilience Alliance prospectus on Water and agriculture)

a) Are there discrete bundles of ecosystem services and are there thresholds?b) Do “bundles” of interacting ecosystem services behave in predictable ways that could influence how we manage landscapes?c) What tools can we develop to assess tradeoffs among bundles of ecosystems services, particularly between provisioning and regulating services, and the effects on ecosystem resilience?

III. Any water use/allocation system (like the MDB) is necessarily a social-economic-biophysical (3-domain) system that functions at multiple scales

Partial solutions will not work

A resilience approach to achieving a sustainable outcome would focus on cross-scale and cross-domain effects of existing and proposed use systems, paying special attention to:

i) possible non-linear,threshold effects (in all 3 domains)ii) the evolution of a system of polycentric, adaptive governance (a la E. Ostrom and colleagues)

3) Sustainability in regional Australia (regional resilience)

How can you do an assessment of resilience and use it to modify policy and management?

One suggestion (hesitantly at this stage):iterative workshops using as a framework the evolving

“workbooks” of the Resilience Alliance (www.resalliance.org)

At this stage, use both the ‘Practitioners’ and the ‘Scientists’ versions, especially for interventions and management

RESILIENCE ASSESSMENT

1. DEFINING AND UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEMResilience of what?Resilience to what?

Identifying system drivers and disturbances Developing a historical profile of the system

People and governanceKey playersGovernance

2. ASSESSING RESILIENCEDeveloping conceptual models of change

The prevailing mental models for ecological and social-ecological dynamics.Phases in system dynamics, critical scales and cross-scale connectionsA state-and-transition picture.

Alternate System regimes, controlling variables, thresholds and tipping points.

A Conceptual model of regime shiftsLikely pathways into the future (scenarios)Possible alternate regimes and thresholds

Likely interactions among thresholdsCross-examination of the conceptual model(s) with known resilience and adaptability attributes

Resilience AttributesAdaptability AttributesChanges in “capitals”

Cycles of change and cross-scale interactions

3. INTERVENTIONS FOR RESILIENCE MANAGEMENT

1. KINDS AND SCALES OF INTERVENTIONSCritical thresholds and interventions

2. INTERVENTIONS IN RELATION TO PANARCHY BEHAVIOUR

3. INTERACTIONS AND SEQUENCING

4. ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT

5. IS TRANSFORMATION CALLED FOR?

The procedure must be iterative

There is no simple recipe

Next BRS Seminar Friday 19 October 2007

Climate change projections for AustraliaDr Penny WhettonLeader Climate Change Impact and Risk StreamCSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research

CSIRO and BoM released on 2 October new climate change projections for Australia. They are the most detailed yet prepared for Australia, and are based on the latest international global climate model results. As well as temperature and rainfall, projections are also made for a range of other climate variables such as relative humidity, winds, PE, radiation and SST.

αα ΩΩ

rrKK

r: growth / exploitationresources readily available

K: conservationthings change slowly; resources ‘locked up’

Ω: releasethings change very rapidly; ‘locked up’ resources suddenly released

α: re-organization/renewalsystem boundaries tenuous; innovations are possible

Preparedness (readiness) to change- level of understanding the current system regime in terms of trends at higher scales in time and space- awareness of alternate system regimes- ‘mental models’ of stakeholders (related to above); “visions”of the future - willingness to re-define the system and commit to new ways of making a living- extent of vested interests in not changing, and disparity in the distribution of benefits from the current system regime- others?

(Can these be quantified? Can they be used?)

Capacity to change- Leadership- Institutions that promote adaptive governance- Promotion of novelty and experimentation (assistance, and rules that encourage, rather than discourage, it) - Financial capital- Human capital – diversity of skills and levels of education- Social capital – trust, networks- Higher scale inputs – financial, human, institutional changes (rules, subsidies, taxes, etc)

Options for change

- Diversity and reserves of natural capital- Existence of markets, emergence of new markets- Non-options - Knowledge of thresholds to undesirable system regimes- ?

Forced vs. adaptive transformation

Proposition: Forced transformation (re-organisation after a collapse) leads to greater reductions in wellbeing, and is more costly, than transformations brought about through self-organisation before an undesirable regime shift or a “collapse”.

Successful transitioning to a sustainable trajectory requires :- building transformability- knowing when, where and how to intervene

When is dictated by i) external events (crises and windows of opportunity) and ii) the phases of the system’s dynamics at various scales

Where requires knowledge of potential and actual regime shifts in the system

How requires knowledge of the transformability attributes that are most constraining (readiness to transform and the lack of shared visions of alternative futures seem to be a major hindrances)

The main messages:• sustainability ≈ resilience, adaptability, transformability• policy and management need to focus on the attributes that determine these three properties•alternate regimes are the norm; pay attention to feedbacks that change suddenly at some level of a controlling (slow) variable • “optimal” states reduce resilience -- top-down, command-and-control management doesn’t work for very long • adaptive cycles and panarchy effects determine the success of interventions

When is transformation necessary? How can we know when to transform (when to

“jump”)?

- waiting until a system has undergone a regime shift, or waiting too long after a regime shift, can result in being trapped in a deepening, undesirable system attractor.

Examples of questions flowing from a resilience approach

Which parts of Australia show critical loss of resilience?

Are there regions in Australia teetering around a backloop?

Given its unprecedented connectivity, is a globalizing world itself approaching a big backloop?

If a big backloop looms, can a resilience approach help avoid it, or prepare a graceful passage through it?

Key assumption underlying Resilience Management and Governance:

social-ecological systems have non-linear dynamics and can exist in alternate stability domains (regimes)

Flawed assumptions underlying a maximum sustainable yield approach to NRM

• focus on average conditions (rather than extreme events)• belief that problems from different sectors don’t interact (they do, very much) • expectation that change will be incremental and linear (smooth) (it is mostly lurching and non-linear)

• keeping the system in some optimal state will deliver MSY indefinitely.

There is no sustainable “optimal” state of an ecosystem, a social system, or the world. It is an unattainable goal

Success in intervening in a social-ecological system at a particular focal scale depends on where it is in the adaptive cycle, and the states of the system at higher and lower scales

policyfinancial (subsidies, infrastructure,

technology, ..)management actions / techniques