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Resiliencia socioecologica
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Copyright copy 2010 by the author(s) Published here under license by the Resilience AllianceFolke C S R Carpenter B Walker M Scheffer T Chapin and J Rockstroumlm 2010 Resilience thinkingintegrating resilience adaptability and transformability Ecology and Society 15(4) 20 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
InsightResilience Thinking Integrating Resilience Adaptability andTransformability
Carl Folke 12 Stephen R Carpenter 3 Brian Walker 14 Marten Scheffer 5 Terry Chapin 6 and Johan Rockstroumlm 17
ABSTRACT Resilience thinking addresses the dynamics and development of complex socialndashecologicalsystems (SES) Three aspects are central resilience adaptability and transformability These aspectsinterrelate across multiple scales Resilience in this context is the capacity of a SES to continually changeand adapt yet remain within critical thresholds Adaptability is part of resilience It represents the capacityto adjust responses to changing external drivers and internal processes and thereby allow for developmentalong the current trajectory (stability domain) Transformability is the capacity to cross thresholds into newdevelopment trajectories Transformational change at smaller scales enables resilience at larger scales Thecapacity to transform at smaller scales draws on resilience from multiple scales making use of crises aswindows of opportunity for novelty and innovation and recombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions Society must seriously consider ways to foster resilience of smallermore manageable SESs that contribute to Earth System resilience and to explore options for deliberatetransformation of SESs that threaten Earth System resilience
Key Words adaptability adaptation resilience social-ecological systems transformabilitytransformation
INTRODUCTION
One of the most cited papers in Ecology and Society was written to exposit the relationships amongresilience adaptability and transformability(Walker et al 2004) That paper defined resilienceas ldquothe capacity of a system to absorb disturbanceand reorganize while undergoing change so as tostill retain essentially the same function structureidentity and feedbacksrdquo (Walker et al 20044)
Discussions since publication of that paper haveexposed some confusion about the use of the termresilience The idea that adaptation andtransformation may be essential to maintainresilience may at first glance seem counterintuitiveas it embraces change as a requisite to persist Yetthe very dynamics between periods of abrupt andgradual change and the capacity to adapt andtransform for persistence are at the core of theresilience of socialndashecological systems (SESs) We
therefore strive to develop a theoretical frameworkfor understanding what drives SESs centeredaround the idea of resilience We term thisframework resilience thinking Here we rephrasethe three core elements of resilience thinking toembrace these ideas
RESILIENCE THE HISTORY OF ACONCEPT
Resilience was originally introduced by Holling(1973) as a concept to help understand the capacityof ecosystems with alternative attractors to persistin the original state subject to perturbations asreviewed by eg Gunderson (2000) Folke (2006)and Scheffer (2009) In some fields the termresilience has been technically used in a narrowsense to refer to the return rate to equilibrium upona perturbation (called engineering resilience byHolling in 1996) However many complex systems
1Stockholm Resilience Centre Stockholm University 2Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 3Center forLimnology University of Wisconsin 4CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems 5Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group Wageningen AgriculturalUniversity 6Institute of Arctic Biology University of Alaska Fairbanks 7Stockholm Environment Institute
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
have multiple attractors This implies that aperturbation can bring the system over a thresholdthat marks the limit of the basin of attraction orstability domain of the original state causing thesystem to be attracted to a contrasting state This isqualitatively different from returning to the originalstate and Hollingrsquos (1996) definition of ecologicalor ecosystem resilience has been instrumental toemphasize this difference
The concept of alternative stable states with clear-cut basins of attraction is a highly simplified imageof reality in ecosystems Attractors may be stablepoints or more complicated cycles of various kindsIntrinsic tendencies to produce cyclic or chaoticdynamics are blended in intricate ways with theeffects of environmental stochasticity and withtrends that cause thresholds as well as the nature ofattractors to change over time Nonetheless weobserve sharp shifts in ecosystems that stand out ofthe blur of fluctuations around trends Such shiftsare called regime shifts and may have differentcauses (Scheffer et al 2001 Carpenter 2003) Whenthey correspond to a shift between different stabilitydomains they are referred to as critical transitions(Scheffer 2009) All of these concepts have precisedefinitions in the mathematics of dynamical systems(Kuznetsov 1998 Scheffer 2009)
However despite their elegance and rigor theycapture only part of reality One of the mainlimitations of the dynamical systems theory thatforms the broader underlying framework is that itdoes not easily account for the fact that the verynature of systems may change over time (Scheffer2009) This implies that in order to understand thedynamics of an intertwined socialndashecologicalsystem (SES) other concepts are needed
In many disciplines human actions are often viewedas external drivers of ecosystem dynamicsexamples include fishing water harvesting andpolluting Through such a lens the manager is anexternal intervener in ecosystem resilience Thereare those who suggest constraining the use of theresilience concept to ecosystem resilience forconceptual clarity as the basis for practicalapplication of resilience within ecological scienceand ecosystem management (eg Brand and Jax2007) However many of the serious recurringproblems in natural resource use and managementstem precisely from the lack of recognition thatecosystems and the social systems that use anddepend on them are inextricably linked It is the
feedback loops among them as interdependentsocialndashecological systems that determine theiroverall dynamics
ADAPTABILITY ANDTRANSFORMABILITY ASPREREQUISITES FOR SES RESILIENCE
Socialndashecological resilience is about people andnature as interdependent systems This is true forlocal communities and their surrounding ecosystemsbut the great acceleration of human activities onearth now also makes it an issue at global scales(Steffen et al 2007) making it difficult and evenirrational to continue to separate the ecological andsocial and to try to explain them independently evenfor analytical purposes To put the issue in contextice core data reveal that humanity has for the last10000 years lived in a relatively stable climate anera referred to as the Holocene This era has allowedagriculture and all major human civilizations todevelop and flourish The future of human well-being may be seriously compromised if we shouldpass a critical threshold that tips the earth systemout of this stability domain (Rockstroumlm et al 2009)It is plausible that current development paradigmsand patterns if continued would tip the integratedhumanndashearth system into a radically different basinof attraction (Steffen et al 2007) Preventing suchan undesired critical transition will requireinnovation and novelty Profound change in societyis likely to be required for persistence in theHolocene stability domain Alas resilience ofbehavioral patterns in society is notoriously largeand a serious impediment for preventing loss ofEarth System resilience SES resilience thatcontributes to Earth System resilience is needed toremain in the Holocene state
It should be immediately clear from this examplethat social change is essential for SES resilienceThis is why we incorporate adaptability and themore radical concept of transformability as keyingredients of resilience thinking (Table 1)
Adaptability captures the capacity of a SES to learncombine experience and knowledge adjust itsresponses to changing external drivers and internalprocesses and continue developing within thecurrent stability domain or basin of attraction(Berkes et al 2003) Adaptability has been definedas ldquothe capacity of actors in a system to influenceresiliencerdquo (Walker et al 20045) Thus adaptive
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Table 1 Glossary of resilience terms
Term Definition
Active transformation The deliberate initiation of a phased introduction of one or more new state variables (a new wayof making a living) at lower scales while maintaining the resilience of the system at higherscales as transformational change proceeds
Adaptability (adaptivecapacity)
The capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience
Adaptive cycle A heuristic model that portrays an endogenously driven four-phase cycle of social-ecologicalsystems and other complex adaptive systems The common trajectory is from a phase of rapidgrowth where resources are freely available and there is high resilience (r phase) throughcapital accumulation into a gradually rigidifying phase where most resources are locked up andthere is little flexibility or novelty and low resilience (K phase) thence via a sudden collapseinto a release phase of chaotic dynamics in which relationships and structures are undone (Ω)into a phase of re-organization where novelty can prevail (α) The r-K dynamics reflect a more-or-less predictable relatively slow ldquoforelooprdquo and the Ω - α dynamics represent a chaotic fastldquobacklooprdquo that strongly influences the nature of the next foreloop External or higher-scaleinfluences can cause a move from any phase to any other phase
Forced transformation An imposed transformation of a socialndashecological system that is not introduced deliberately bythe actors
General resilience The resilience of any and all parts of a system to all kinds of shocks including novel ones
Panarchy The interactive dynamics of a nested set of adaptive cycles
Regime The set of system states within a stability landscape
Regime shift A change in a system state from one regime or stability domain to another
Resilience The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so asto still retain essentially the same function structure and feedbacks and therefore identity thatis the capacity to change in order to maintain the same identity
Socialndashecological system Integrated system of ecosystems and human society with reciprocal feedback andinterdependence The concept emphasizes the humans-in-nature perspective
Specified resilience The resilience ldquoof what to whatrdquo resilience of some particular part of a system related to aparticular control variable to one or more identified kinds of shocks
Stability domain A basin of attraction of a system in which the dimensions are defined by the set of controllingvariables that have threshold levels (equivalent to a system regime)
Stability landscape The extent of the possible states of system space defined by the set of control variables inwhich stability domains are embedded
Threshold (aka criticaltransition)
A level or amount of a controlling often slowly changing variable in which a change occurs ina critical feedback causing the system to self-organize along a different trajectory that istowards a different attractor
Transformability The capacity to transform the stability landscape itself in order to become a different kind ofsystem to create a fundamentally new system when ecological economic or social structuresmake the existing system untenable
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
capacity maintains certain processes despitechanging internal demands and external forces onthe SES (Carpenter and Brock 2008) By contrasttransformability has been defined as ldquothe capacityto create a fundamentally new system whenecological economic or social structures make theexisting system untenablerdquo (Walker et al 20045)
Extending the use of resilience to socialndashecologicalsystems makes it possible to explicitly deal withissues raised by Holling (1986) about renewalnovelty innovation and reorganization in systemdevelopment and how they interact across scales(Gunderson and Holling 2002) This is an excitingarea of explorative work broadening the scope fromadaptive management of ecosystem feedbacks tounderstanding and accounting for the socialdimension that creates barriers or bridges forecosystem stewardship of dynamic landscapes andseascapes in times of change (Gunderson et al1995) Are there deeper slower variables in socialsystems such as identity core values andworldviews that constrain adaptability In additionwhat are the features of agency actor groups sociallearning networks organizations institutionsgovernance structures incentives political andpower relations or ethics that enhance or underminesocialndashecological resilience (Folke et al 2005Chapin et al 2006 Smith and Stirling 2010) Howcan we assess socialndashecological thresholds andregime shifts and what governance challenges dothey imply (Norberg and Cumming 2008 Biggs etal 2009)
Similarly it helps to broaden the social domain frominvestigating human action in relation to a certainnatural resource like dairy or fruit production orenvironmental issue like climate change to thechallenge of multilevel collaborative societalresponses to a broader set of feedbacks andthresholds in socialndashecological systems (Chapin etal 2009) For example governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment in the Murray DarlingBasin Australia has had to solve problems adaptingto change while continuing to develop connectingthe region to global markets Dryland croppinggrazing irrigated dairy and fruit production iswidespread and the catchment produces one quarterof the State of Victorias export earnings (Walker etal 2009) At a first glance economically lucrativeactivities seem to be thriving But if the analysis isbroadened to a socialndashecological approach toaccount for the capacity of the landscape in
sustaining the values of the region the picture looksquite different Widespread clearing of nativevegetation and high levels of water use for irrigationhave resulted in rising water tables creating severesalinization problems so severe that the regionfaces serious socialndashecological thresholds withpossible knock-on effects between them Crossingsuch thresholds may result in irreversible changesin the region (Walker et al 2009) Hence strategiesfor adaptability that are socially desirable may leadto vulnerable socialndashecological systems andpersistent undesirable states such as poverty trapsor rigidity traps (Scheffer 2009) Will theadaptability among people and governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment be sufficient to dealwith environmental change like salinization andinteracting thresholds and avoid being pushed intoa poverty trap or does the socialndashecological systemneed to transform into a new stability landscapeforcing people to change deep values and identity(Walker et al 2009)
SPECIFIED AND GENERAL RESILIENCE
In practice resilience is sometimes applied toproblems relating to particular aspects of a systemthat might arise from a particular set of sources orshocks We refer to this as specified resilience Inother cases the manager is concerned more aboutresilience to all kinds of shocks includingcompletely novel ones We refer to this as generalresilience
In socialndashecological systems specified resiliencearises in response to the question ldquoresilience of whatto whatrdquo (Carpenter et al 2001) However thereis a danger in becoming too focused on specifiedresilience because increasing resilience of particularparts of a system to specific disturbances may causethe system to lose resilience in other ways (Cifdalozet al 2010) This is illustrated by the HOT (highlyoptimized tolerance) theory (Carson and Doyle2000) which shows how systems that become veryrobust to frequent kinds of disturbance necessarilybecome fragile in relation to infrequent kinds Forexample international travel in Europe becameincreasingly focused on improving and elaboratingair travel with less emphasis on internationalground and water transportation The Icelandicvolcano of 2010 exposed the low resilience of thistravel system to an extensive cloud of airborne ashthat interfered with the operation of passenger jets
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
General resilience in contrast does not define eitherthe part of the system that might cross a thresholdor the kinds of shocks the system has to endure Itis about coping with uncertainty in all ways Thedistinction is important because our experience inworking with groups who are interested in using aresilience approach suggests that they tend to focuson specified resilience and in doing so they may benarrowing options for dealing with novel shocks andeven increasing the likelihood of new kinds ofinstability Recognizing that efforts to fosterspecified resilience will not necessarily avoid aregime shift is a first step to understanding the needfor transformational change Getting beyond thestate of denial particularly in SESs with strongidentity or cultural beliefs is not easy and oftenrequires a shock or at least a perceived crisisResilience thinking suggests that such events mayopen up opportunities for reevaluating the currentsituation trigger social mobilization recombinesources of experience and knowledge for learningand spark novelty and innovation It may lead tonew kinds of adaptability or possibly totransformational change
MULTISCALE RESILIENCE ANDTRANSFORMABILITY
As defined in Walker et al (2004) transformationalchange involves a change in the nature of thestability landscape introducing new defining statevariables and losing others as when a householdadopts a new direction in making a living or whena region moves from an agrarian to a resource-extraction economy It can be a deliberate processinitiated by the people involved or it can be forcedon them by changing environmental orsocioeconomic conditions Whether transformationis deliberate or forced depends on the level oftransformability in the SES concerned
The attributes of transformability have much incommon with those of general resilience includinghigh levels of all forms of capital diversity inlandscapes and seascapes and of institutions actorgroups and networks learning platforms collectiveaction and support from higher scales in thegovernance structure Transformational changeoften involves shifts in perception and meaningsocial network configurations patterns ofinteractions among actors including leadership andpolitical and power relations and associatedorganizational and institutional arrangements (eg
Folke et al 2009 Huitema and Meijerink 2009Smith and Stirling 2010)
Deliberate transformational change can be initiatedat multiple scales and perhaps gradually assuggested by recent experience with applyingresilience thinking to catchment planning andmanagement in SE Australia (Walker et al 2009)Deliberate transformational change at the scale ofthe whole catchment of all the component parts atthe same time is likely to be too costly undesirableor socially unacceptable Transformational changesat lower scales in a sequential way can lead tofeedback effects at the catchment scale which is alearning process and facilitate eventual catchment-scale transformational change Actors andorganizations that bridge the local to higher socialndashecological scales are often involved in suchprocesses (Olsson et al 2004)
Forced transformation however is likely to occurat scales larger than the scale of the managementfocus and therefore be beyond the influence of localactors Changes in regional tax structures forexample may precipitate transformations fromfarming to suburbanization Loss of summer sea icemay transform the geopolitical and economicfeedbacks among Arctic nations Systems with hightransformative capacity may deliberately initiatetransformational changes that shape the outcomesof forced transformations occurring at larger scales
Transformation trajectories are the subject of agrowing literature (Gunderson and Holling 2002Buchanan et al 2005 Geels and Kemp 2006 Chapinet al 2010) A resilience perspective emphasizes anadaptive approach facilitating different transformativeexperiments at small scales and allowing cross-learning and new initiatives to emerge constrainedonly by avoiding trajectories that the SES does notwish to follow especially those with known orsuspected thresholds The first part of this processis much the same as that proposed in the socio-technical transitions literature which encouragesarenas for safe experimentation (eg Loorbach2007 Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009)However where the transition model thendetermines the new goal and adopts a particularprocess for reaching it a resilience approach wouldallow the new identity of the SES to emerge throughinteractions within and across scales
For example declining agricultural productivity inseveral Latin American countries due to land
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
degradation reached an unsustainable level in the1970s This breakdown prompted some farmers tostart experimenting with unconventional methodsfor land management in particular low-tillalternatives to plowing that enhanced soil organicmatter and fertility (Derpsch and Friedrich 2009)Responses to the land productivity crisis andsubsequent social crisis of deteriorated livelihoodswere first pursued by individual farmers andresearchers in Brazil Paraguay and ArgentinaExperimentation with new innovative breakthroughsin technologies were necessary as the shift fromthen-dominant methods to no-tillage required majorchanges in land management practices such asweed management mulch-farming and greenmanuring techniques as well as new machines fordirect planting The experimental learning approachat small scales with processes for emergence andcross-scale learning caused a transformation of thewhole farming system Currently more than 25million ha of agricultural land is under no-tillage inBrazil alone and in Latin America the transitionfrom conventional plow-based agriculture to no-tillsystems has reached a scale where one can talk ofan agrarian revolution or a socialndashecologicaltransformation (Fowler and Rockstroumlm 2001)
Case studies of SESs suggest that transformationsconsist of three phases being prepared for or evenpreparing the socialndashecological systems for changenavigating the transition by making use of a crisisas a window of opportunity for change and buildingresilience of the new socialndashecological regime(Olsson et al 2004 Chapin et al 2010) Suchtransformations are never scale-independent butdraw on socialndashecological sources of resilienceacross scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002) Forexample at the Great Barrier Reef a governancetransformation across multiple levels of naturalresource management took place from protection ofselected individual reefs to stewardship of the large-scale seascape The transformation was triggered bya sense of urgency induced by threats to the reef ofterrestrial runoff overharvesting and globalwarming The Great Barrier Reef Marine ParkAuthority was crucial in the transformation andprovided leadership throughout the processStrategies involved internal reorganization andmanagement innovation leading to an ability tocoordinate the scientific community to increasepublic awareness of environmental issues andproblems to involve a broader set of stakeholders
and to maneuver the political system for support atcritical times (Olsson et al 2008)
Multiscale resilience is fundamental for understandingthe interplay between persistence and changeadaptability and transformability Without the scaledimension resilience and transformation may seemto be in stark contrast or even conflict Confusionarises when resilience is interpreted as backwardlooking assumed to prevent novelty innovation andtransitions to new development pathways Thisinterpretation seems to be more about robustness tochange and not about resilience for transformation
The resilience framework broadens the descriptionof resilience beyond its meaning as a buffer forconserving what you have and recovering to whatyou were Beyond this concept of persistenceresilience thinking incorporates the dynamicinterplay of persistence adaptability and transformabilityacross multiple scales and multiple attractors inSESs Fruitful avenues of inquiry include theexistence of potential thresholds and regime shiftsin SESs and the challenges that this impliesadaptability of SESs to deal with such challengesincluding uncertainty and surprise and the abilityto steer away from undesirable attractors innovateand possibly transform SESs into trajectories thatsustain and enhance ecosystem services societaldevelopment and human well-being
CONCLUSIONS
In a nutshell resilience thinking focuses on threeaspects of socialndashecological systems (SES)resilience as persistence adaptability andtransformability Resilience is the tendency of a SESsubject to change to remain within a stabilitydomain continually changing and adapting yetremaining within critical thresholds Adaptability isa part of resilience Adaptability is the capacity ofa SES to adjust its responses to changing externaldrivers and internal processes and thereby allow fordevelopment within the current stability domainalong the current trajectory Transformability is thecapacity to create new stability domains fordevelopment a new stability landscape and crossthresholds into a new development trajectoryDeliberate transformation requires resiliencethinking first in assessing the relative merits of thecurrent versus alternative potentially more
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
favorable stability domains and second in fosteringresilience of the new development trajectory thenew basin of attraction
Transformations do not take place in a vacuum butdraw on resilience from multiple scales making useof crises as windows of opportunity andrecombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions from aregime in one stability landscape to anotherTransformation involves novelty and innovationTransformational change at smaller scales enablesresilience at larger scales while the capacity totransform at smaller scales draws on resilience atother scales Thus deliberate transformationinvolves breaking down the resilience of the old andbuilding the resilience of the new As the EarthSystem approaches or exceeds thresholds that mightprecipitate a forced transformation to some stateoutside its Holocene stability domain society mustseriously consider ways to foster more flexiblesystems that contribute to Earth System resilienceand to explore options for the deliberatetransformation of systems that threaten EarthSystem resilience
Responses to this article can be read online athttpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20responses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the volcanic eruption at theEyjafjalla Glacier Iceland for extending the stay inStockholm of some of the co-authors and enablingthe completion of the paper Support for the work tothe Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BeijerInstitute was provided by Mistra Formas and Kjelland Maumlrta Beijer Foundation
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Berkes F J Colding and C Folke editors2003 Navigating socialndashecological systemsbuilding resilience for complexity and change Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK
Biggs R SR Carpenter and WA Brock 2009Turning back from the brink detecting an
impending regime shift in time to avert itProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America 106826-831
Brand FS and K Jax 2007 Focusing themeaning(s) of resilience resilience as a descriptiveconcept and a boundary object Ecology andSociety 12(1)23 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol12iss1art23
Buchanan D L Fitzgerald D Ketley RGollop JL Jones SSaint Lamont A Neathand E Whitby 2005 No going back a review ofthe literature on sustaining organizational changeInternational Journal of Management Reviews 7189ndash205
Carpenter SR 2003 Regime shifts in lakeecosystems pattern and variation EcologyInstitute OldendorfLuhe Germany
Carpenter SR and WA Brock 2008 Adaptivecapacity and traps Ecology and Society 13(2)40[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol13iss2art40
Carpenter SR BH Walker JM Anderies andN Abel 2001 From metaphor to measurementresilience of what to what Ecosystems 4765-781
Carson J and J Doyle 2000 Highly optimizedtolerance robustness and design in complexsystems Physical Review Letters 84(11)2529-2532
Chapin III FS SR Carpenter G P KofinasC Folke N Abel WC Clark P Olsson DMStafford Smith BH Walker OR Young FBerkes R Biggs JM Grove RL Naylor EPinkerton W Steffen and FJ Swanson 2010Ecosystem stewardship sustainability strategies fora rapidly changing planet Trends in Ecology andEvolution 25241-249
Chapin III FS GP Kofinas and C Folkeeditors 2009 Principles of ecosystemstewardship resilience-based natural resourcemanagement in a changing world Springer NewYork New York USA
Chapin III FS AL Lovecraft ES ZavaletaJ Nelson MD Robards G P Kofinas SFTrainor GD Peterson HP Huntington and RL Naylor 2006 Policy strategies to addresssustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response
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to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
have multiple attractors This implies that aperturbation can bring the system over a thresholdthat marks the limit of the basin of attraction orstability domain of the original state causing thesystem to be attracted to a contrasting state This isqualitatively different from returning to the originalstate and Hollingrsquos (1996) definition of ecologicalor ecosystem resilience has been instrumental toemphasize this difference
The concept of alternative stable states with clear-cut basins of attraction is a highly simplified imageof reality in ecosystems Attractors may be stablepoints or more complicated cycles of various kindsIntrinsic tendencies to produce cyclic or chaoticdynamics are blended in intricate ways with theeffects of environmental stochasticity and withtrends that cause thresholds as well as the nature ofattractors to change over time Nonetheless weobserve sharp shifts in ecosystems that stand out ofthe blur of fluctuations around trends Such shiftsare called regime shifts and may have differentcauses (Scheffer et al 2001 Carpenter 2003) Whenthey correspond to a shift between different stabilitydomains they are referred to as critical transitions(Scheffer 2009) All of these concepts have precisedefinitions in the mathematics of dynamical systems(Kuznetsov 1998 Scheffer 2009)
However despite their elegance and rigor theycapture only part of reality One of the mainlimitations of the dynamical systems theory thatforms the broader underlying framework is that itdoes not easily account for the fact that the verynature of systems may change over time (Scheffer2009) This implies that in order to understand thedynamics of an intertwined socialndashecologicalsystem (SES) other concepts are needed
In many disciplines human actions are often viewedas external drivers of ecosystem dynamicsexamples include fishing water harvesting andpolluting Through such a lens the manager is anexternal intervener in ecosystem resilience Thereare those who suggest constraining the use of theresilience concept to ecosystem resilience forconceptual clarity as the basis for practicalapplication of resilience within ecological scienceand ecosystem management (eg Brand and Jax2007) However many of the serious recurringproblems in natural resource use and managementstem precisely from the lack of recognition thatecosystems and the social systems that use anddepend on them are inextricably linked It is the
feedback loops among them as interdependentsocialndashecological systems that determine theiroverall dynamics
ADAPTABILITY ANDTRANSFORMABILITY ASPREREQUISITES FOR SES RESILIENCE
Socialndashecological resilience is about people andnature as interdependent systems This is true forlocal communities and their surrounding ecosystemsbut the great acceleration of human activities onearth now also makes it an issue at global scales(Steffen et al 2007) making it difficult and evenirrational to continue to separate the ecological andsocial and to try to explain them independently evenfor analytical purposes To put the issue in contextice core data reveal that humanity has for the last10000 years lived in a relatively stable climate anera referred to as the Holocene This era has allowedagriculture and all major human civilizations todevelop and flourish The future of human well-being may be seriously compromised if we shouldpass a critical threshold that tips the earth systemout of this stability domain (Rockstroumlm et al 2009)It is plausible that current development paradigmsand patterns if continued would tip the integratedhumanndashearth system into a radically different basinof attraction (Steffen et al 2007) Preventing suchan undesired critical transition will requireinnovation and novelty Profound change in societyis likely to be required for persistence in theHolocene stability domain Alas resilience ofbehavioral patterns in society is notoriously largeand a serious impediment for preventing loss ofEarth System resilience SES resilience thatcontributes to Earth System resilience is needed toremain in the Holocene state
It should be immediately clear from this examplethat social change is essential for SES resilienceThis is why we incorporate adaptability and themore radical concept of transformability as keyingredients of resilience thinking (Table 1)
Adaptability captures the capacity of a SES to learncombine experience and knowledge adjust itsresponses to changing external drivers and internalprocesses and continue developing within thecurrent stability domain or basin of attraction(Berkes et al 2003) Adaptability has been definedas ldquothe capacity of actors in a system to influenceresiliencerdquo (Walker et al 20045) Thus adaptive
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Table 1 Glossary of resilience terms
Term Definition
Active transformation The deliberate initiation of a phased introduction of one or more new state variables (a new wayof making a living) at lower scales while maintaining the resilience of the system at higherscales as transformational change proceeds
Adaptability (adaptivecapacity)
The capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience
Adaptive cycle A heuristic model that portrays an endogenously driven four-phase cycle of social-ecologicalsystems and other complex adaptive systems The common trajectory is from a phase of rapidgrowth where resources are freely available and there is high resilience (r phase) throughcapital accumulation into a gradually rigidifying phase where most resources are locked up andthere is little flexibility or novelty and low resilience (K phase) thence via a sudden collapseinto a release phase of chaotic dynamics in which relationships and structures are undone (Ω)into a phase of re-organization where novelty can prevail (α) The r-K dynamics reflect a more-or-less predictable relatively slow ldquoforelooprdquo and the Ω - α dynamics represent a chaotic fastldquobacklooprdquo that strongly influences the nature of the next foreloop External or higher-scaleinfluences can cause a move from any phase to any other phase
Forced transformation An imposed transformation of a socialndashecological system that is not introduced deliberately bythe actors
General resilience The resilience of any and all parts of a system to all kinds of shocks including novel ones
Panarchy The interactive dynamics of a nested set of adaptive cycles
Regime The set of system states within a stability landscape
Regime shift A change in a system state from one regime or stability domain to another
Resilience The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so asto still retain essentially the same function structure and feedbacks and therefore identity thatis the capacity to change in order to maintain the same identity
Socialndashecological system Integrated system of ecosystems and human society with reciprocal feedback andinterdependence The concept emphasizes the humans-in-nature perspective
Specified resilience The resilience ldquoof what to whatrdquo resilience of some particular part of a system related to aparticular control variable to one or more identified kinds of shocks
Stability domain A basin of attraction of a system in which the dimensions are defined by the set of controllingvariables that have threshold levels (equivalent to a system regime)
Stability landscape The extent of the possible states of system space defined by the set of control variables inwhich stability domains are embedded
Threshold (aka criticaltransition)
A level or amount of a controlling often slowly changing variable in which a change occurs ina critical feedback causing the system to self-organize along a different trajectory that istowards a different attractor
Transformability The capacity to transform the stability landscape itself in order to become a different kind ofsystem to create a fundamentally new system when ecological economic or social structuresmake the existing system untenable
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
capacity maintains certain processes despitechanging internal demands and external forces onthe SES (Carpenter and Brock 2008) By contrasttransformability has been defined as ldquothe capacityto create a fundamentally new system whenecological economic or social structures make theexisting system untenablerdquo (Walker et al 20045)
Extending the use of resilience to socialndashecologicalsystems makes it possible to explicitly deal withissues raised by Holling (1986) about renewalnovelty innovation and reorganization in systemdevelopment and how they interact across scales(Gunderson and Holling 2002) This is an excitingarea of explorative work broadening the scope fromadaptive management of ecosystem feedbacks tounderstanding and accounting for the socialdimension that creates barriers or bridges forecosystem stewardship of dynamic landscapes andseascapes in times of change (Gunderson et al1995) Are there deeper slower variables in socialsystems such as identity core values andworldviews that constrain adaptability In additionwhat are the features of agency actor groups sociallearning networks organizations institutionsgovernance structures incentives political andpower relations or ethics that enhance or underminesocialndashecological resilience (Folke et al 2005Chapin et al 2006 Smith and Stirling 2010) Howcan we assess socialndashecological thresholds andregime shifts and what governance challenges dothey imply (Norberg and Cumming 2008 Biggs etal 2009)
Similarly it helps to broaden the social domain frominvestigating human action in relation to a certainnatural resource like dairy or fruit production orenvironmental issue like climate change to thechallenge of multilevel collaborative societalresponses to a broader set of feedbacks andthresholds in socialndashecological systems (Chapin etal 2009) For example governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment in the Murray DarlingBasin Australia has had to solve problems adaptingto change while continuing to develop connectingthe region to global markets Dryland croppinggrazing irrigated dairy and fruit production iswidespread and the catchment produces one quarterof the State of Victorias export earnings (Walker etal 2009) At a first glance economically lucrativeactivities seem to be thriving But if the analysis isbroadened to a socialndashecological approach toaccount for the capacity of the landscape in
sustaining the values of the region the picture looksquite different Widespread clearing of nativevegetation and high levels of water use for irrigationhave resulted in rising water tables creating severesalinization problems so severe that the regionfaces serious socialndashecological thresholds withpossible knock-on effects between them Crossingsuch thresholds may result in irreversible changesin the region (Walker et al 2009) Hence strategiesfor adaptability that are socially desirable may leadto vulnerable socialndashecological systems andpersistent undesirable states such as poverty trapsor rigidity traps (Scheffer 2009) Will theadaptability among people and governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment be sufficient to dealwith environmental change like salinization andinteracting thresholds and avoid being pushed intoa poverty trap or does the socialndashecological systemneed to transform into a new stability landscapeforcing people to change deep values and identity(Walker et al 2009)
SPECIFIED AND GENERAL RESILIENCE
In practice resilience is sometimes applied toproblems relating to particular aspects of a systemthat might arise from a particular set of sources orshocks We refer to this as specified resilience Inother cases the manager is concerned more aboutresilience to all kinds of shocks includingcompletely novel ones We refer to this as generalresilience
In socialndashecological systems specified resiliencearises in response to the question ldquoresilience of whatto whatrdquo (Carpenter et al 2001) However thereis a danger in becoming too focused on specifiedresilience because increasing resilience of particularparts of a system to specific disturbances may causethe system to lose resilience in other ways (Cifdalozet al 2010) This is illustrated by the HOT (highlyoptimized tolerance) theory (Carson and Doyle2000) which shows how systems that become veryrobust to frequent kinds of disturbance necessarilybecome fragile in relation to infrequent kinds Forexample international travel in Europe becameincreasingly focused on improving and elaboratingair travel with less emphasis on internationalground and water transportation The Icelandicvolcano of 2010 exposed the low resilience of thistravel system to an extensive cloud of airborne ashthat interfered with the operation of passenger jets
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
General resilience in contrast does not define eitherthe part of the system that might cross a thresholdor the kinds of shocks the system has to endure Itis about coping with uncertainty in all ways Thedistinction is important because our experience inworking with groups who are interested in using aresilience approach suggests that they tend to focuson specified resilience and in doing so they may benarrowing options for dealing with novel shocks andeven increasing the likelihood of new kinds ofinstability Recognizing that efforts to fosterspecified resilience will not necessarily avoid aregime shift is a first step to understanding the needfor transformational change Getting beyond thestate of denial particularly in SESs with strongidentity or cultural beliefs is not easy and oftenrequires a shock or at least a perceived crisisResilience thinking suggests that such events mayopen up opportunities for reevaluating the currentsituation trigger social mobilization recombinesources of experience and knowledge for learningand spark novelty and innovation It may lead tonew kinds of adaptability or possibly totransformational change
MULTISCALE RESILIENCE ANDTRANSFORMABILITY
As defined in Walker et al (2004) transformationalchange involves a change in the nature of thestability landscape introducing new defining statevariables and losing others as when a householdadopts a new direction in making a living or whena region moves from an agrarian to a resource-extraction economy It can be a deliberate processinitiated by the people involved or it can be forcedon them by changing environmental orsocioeconomic conditions Whether transformationis deliberate or forced depends on the level oftransformability in the SES concerned
The attributes of transformability have much incommon with those of general resilience includinghigh levels of all forms of capital diversity inlandscapes and seascapes and of institutions actorgroups and networks learning platforms collectiveaction and support from higher scales in thegovernance structure Transformational changeoften involves shifts in perception and meaningsocial network configurations patterns ofinteractions among actors including leadership andpolitical and power relations and associatedorganizational and institutional arrangements (eg
Folke et al 2009 Huitema and Meijerink 2009Smith and Stirling 2010)
Deliberate transformational change can be initiatedat multiple scales and perhaps gradually assuggested by recent experience with applyingresilience thinking to catchment planning andmanagement in SE Australia (Walker et al 2009)Deliberate transformational change at the scale ofthe whole catchment of all the component parts atthe same time is likely to be too costly undesirableor socially unacceptable Transformational changesat lower scales in a sequential way can lead tofeedback effects at the catchment scale which is alearning process and facilitate eventual catchment-scale transformational change Actors andorganizations that bridge the local to higher socialndashecological scales are often involved in suchprocesses (Olsson et al 2004)
Forced transformation however is likely to occurat scales larger than the scale of the managementfocus and therefore be beyond the influence of localactors Changes in regional tax structures forexample may precipitate transformations fromfarming to suburbanization Loss of summer sea icemay transform the geopolitical and economicfeedbacks among Arctic nations Systems with hightransformative capacity may deliberately initiatetransformational changes that shape the outcomesof forced transformations occurring at larger scales
Transformation trajectories are the subject of agrowing literature (Gunderson and Holling 2002Buchanan et al 2005 Geels and Kemp 2006 Chapinet al 2010) A resilience perspective emphasizes anadaptive approach facilitating different transformativeexperiments at small scales and allowing cross-learning and new initiatives to emerge constrainedonly by avoiding trajectories that the SES does notwish to follow especially those with known orsuspected thresholds The first part of this processis much the same as that proposed in the socio-technical transitions literature which encouragesarenas for safe experimentation (eg Loorbach2007 Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009)However where the transition model thendetermines the new goal and adopts a particularprocess for reaching it a resilience approach wouldallow the new identity of the SES to emerge throughinteractions within and across scales
For example declining agricultural productivity inseveral Latin American countries due to land
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
degradation reached an unsustainable level in the1970s This breakdown prompted some farmers tostart experimenting with unconventional methodsfor land management in particular low-tillalternatives to plowing that enhanced soil organicmatter and fertility (Derpsch and Friedrich 2009)Responses to the land productivity crisis andsubsequent social crisis of deteriorated livelihoodswere first pursued by individual farmers andresearchers in Brazil Paraguay and ArgentinaExperimentation with new innovative breakthroughsin technologies were necessary as the shift fromthen-dominant methods to no-tillage required majorchanges in land management practices such asweed management mulch-farming and greenmanuring techniques as well as new machines fordirect planting The experimental learning approachat small scales with processes for emergence andcross-scale learning caused a transformation of thewhole farming system Currently more than 25million ha of agricultural land is under no-tillage inBrazil alone and in Latin America the transitionfrom conventional plow-based agriculture to no-tillsystems has reached a scale where one can talk ofan agrarian revolution or a socialndashecologicaltransformation (Fowler and Rockstroumlm 2001)
Case studies of SESs suggest that transformationsconsist of three phases being prepared for or evenpreparing the socialndashecological systems for changenavigating the transition by making use of a crisisas a window of opportunity for change and buildingresilience of the new socialndashecological regime(Olsson et al 2004 Chapin et al 2010) Suchtransformations are never scale-independent butdraw on socialndashecological sources of resilienceacross scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002) Forexample at the Great Barrier Reef a governancetransformation across multiple levels of naturalresource management took place from protection ofselected individual reefs to stewardship of the large-scale seascape The transformation was triggered bya sense of urgency induced by threats to the reef ofterrestrial runoff overharvesting and globalwarming The Great Barrier Reef Marine ParkAuthority was crucial in the transformation andprovided leadership throughout the processStrategies involved internal reorganization andmanagement innovation leading to an ability tocoordinate the scientific community to increasepublic awareness of environmental issues andproblems to involve a broader set of stakeholders
and to maneuver the political system for support atcritical times (Olsson et al 2008)
Multiscale resilience is fundamental for understandingthe interplay between persistence and changeadaptability and transformability Without the scaledimension resilience and transformation may seemto be in stark contrast or even conflict Confusionarises when resilience is interpreted as backwardlooking assumed to prevent novelty innovation andtransitions to new development pathways Thisinterpretation seems to be more about robustness tochange and not about resilience for transformation
The resilience framework broadens the descriptionof resilience beyond its meaning as a buffer forconserving what you have and recovering to whatyou were Beyond this concept of persistenceresilience thinking incorporates the dynamicinterplay of persistence adaptability and transformabilityacross multiple scales and multiple attractors inSESs Fruitful avenues of inquiry include theexistence of potential thresholds and regime shiftsin SESs and the challenges that this impliesadaptability of SESs to deal with such challengesincluding uncertainty and surprise and the abilityto steer away from undesirable attractors innovateand possibly transform SESs into trajectories thatsustain and enhance ecosystem services societaldevelopment and human well-being
CONCLUSIONS
In a nutshell resilience thinking focuses on threeaspects of socialndashecological systems (SES)resilience as persistence adaptability andtransformability Resilience is the tendency of a SESsubject to change to remain within a stabilitydomain continually changing and adapting yetremaining within critical thresholds Adaptability isa part of resilience Adaptability is the capacity ofa SES to adjust its responses to changing externaldrivers and internal processes and thereby allow fordevelopment within the current stability domainalong the current trajectory Transformability is thecapacity to create new stability domains fordevelopment a new stability landscape and crossthresholds into a new development trajectoryDeliberate transformation requires resiliencethinking first in assessing the relative merits of thecurrent versus alternative potentially more
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
favorable stability domains and second in fosteringresilience of the new development trajectory thenew basin of attraction
Transformations do not take place in a vacuum butdraw on resilience from multiple scales making useof crises as windows of opportunity andrecombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions from aregime in one stability landscape to anotherTransformation involves novelty and innovationTransformational change at smaller scales enablesresilience at larger scales while the capacity totransform at smaller scales draws on resilience atother scales Thus deliberate transformationinvolves breaking down the resilience of the old andbuilding the resilience of the new As the EarthSystem approaches or exceeds thresholds that mightprecipitate a forced transformation to some stateoutside its Holocene stability domain society mustseriously consider ways to foster more flexiblesystems that contribute to Earth System resilienceand to explore options for the deliberatetransformation of systems that threaten EarthSystem resilience
Responses to this article can be read online athttpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20responses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the volcanic eruption at theEyjafjalla Glacier Iceland for extending the stay inStockholm of some of the co-authors and enablingthe completion of the paper Support for the work tothe Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BeijerInstitute was provided by Mistra Formas and Kjelland Maumlrta Beijer Foundation
LITERATURE CITED
Berkes F J Colding and C Folke editors2003 Navigating socialndashecological systemsbuilding resilience for complexity and change Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK
Biggs R SR Carpenter and WA Brock 2009Turning back from the brink detecting an
impending regime shift in time to avert itProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America 106826-831
Brand FS and K Jax 2007 Focusing themeaning(s) of resilience resilience as a descriptiveconcept and a boundary object Ecology andSociety 12(1)23 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol12iss1art23
Buchanan D L Fitzgerald D Ketley RGollop JL Jones SSaint Lamont A Neathand E Whitby 2005 No going back a review ofthe literature on sustaining organizational changeInternational Journal of Management Reviews 7189ndash205
Carpenter SR 2003 Regime shifts in lakeecosystems pattern and variation EcologyInstitute OldendorfLuhe Germany
Carpenter SR and WA Brock 2008 Adaptivecapacity and traps Ecology and Society 13(2)40[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol13iss2art40
Carpenter SR BH Walker JM Anderies andN Abel 2001 From metaphor to measurementresilience of what to what Ecosystems 4765-781
Carson J and J Doyle 2000 Highly optimizedtolerance robustness and design in complexsystems Physical Review Letters 84(11)2529-2532
Chapin III FS SR Carpenter G P KofinasC Folke N Abel WC Clark P Olsson DMStafford Smith BH Walker OR Young FBerkes R Biggs JM Grove RL Naylor EPinkerton W Steffen and FJ Swanson 2010Ecosystem stewardship sustainability strategies fora rapidly changing planet Trends in Ecology andEvolution 25241-249
Chapin III FS GP Kofinas and C Folkeeditors 2009 Principles of ecosystemstewardship resilience-based natural resourcemanagement in a changing world Springer NewYork New York USA
Chapin III FS AL Lovecraft ES ZavaletaJ Nelson MD Robards G P Kofinas SFTrainor GD Peterson HP Huntington and RL Naylor 2006 Policy strategies to addresssustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response
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to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Table 1 Glossary of resilience terms
Term Definition
Active transformation The deliberate initiation of a phased introduction of one or more new state variables (a new wayof making a living) at lower scales while maintaining the resilience of the system at higherscales as transformational change proceeds
Adaptability (adaptivecapacity)
The capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience
Adaptive cycle A heuristic model that portrays an endogenously driven four-phase cycle of social-ecologicalsystems and other complex adaptive systems The common trajectory is from a phase of rapidgrowth where resources are freely available and there is high resilience (r phase) throughcapital accumulation into a gradually rigidifying phase where most resources are locked up andthere is little flexibility or novelty and low resilience (K phase) thence via a sudden collapseinto a release phase of chaotic dynamics in which relationships and structures are undone (Ω)into a phase of re-organization where novelty can prevail (α) The r-K dynamics reflect a more-or-less predictable relatively slow ldquoforelooprdquo and the Ω - α dynamics represent a chaotic fastldquobacklooprdquo that strongly influences the nature of the next foreloop External or higher-scaleinfluences can cause a move from any phase to any other phase
Forced transformation An imposed transformation of a socialndashecological system that is not introduced deliberately bythe actors
General resilience The resilience of any and all parts of a system to all kinds of shocks including novel ones
Panarchy The interactive dynamics of a nested set of adaptive cycles
Regime The set of system states within a stability landscape
Regime shift A change in a system state from one regime or stability domain to another
Resilience The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so asto still retain essentially the same function structure and feedbacks and therefore identity thatis the capacity to change in order to maintain the same identity
Socialndashecological system Integrated system of ecosystems and human society with reciprocal feedback andinterdependence The concept emphasizes the humans-in-nature perspective
Specified resilience The resilience ldquoof what to whatrdquo resilience of some particular part of a system related to aparticular control variable to one or more identified kinds of shocks
Stability domain A basin of attraction of a system in which the dimensions are defined by the set of controllingvariables that have threshold levels (equivalent to a system regime)
Stability landscape The extent of the possible states of system space defined by the set of control variables inwhich stability domains are embedded
Threshold (aka criticaltransition)
A level or amount of a controlling often slowly changing variable in which a change occurs ina critical feedback causing the system to self-organize along a different trajectory that istowards a different attractor
Transformability The capacity to transform the stability landscape itself in order to become a different kind ofsystem to create a fundamentally new system when ecological economic or social structuresmake the existing system untenable
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
capacity maintains certain processes despitechanging internal demands and external forces onthe SES (Carpenter and Brock 2008) By contrasttransformability has been defined as ldquothe capacityto create a fundamentally new system whenecological economic or social structures make theexisting system untenablerdquo (Walker et al 20045)
Extending the use of resilience to socialndashecologicalsystems makes it possible to explicitly deal withissues raised by Holling (1986) about renewalnovelty innovation and reorganization in systemdevelopment and how they interact across scales(Gunderson and Holling 2002) This is an excitingarea of explorative work broadening the scope fromadaptive management of ecosystem feedbacks tounderstanding and accounting for the socialdimension that creates barriers or bridges forecosystem stewardship of dynamic landscapes andseascapes in times of change (Gunderson et al1995) Are there deeper slower variables in socialsystems such as identity core values andworldviews that constrain adaptability In additionwhat are the features of agency actor groups sociallearning networks organizations institutionsgovernance structures incentives political andpower relations or ethics that enhance or underminesocialndashecological resilience (Folke et al 2005Chapin et al 2006 Smith and Stirling 2010) Howcan we assess socialndashecological thresholds andregime shifts and what governance challenges dothey imply (Norberg and Cumming 2008 Biggs etal 2009)
Similarly it helps to broaden the social domain frominvestigating human action in relation to a certainnatural resource like dairy or fruit production orenvironmental issue like climate change to thechallenge of multilevel collaborative societalresponses to a broader set of feedbacks andthresholds in socialndashecological systems (Chapin etal 2009) For example governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment in the Murray DarlingBasin Australia has had to solve problems adaptingto change while continuing to develop connectingthe region to global markets Dryland croppinggrazing irrigated dairy and fruit production iswidespread and the catchment produces one quarterof the State of Victorias export earnings (Walker etal 2009) At a first glance economically lucrativeactivities seem to be thriving But if the analysis isbroadened to a socialndashecological approach toaccount for the capacity of the landscape in
sustaining the values of the region the picture looksquite different Widespread clearing of nativevegetation and high levels of water use for irrigationhave resulted in rising water tables creating severesalinization problems so severe that the regionfaces serious socialndashecological thresholds withpossible knock-on effects between them Crossingsuch thresholds may result in irreversible changesin the region (Walker et al 2009) Hence strategiesfor adaptability that are socially desirable may leadto vulnerable socialndashecological systems andpersistent undesirable states such as poverty trapsor rigidity traps (Scheffer 2009) Will theadaptability among people and governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment be sufficient to dealwith environmental change like salinization andinteracting thresholds and avoid being pushed intoa poverty trap or does the socialndashecological systemneed to transform into a new stability landscapeforcing people to change deep values and identity(Walker et al 2009)
SPECIFIED AND GENERAL RESILIENCE
In practice resilience is sometimes applied toproblems relating to particular aspects of a systemthat might arise from a particular set of sources orshocks We refer to this as specified resilience Inother cases the manager is concerned more aboutresilience to all kinds of shocks includingcompletely novel ones We refer to this as generalresilience
In socialndashecological systems specified resiliencearises in response to the question ldquoresilience of whatto whatrdquo (Carpenter et al 2001) However thereis a danger in becoming too focused on specifiedresilience because increasing resilience of particularparts of a system to specific disturbances may causethe system to lose resilience in other ways (Cifdalozet al 2010) This is illustrated by the HOT (highlyoptimized tolerance) theory (Carson and Doyle2000) which shows how systems that become veryrobust to frequent kinds of disturbance necessarilybecome fragile in relation to infrequent kinds Forexample international travel in Europe becameincreasingly focused on improving and elaboratingair travel with less emphasis on internationalground and water transportation The Icelandicvolcano of 2010 exposed the low resilience of thistravel system to an extensive cloud of airborne ashthat interfered with the operation of passenger jets
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
General resilience in contrast does not define eitherthe part of the system that might cross a thresholdor the kinds of shocks the system has to endure Itis about coping with uncertainty in all ways Thedistinction is important because our experience inworking with groups who are interested in using aresilience approach suggests that they tend to focuson specified resilience and in doing so they may benarrowing options for dealing with novel shocks andeven increasing the likelihood of new kinds ofinstability Recognizing that efforts to fosterspecified resilience will not necessarily avoid aregime shift is a first step to understanding the needfor transformational change Getting beyond thestate of denial particularly in SESs with strongidentity or cultural beliefs is not easy and oftenrequires a shock or at least a perceived crisisResilience thinking suggests that such events mayopen up opportunities for reevaluating the currentsituation trigger social mobilization recombinesources of experience and knowledge for learningand spark novelty and innovation It may lead tonew kinds of adaptability or possibly totransformational change
MULTISCALE RESILIENCE ANDTRANSFORMABILITY
As defined in Walker et al (2004) transformationalchange involves a change in the nature of thestability landscape introducing new defining statevariables and losing others as when a householdadopts a new direction in making a living or whena region moves from an agrarian to a resource-extraction economy It can be a deliberate processinitiated by the people involved or it can be forcedon them by changing environmental orsocioeconomic conditions Whether transformationis deliberate or forced depends on the level oftransformability in the SES concerned
The attributes of transformability have much incommon with those of general resilience includinghigh levels of all forms of capital diversity inlandscapes and seascapes and of institutions actorgroups and networks learning platforms collectiveaction and support from higher scales in thegovernance structure Transformational changeoften involves shifts in perception and meaningsocial network configurations patterns ofinteractions among actors including leadership andpolitical and power relations and associatedorganizational and institutional arrangements (eg
Folke et al 2009 Huitema and Meijerink 2009Smith and Stirling 2010)
Deliberate transformational change can be initiatedat multiple scales and perhaps gradually assuggested by recent experience with applyingresilience thinking to catchment planning andmanagement in SE Australia (Walker et al 2009)Deliberate transformational change at the scale ofthe whole catchment of all the component parts atthe same time is likely to be too costly undesirableor socially unacceptable Transformational changesat lower scales in a sequential way can lead tofeedback effects at the catchment scale which is alearning process and facilitate eventual catchment-scale transformational change Actors andorganizations that bridge the local to higher socialndashecological scales are often involved in suchprocesses (Olsson et al 2004)
Forced transformation however is likely to occurat scales larger than the scale of the managementfocus and therefore be beyond the influence of localactors Changes in regional tax structures forexample may precipitate transformations fromfarming to suburbanization Loss of summer sea icemay transform the geopolitical and economicfeedbacks among Arctic nations Systems with hightransformative capacity may deliberately initiatetransformational changes that shape the outcomesof forced transformations occurring at larger scales
Transformation trajectories are the subject of agrowing literature (Gunderson and Holling 2002Buchanan et al 2005 Geels and Kemp 2006 Chapinet al 2010) A resilience perspective emphasizes anadaptive approach facilitating different transformativeexperiments at small scales and allowing cross-learning and new initiatives to emerge constrainedonly by avoiding trajectories that the SES does notwish to follow especially those with known orsuspected thresholds The first part of this processis much the same as that proposed in the socio-technical transitions literature which encouragesarenas for safe experimentation (eg Loorbach2007 Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009)However where the transition model thendetermines the new goal and adopts a particularprocess for reaching it a resilience approach wouldallow the new identity of the SES to emerge throughinteractions within and across scales
For example declining agricultural productivity inseveral Latin American countries due to land
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
degradation reached an unsustainable level in the1970s This breakdown prompted some farmers tostart experimenting with unconventional methodsfor land management in particular low-tillalternatives to plowing that enhanced soil organicmatter and fertility (Derpsch and Friedrich 2009)Responses to the land productivity crisis andsubsequent social crisis of deteriorated livelihoodswere first pursued by individual farmers andresearchers in Brazil Paraguay and ArgentinaExperimentation with new innovative breakthroughsin technologies were necessary as the shift fromthen-dominant methods to no-tillage required majorchanges in land management practices such asweed management mulch-farming and greenmanuring techniques as well as new machines fordirect planting The experimental learning approachat small scales with processes for emergence andcross-scale learning caused a transformation of thewhole farming system Currently more than 25million ha of agricultural land is under no-tillage inBrazil alone and in Latin America the transitionfrom conventional plow-based agriculture to no-tillsystems has reached a scale where one can talk ofan agrarian revolution or a socialndashecologicaltransformation (Fowler and Rockstroumlm 2001)
Case studies of SESs suggest that transformationsconsist of three phases being prepared for or evenpreparing the socialndashecological systems for changenavigating the transition by making use of a crisisas a window of opportunity for change and buildingresilience of the new socialndashecological regime(Olsson et al 2004 Chapin et al 2010) Suchtransformations are never scale-independent butdraw on socialndashecological sources of resilienceacross scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002) Forexample at the Great Barrier Reef a governancetransformation across multiple levels of naturalresource management took place from protection ofselected individual reefs to stewardship of the large-scale seascape The transformation was triggered bya sense of urgency induced by threats to the reef ofterrestrial runoff overharvesting and globalwarming The Great Barrier Reef Marine ParkAuthority was crucial in the transformation andprovided leadership throughout the processStrategies involved internal reorganization andmanagement innovation leading to an ability tocoordinate the scientific community to increasepublic awareness of environmental issues andproblems to involve a broader set of stakeholders
and to maneuver the political system for support atcritical times (Olsson et al 2008)
Multiscale resilience is fundamental for understandingthe interplay between persistence and changeadaptability and transformability Without the scaledimension resilience and transformation may seemto be in stark contrast or even conflict Confusionarises when resilience is interpreted as backwardlooking assumed to prevent novelty innovation andtransitions to new development pathways Thisinterpretation seems to be more about robustness tochange and not about resilience for transformation
The resilience framework broadens the descriptionof resilience beyond its meaning as a buffer forconserving what you have and recovering to whatyou were Beyond this concept of persistenceresilience thinking incorporates the dynamicinterplay of persistence adaptability and transformabilityacross multiple scales and multiple attractors inSESs Fruitful avenues of inquiry include theexistence of potential thresholds and regime shiftsin SESs and the challenges that this impliesadaptability of SESs to deal with such challengesincluding uncertainty and surprise and the abilityto steer away from undesirable attractors innovateand possibly transform SESs into trajectories thatsustain and enhance ecosystem services societaldevelopment and human well-being
CONCLUSIONS
In a nutshell resilience thinking focuses on threeaspects of socialndashecological systems (SES)resilience as persistence adaptability andtransformability Resilience is the tendency of a SESsubject to change to remain within a stabilitydomain continually changing and adapting yetremaining within critical thresholds Adaptability isa part of resilience Adaptability is the capacity ofa SES to adjust its responses to changing externaldrivers and internal processes and thereby allow fordevelopment within the current stability domainalong the current trajectory Transformability is thecapacity to create new stability domains fordevelopment a new stability landscape and crossthresholds into a new development trajectoryDeliberate transformation requires resiliencethinking first in assessing the relative merits of thecurrent versus alternative potentially more
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
favorable stability domains and second in fosteringresilience of the new development trajectory thenew basin of attraction
Transformations do not take place in a vacuum butdraw on resilience from multiple scales making useof crises as windows of opportunity andrecombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions from aregime in one stability landscape to anotherTransformation involves novelty and innovationTransformational change at smaller scales enablesresilience at larger scales while the capacity totransform at smaller scales draws on resilience atother scales Thus deliberate transformationinvolves breaking down the resilience of the old andbuilding the resilience of the new As the EarthSystem approaches or exceeds thresholds that mightprecipitate a forced transformation to some stateoutside its Holocene stability domain society mustseriously consider ways to foster more flexiblesystems that contribute to Earth System resilienceand to explore options for the deliberatetransformation of systems that threaten EarthSystem resilience
Responses to this article can be read online athttpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20responses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the volcanic eruption at theEyjafjalla Glacier Iceland for extending the stay inStockholm of some of the co-authors and enablingthe completion of the paper Support for the work tothe Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BeijerInstitute was provided by Mistra Formas and Kjelland Maumlrta Beijer Foundation
LITERATURE CITED
Berkes F J Colding and C Folke editors2003 Navigating socialndashecological systemsbuilding resilience for complexity and change Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK
Biggs R SR Carpenter and WA Brock 2009Turning back from the brink detecting an
impending regime shift in time to avert itProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America 106826-831
Brand FS and K Jax 2007 Focusing themeaning(s) of resilience resilience as a descriptiveconcept and a boundary object Ecology andSociety 12(1)23 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol12iss1art23
Buchanan D L Fitzgerald D Ketley RGollop JL Jones SSaint Lamont A Neathand E Whitby 2005 No going back a review ofthe literature on sustaining organizational changeInternational Journal of Management Reviews 7189ndash205
Carpenter SR 2003 Regime shifts in lakeecosystems pattern and variation EcologyInstitute OldendorfLuhe Germany
Carpenter SR and WA Brock 2008 Adaptivecapacity and traps Ecology and Society 13(2)40[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol13iss2art40
Carpenter SR BH Walker JM Anderies andN Abel 2001 From metaphor to measurementresilience of what to what Ecosystems 4765-781
Carson J and J Doyle 2000 Highly optimizedtolerance robustness and design in complexsystems Physical Review Letters 84(11)2529-2532
Chapin III FS SR Carpenter G P KofinasC Folke N Abel WC Clark P Olsson DMStafford Smith BH Walker OR Young FBerkes R Biggs JM Grove RL Naylor EPinkerton W Steffen and FJ Swanson 2010Ecosystem stewardship sustainability strategies fora rapidly changing planet Trends in Ecology andEvolution 25241-249
Chapin III FS GP Kofinas and C Folkeeditors 2009 Principles of ecosystemstewardship resilience-based natural resourcemanagement in a changing world Springer NewYork New York USA
Chapin III FS AL Lovecraft ES ZavaletaJ Nelson MD Robards G P Kofinas SFTrainor GD Peterson HP Huntington and RL Naylor 2006 Policy strategies to addresssustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
capacity maintains certain processes despitechanging internal demands and external forces onthe SES (Carpenter and Brock 2008) By contrasttransformability has been defined as ldquothe capacityto create a fundamentally new system whenecological economic or social structures make theexisting system untenablerdquo (Walker et al 20045)
Extending the use of resilience to socialndashecologicalsystems makes it possible to explicitly deal withissues raised by Holling (1986) about renewalnovelty innovation and reorganization in systemdevelopment and how they interact across scales(Gunderson and Holling 2002) This is an excitingarea of explorative work broadening the scope fromadaptive management of ecosystem feedbacks tounderstanding and accounting for the socialdimension that creates barriers or bridges forecosystem stewardship of dynamic landscapes andseascapes in times of change (Gunderson et al1995) Are there deeper slower variables in socialsystems such as identity core values andworldviews that constrain adaptability In additionwhat are the features of agency actor groups sociallearning networks organizations institutionsgovernance structures incentives political andpower relations or ethics that enhance or underminesocialndashecological resilience (Folke et al 2005Chapin et al 2006 Smith and Stirling 2010) Howcan we assess socialndashecological thresholds andregime shifts and what governance challenges dothey imply (Norberg and Cumming 2008 Biggs etal 2009)
Similarly it helps to broaden the social domain frominvestigating human action in relation to a certainnatural resource like dairy or fruit production orenvironmental issue like climate change to thechallenge of multilevel collaborative societalresponses to a broader set of feedbacks andthresholds in socialndashecological systems (Chapin etal 2009) For example governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment in the Murray DarlingBasin Australia has had to solve problems adaptingto change while continuing to develop connectingthe region to global markets Dryland croppinggrazing irrigated dairy and fruit production iswidespread and the catchment produces one quarterof the State of Victorias export earnings (Walker etal 2009) At a first glance economically lucrativeactivities seem to be thriving But if the analysis isbroadened to a socialndashecological approach toaccount for the capacity of the landscape in
sustaining the values of the region the picture looksquite different Widespread clearing of nativevegetation and high levels of water use for irrigationhave resulted in rising water tables creating severesalinization problems so severe that the regionfaces serious socialndashecological thresholds withpossible knock-on effects between them Crossingsuch thresholds may result in irreversible changesin the region (Walker et al 2009) Hence strategiesfor adaptability that are socially desirable may leadto vulnerable socialndashecological systems andpersistent undesirable states such as poverty trapsor rigidity traps (Scheffer 2009) Will theadaptability among people and governance of theGoulburn-Broken catchment be sufficient to dealwith environmental change like salinization andinteracting thresholds and avoid being pushed intoa poverty trap or does the socialndashecological systemneed to transform into a new stability landscapeforcing people to change deep values and identity(Walker et al 2009)
SPECIFIED AND GENERAL RESILIENCE
In practice resilience is sometimes applied toproblems relating to particular aspects of a systemthat might arise from a particular set of sources orshocks We refer to this as specified resilience Inother cases the manager is concerned more aboutresilience to all kinds of shocks includingcompletely novel ones We refer to this as generalresilience
In socialndashecological systems specified resiliencearises in response to the question ldquoresilience of whatto whatrdquo (Carpenter et al 2001) However thereis a danger in becoming too focused on specifiedresilience because increasing resilience of particularparts of a system to specific disturbances may causethe system to lose resilience in other ways (Cifdalozet al 2010) This is illustrated by the HOT (highlyoptimized tolerance) theory (Carson and Doyle2000) which shows how systems that become veryrobust to frequent kinds of disturbance necessarilybecome fragile in relation to infrequent kinds Forexample international travel in Europe becameincreasingly focused on improving and elaboratingair travel with less emphasis on internationalground and water transportation The Icelandicvolcano of 2010 exposed the low resilience of thistravel system to an extensive cloud of airborne ashthat interfered with the operation of passenger jets
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
General resilience in contrast does not define eitherthe part of the system that might cross a thresholdor the kinds of shocks the system has to endure Itis about coping with uncertainty in all ways Thedistinction is important because our experience inworking with groups who are interested in using aresilience approach suggests that they tend to focuson specified resilience and in doing so they may benarrowing options for dealing with novel shocks andeven increasing the likelihood of new kinds ofinstability Recognizing that efforts to fosterspecified resilience will not necessarily avoid aregime shift is a first step to understanding the needfor transformational change Getting beyond thestate of denial particularly in SESs with strongidentity or cultural beliefs is not easy and oftenrequires a shock or at least a perceived crisisResilience thinking suggests that such events mayopen up opportunities for reevaluating the currentsituation trigger social mobilization recombinesources of experience and knowledge for learningand spark novelty and innovation It may lead tonew kinds of adaptability or possibly totransformational change
MULTISCALE RESILIENCE ANDTRANSFORMABILITY
As defined in Walker et al (2004) transformationalchange involves a change in the nature of thestability landscape introducing new defining statevariables and losing others as when a householdadopts a new direction in making a living or whena region moves from an agrarian to a resource-extraction economy It can be a deliberate processinitiated by the people involved or it can be forcedon them by changing environmental orsocioeconomic conditions Whether transformationis deliberate or forced depends on the level oftransformability in the SES concerned
The attributes of transformability have much incommon with those of general resilience includinghigh levels of all forms of capital diversity inlandscapes and seascapes and of institutions actorgroups and networks learning platforms collectiveaction and support from higher scales in thegovernance structure Transformational changeoften involves shifts in perception and meaningsocial network configurations patterns ofinteractions among actors including leadership andpolitical and power relations and associatedorganizational and institutional arrangements (eg
Folke et al 2009 Huitema and Meijerink 2009Smith and Stirling 2010)
Deliberate transformational change can be initiatedat multiple scales and perhaps gradually assuggested by recent experience with applyingresilience thinking to catchment planning andmanagement in SE Australia (Walker et al 2009)Deliberate transformational change at the scale ofthe whole catchment of all the component parts atthe same time is likely to be too costly undesirableor socially unacceptable Transformational changesat lower scales in a sequential way can lead tofeedback effects at the catchment scale which is alearning process and facilitate eventual catchment-scale transformational change Actors andorganizations that bridge the local to higher socialndashecological scales are often involved in suchprocesses (Olsson et al 2004)
Forced transformation however is likely to occurat scales larger than the scale of the managementfocus and therefore be beyond the influence of localactors Changes in regional tax structures forexample may precipitate transformations fromfarming to suburbanization Loss of summer sea icemay transform the geopolitical and economicfeedbacks among Arctic nations Systems with hightransformative capacity may deliberately initiatetransformational changes that shape the outcomesof forced transformations occurring at larger scales
Transformation trajectories are the subject of agrowing literature (Gunderson and Holling 2002Buchanan et al 2005 Geels and Kemp 2006 Chapinet al 2010) A resilience perspective emphasizes anadaptive approach facilitating different transformativeexperiments at small scales and allowing cross-learning and new initiatives to emerge constrainedonly by avoiding trajectories that the SES does notwish to follow especially those with known orsuspected thresholds The first part of this processis much the same as that proposed in the socio-technical transitions literature which encouragesarenas for safe experimentation (eg Loorbach2007 Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009)However where the transition model thendetermines the new goal and adopts a particularprocess for reaching it a resilience approach wouldallow the new identity of the SES to emerge throughinteractions within and across scales
For example declining agricultural productivity inseveral Latin American countries due to land
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
degradation reached an unsustainable level in the1970s This breakdown prompted some farmers tostart experimenting with unconventional methodsfor land management in particular low-tillalternatives to plowing that enhanced soil organicmatter and fertility (Derpsch and Friedrich 2009)Responses to the land productivity crisis andsubsequent social crisis of deteriorated livelihoodswere first pursued by individual farmers andresearchers in Brazil Paraguay and ArgentinaExperimentation with new innovative breakthroughsin technologies were necessary as the shift fromthen-dominant methods to no-tillage required majorchanges in land management practices such asweed management mulch-farming and greenmanuring techniques as well as new machines fordirect planting The experimental learning approachat small scales with processes for emergence andcross-scale learning caused a transformation of thewhole farming system Currently more than 25million ha of agricultural land is under no-tillage inBrazil alone and in Latin America the transitionfrom conventional plow-based agriculture to no-tillsystems has reached a scale where one can talk ofan agrarian revolution or a socialndashecologicaltransformation (Fowler and Rockstroumlm 2001)
Case studies of SESs suggest that transformationsconsist of three phases being prepared for or evenpreparing the socialndashecological systems for changenavigating the transition by making use of a crisisas a window of opportunity for change and buildingresilience of the new socialndashecological regime(Olsson et al 2004 Chapin et al 2010) Suchtransformations are never scale-independent butdraw on socialndashecological sources of resilienceacross scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002) Forexample at the Great Barrier Reef a governancetransformation across multiple levels of naturalresource management took place from protection ofselected individual reefs to stewardship of the large-scale seascape The transformation was triggered bya sense of urgency induced by threats to the reef ofterrestrial runoff overharvesting and globalwarming The Great Barrier Reef Marine ParkAuthority was crucial in the transformation andprovided leadership throughout the processStrategies involved internal reorganization andmanagement innovation leading to an ability tocoordinate the scientific community to increasepublic awareness of environmental issues andproblems to involve a broader set of stakeholders
and to maneuver the political system for support atcritical times (Olsson et al 2008)
Multiscale resilience is fundamental for understandingthe interplay between persistence and changeadaptability and transformability Without the scaledimension resilience and transformation may seemto be in stark contrast or even conflict Confusionarises when resilience is interpreted as backwardlooking assumed to prevent novelty innovation andtransitions to new development pathways Thisinterpretation seems to be more about robustness tochange and not about resilience for transformation
The resilience framework broadens the descriptionof resilience beyond its meaning as a buffer forconserving what you have and recovering to whatyou were Beyond this concept of persistenceresilience thinking incorporates the dynamicinterplay of persistence adaptability and transformabilityacross multiple scales and multiple attractors inSESs Fruitful avenues of inquiry include theexistence of potential thresholds and regime shiftsin SESs and the challenges that this impliesadaptability of SESs to deal with such challengesincluding uncertainty and surprise and the abilityto steer away from undesirable attractors innovateand possibly transform SESs into trajectories thatsustain and enhance ecosystem services societaldevelopment and human well-being
CONCLUSIONS
In a nutshell resilience thinking focuses on threeaspects of socialndashecological systems (SES)resilience as persistence adaptability andtransformability Resilience is the tendency of a SESsubject to change to remain within a stabilitydomain continually changing and adapting yetremaining within critical thresholds Adaptability isa part of resilience Adaptability is the capacity ofa SES to adjust its responses to changing externaldrivers and internal processes and thereby allow fordevelopment within the current stability domainalong the current trajectory Transformability is thecapacity to create new stability domains fordevelopment a new stability landscape and crossthresholds into a new development trajectoryDeliberate transformation requires resiliencethinking first in assessing the relative merits of thecurrent versus alternative potentially more
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
favorable stability domains and second in fosteringresilience of the new development trajectory thenew basin of attraction
Transformations do not take place in a vacuum butdraw on resilience from multiple scales making useof crises as windows of opportunity andrecombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions from aregime in one stability landscape to anotherTransformation involves novelty and innovationTransformational change at smaller scales enablesresilience at larger scales while the capacity totransform at smaller scales draws on resilience atother scales Thus deliberate transformationinvolves breaking down the resilience of the old andbuilding the resilience of the new As the EarthSystem approaches or exceeds thresholds that mightprecipitate a forced transformation to some stateoutside its Holocene stability domain society mustseriously consider ways to foster more flexiblesystems that contribute to Earth System resilienceand to explore options for the deliberatetransformation of systems that threaten EarthSystem resilience
Responses to this article can be read online athttpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20responses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the volcanic eruption at theEyjafjalla Glacier Iceland for extending the stay inStockholm of some of the co-authors and enablingthe completion of the paper Support for the work tothe Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BeijerInstitute was provided by Mistra Formas and Kjelland Maumlrta Beijer Foundation
LITERATURE CITED
Berkes F J Colding and C Folke editors2003 Navigating socialndashecological systemsbuilding resilience for complexity and change Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK
Biggs R SR Carpenter and WA Brock 2009Turning back from the brink detecting an
impending regime shift in time to avert itProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America 106826-831
Brand FS and K Jax 2007 Focusing themeaning(s) of resilience resilience as a descriptiveconcept and a boundary object Ecology andSociety 12(1)23 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol12iss1art23
Buchanan D L Fitzgerald D Ketley RGollop JL Jones SSaint Lamont A Neathand E Whitby 2005 No going back a review ofthe literature on sustaining organizational changeInternational Journal of Management Reviews 7189ndash205
Carpenter SR 2003 Regime shifts in lakeecosystems pattern and variation EcologyInstitute OldendorfLuhe Germany
Carpenter SR and WA Brock 2008 Adaptivecapacity and traps Ecology and Society 13(2)40[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol13iss2art40
Carpenter SR BH Walker JM Anderies andN Abel 2001 From metaphor to measurementresilience of what to what Ecosystems 4765-781
Carson J and J Doyle 2000 Highly optimizedtolerance robustness and design in complexsystems Physical Review Letters 84(11)2529-2532
Chapin III FS SR Carpenter G P KofinasC Folke N Abel WC Clark P Olsson DMStafford Smith BH Walker OR Young FBerkes R Biggs JM Grove RL Naylor EPinkerton W Steffen and FJ Swanson 2010Ecosystem stewardship sustainability strategies fora rapidly changing planet Trends in Ecology andEvolution 25241-249
Chapin III FS GP Kofinas and C Folkeeditors 2009 Principles of ecosystemstewardship resilience-based natural resourcemanagement in a changing world Springer NewYork New York USA
Chapin III FS AL Lovecraft ES ZavaletaJ Nelson MD Robards G P Kofinas SFTrainor GD Peterson HP Huntington and RL Naylor 2006 Policy strategies to addresssustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
General resilience in contrast does not define eitherthe part of the system that might cross a thresholdor the kinds of shocks the system has to endure Itis about coping with uncertainty in all ways Thedistinction is important because our experience inworking with groups who are interested in using aresilience approach suggests that they tend to focuson specified resilience and in doing so they may benarrowing options for dealing with novel shocks andeven increasing the likelihood of new kinds ofinstability Recognizing that efforts to fosterspecified resilience will not necessarily avoid aregime shift is a first step to understanding the needfor transformational change Getting beyond thestate of denial particularly in SESs with strongidentity or cultural beliefs is not easy and oftenrequires a shock or at least a perceived crisisResilience thinking suggests that such events mayopen up opportunities for reevaluating the currentsituation trigger social mobilization recombinesources of experience and knowledge for learningand spark novelty and innovation It may lead tonew kinds of adaptability or possibly totransformational change
MULTISCALE RESILIENCE ANDTRANSFORMABILITY
As defined in Walker et al (2004) transformationalchange involves a change in the nature of thestability landscape introducing new defining statevariables and losing others as when a householdadopts a new direction in making a living or whena region moves from an agrarian to a resource-extraction economy It can be a deliberate processinitiated by the people involved or it can be forcedon them by changing environmental orsocioeconomic conditions Whether transformationis deliberate or forced depends on the level oftransformability in the SES concerned
The attributes of transformability have much incommon with those of general resilience includinghigh levels of all forms of capital diversity inlandscapes and seascapes and of institutions actorgroups and networks learning platforms collectiveaction and support from higher scales in thegovernance structure Transformational changeoften involves shifts in perception and meaningsocial network configurations patterns ofinteractions among actors including leadership andpolitical and power relations and associatedorganizational and institutional arrangements (eg
Folke et al 2009 Huitema and Meijerink 2009Smith and Stirling 2010)
Deliberate transformational change can be initiatedat multiple scales and perhaps gradually assuggested by recent experience with applyingresilience thinking to catchment planning andmanagement in SE Australia (Walker et al 2009)Deliberate transformational change at the scale ofthe whole catchment of all the component parts atthe same time is likely to be too costly undesirableor socially unacceptable Transformational changesat lower scales in a sequential way can lead tofeedback effects at the catchment scale which is alearning process and facilitate eventual catchment-scale transformational change Actors andorganizations that bridge the local to higher socialndashecological scales are often involved in suchprocesses (Olsson et al 2004)
Forced transformation however is likely to occurat scales larger than the scale of the managementfocus and therefore be beyond the influence of localactors Changes in regional tax structures forexample may precipitate transformations fromfarming to suburbanization Loss of summer sea icemay transform the geopolitical and economicfeedbacks among Arctic nations Systems with hightransformative capacity may deliberately initiatetransformational changes that shape the outcomesof forced transformations occurring at larger scales
Transformation trajectories are the subject of agrowing literature (Gunderson and Holling 2002Buchanan et al 2005 Geels and Kemp 2006 Chapinet al 2010) A resilience perspective emphasizes anadaptive approach facilitating different transformativeexperiments at small scales and allowing cross-learning and new initiatives to emerge constrainedonly by avoiding trajectories that the SES does notwish to follow especially those with known orsuspected thresholds The first part of this processis much the same as that proposed in the socio-technical transitions literature which encouragesarenas for safe experimentation (eg Loorbach2007 Fischer-Kowalski and Rotmans 2009)However where the transition model thendetermines the new goal and adopts a particularprocess for reaching it a resilience approach wouldallow the new identity of the SES to emerge throughinteractions within and across scales
For example declining agricultural productivity inseveral Latin American countries due to land
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
degradation reached an unsustainable level in the1970s This breakdown prompted some farmers tostart experimenting with unconventional methodsfor land management in particular low-tillalternatives to plowing that enhanced soil organicmatter and fertility (Derpsch and Friedrich 2009)Responses to the land productivity crisis andsubsequent social crisis of deteriorated livelihoodswere first pursued by individual farmers andresearchers in Brazil Paraguay and ArgentinaExperimentation with new innovative breakthroughsin technologies were necessary as the shift fromthen-dominant methods to no-tillage required majorchanges in land management practices such asweed management mulch-farming and greenmanuring techniques as well as new machines fordirect planting The experimental learning approachat small scales with processes for emergence andcross-scale learning caused a transformation of thewhole farming system Currently more than 25million ha of agricultural land is under no-tillage inBrazil alone and in Latin America the transitionfrom conventional plow-based agriculture to no-tillsystems has reached a scale where one can talk ofan agrarian revolution or a socialndashecologicaltransformation (Fowler and Rockstroumlm 2001)
Case studies of SESs suggest that transformationsconsist of three phases being prepared for or evenpreparing the socialndashecological systems for changenavigating the transition by making use of a crisisas a window of opportunity for change and buildingresilience of the new socialndashecological regime(Olsson et al 2004 Chapin et al 2010) Suchtransformations are never scale-independent butdraw on socialndashecological sources of resilienceacross scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002) Forexample at the Great Barrier Reef a governancetransformation across multiple levels of naturalresource management took place from protection ofselected individual reefs to stewardship of the large-scale seascape The transformation was triggered bya sense of urgency induced by threats to the reef ofterrestrial runoff overharvesting and globalwarming The Great Barrier Reef Marine ParkAuthority was crucial in the transformation andprovided leadership throughout the processStrategies involved internal reorganization andmanagement innovation leading to an ability tocoordinate the scientific community to increasepublic awareness of environmental issues andproblems to involve a broader set of stakeholders
and to maneuver the political system for support atcritical times (Olsson et al 2008)
Multiscale resilience is fundamental for understandingthe interplay between persistence and changeadaptability and transformability Without the scaledimension resilience and transformation may seemto be in stark contrast or even conflict Confusionarises when resilience is interpreted as backwardlooking assumed to prevent novelty innovation andtransitions to new development pathways Thisinterpretation seems to be more about robustness tochange and not about resilience for transformation
The resilience framework broadens the descriptionof resilience beyond its meaning as a buffer forconserving what you have and recovering to whatyou were Beyond this concept of persistenceresilience thinking incorporates the dynamicinterplay of persistence adaptability and transformabilityacross multiple scales and multiple attractors inSESs Fruitful avenues of inquiry include theexistence of potential thresholds and regime shiftsin SESs and the challenges that this impliesadaptability of SESs to deal with such challengesincluding uncertainty and surprise and the abilityto steer away from undesirable attractors innovateand possibly transform SESs into trajectories thatsustain and enhance ecosystem services societaldevelopment and human well-being
CONCLUSIONS
In a nutshell resilience thinking focuses on threeaspects of socialndashecological systems (SES)resilience as persistence adaptability andtransformability Resilience is the tendency of a SESsubject to change to remain within a stabilitydomain continually changing and adapting yetremaining within critical thresholds Adaptability isa part of resilience Adaptability is the capacity ofa SES to adjust its responses to changing externaldrivers and internal processes and thereby allow fordevelopment within the current stability domainalong the current trajectory Transformability is thecapacity to create new stability domains fordevelopment a new stability landscape and crossthresholds into a new development trajectoryDeliberate transformation requires resiliencethinking first in assessing the relative merits of thecurrent versus alternative potentially more
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
favorable stability domains and second in fosteringresilience of the new development trajectory thenew basin of attraction
Transformations do not take place in a vacuum butdraw on resilience from multiple scales making useof crises as windows of opportunity andrecombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions from aregime in one stability landscape to anotherTransformation involves novelty and innovationTransformational change at smaller scales enablesresilience at larger scales while the capacity totransform at smaller scales draws on resilience atother scales Thus deliberate transformationinvolves breaking down the resilience of the old andbuilding the resilience of the new As the EarthSystem approaches or exceeds thresholds that mightprecipitate a forced transformation to some stateoutside its Holocene stability domain society mustseriously consider ways to foster more flexiblesystems that contribute to Earth System resilienceand to explore options for the deliberatetransformation of systems that threaten EarthSystem resilience
Responses to this article can be read online athttpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20responses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the volcanic eruption at theEyjafjalla Glacier Iceland for extending the stay inStockholm of some of the co-authors and enablingthe completion of the paper Support for the work tothe Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BeijerInstitute was provided by Mistra Formas and Kjelland Maumlrta Beijer Foundation
LITERATURE CITED
Berkes F J Colding and C Folke editors2003 Navigating socialndashecological systemsbuilding resilience for complexity and change Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK
Biggs R SR Carpenter and WA Brock 2009Turning back from the brink detecting an
impending regime shift in time to avert itProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America 106826-831
Brand FS and K Jax 2007 Focusing themeaning(s) of resilience resilience as a descriptiveconcept and a boundary object Ecology andSociety 12(1)23 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol12iss1art23
Buchanan D L Fitzgerald D Ketley RGollop JL Jones SSaint Lamont A Neathand E Whitby 2005 No going back a review ofthe literature on sustaining organizational changeInternational Journal of Management Reviews 7189ndash205
Carpenter SR 2003 Regime shifts in lakeecosystems pattern and variation EcologyInstitute OldendorfLuhe Germany
Carpenter SR and WA Brock 2008 Adaptivecapacity and traps Ecology and Society 13(2)40[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol13iss2art40
Carpenter SR BH Walker JM Anderies andN Abel 2001 From metaphor to measurementresilience of what to what Ecosystems 4765-781
Carson J and J Doyle 2000 Highly optimizedtolerance robustness and design in complexsystems Physical Review Letters 84(11)2529-2532
Chapin III FS SR Carpenter G P KofinasC Folke N Abel WC Clark P Olsson DMStafford Smith BH Walker OR Young FBerkes R Biggs JM Grove RL Naylor EPinkerton W Steffen and FJ Swanson 2010Ecosystem stewardship sustainability strategies fora rapidly changing planet Trends in Ecology andEvolution 25241-249
Chapin III FS GP Kofinas and C Folkeeditors 2009 Principles of ecosystemstewardship resilience-based natural resourcemanagement in a changing world Springer NewYork New York USA
Chapin III FS AL Lovecraft ES ZavaletaJ Nelson MD Robards G P Kofinas SFTrainor GD Peterson HP Huntington and RL Naylor 2006 Policy strategies to addresssustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
degradation reached an unsustainable level in the1970s This breakdown prompted some farmers tostart experimenting with unconventional methodsfor land management in particular low-tillalternatives to plowing that enhanced soil organicmatter and fertility (Derpsch and Friedrich 2009)Responses to the land productivity crisis andsubsequent social crisis of deteriorated livelihoodswere first pursued by individual farmers andresearchers in Brazil Paraguay and ArgentinaExperimentation with new innovative breakthroughsin technologies were necessary as the shift fromthen-dominant methods to no-tillage required majorchanges in land management practices such asweed management mulch-farming and greenmanuring techniques as well as new machines fordirect planting The experimental learning approachat small scales with processes for emergence andcross-scale learning caused a transformation of thewhole farming system Currently more than 25million ha of agricultural land is under no-tillage inBrazil alone and in Latin America the transitionfrom conventional plow-based agriculture to no-tillsystems has reached a scale where one can talk ofan agrarian revolution or a socialndashecologicaltransformation (Fowler and Rockstroumlm 2001)
Case studies of SESs suggest that transformationsconsist of three phases being prepared for or evenpreparing the socialndashecological systems for changenavigating the transition by making use of a crisisas a window of opportunity for change and buildingresilience of the new socialndashecological regime(Olsson et al 2004 Chapin et al 2010) Suchtransformations are never scale-independent butdraw on socialndashecological sources of resilienceacross scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002) Forexample at the Great Barrier Reef a governancetransformation across multiple levels of naturalresource management took place from protection ofselected individual reefs to stewardship of the large-scale seascape The transformation was triggered bya sense of urgency induced by threats to the reef ofterrestrial runoff overharvesting and globalwarming The Great Barrier Reef Marine ParkAuthority was crucial in the transformation andprovided leadership throughout the processStrategies involved internal reorganization andmanagement innovation leading to an ability tocoordinate the scientific community to increasepublic awareness of environmental issues andproblems to involve a broader set of stakeholders
and to maneuver the political system for support atcritical times (Olsson et al 2008)
Multiscale resilience is fundamental for understandingthe interplay between persistence and changeadaptability and transformability Without the scaledimension resilience and transformation may seemto be in stark contrast or even conflict Confusionarises when resilience is interpreted as backwardlooking assumed to prevent novelty innovation andtransitions to new development pathways Thisinterpretation seems to be more about robustness tochange and not about resilience for transformation
The resilience framework broadens the descriptionof resilience beyond its meaning as a buffer forconserving what you have and recovering to whatyou were Beyond this concept of persistenceresilience thinking incorporates the dynamicinterplay of persistence adaptability and transformabilityacross multiple scales and multiple attractors inSESs Fruitful avenues of inquiry include theexistence of potential thresholds and regime shiftsin SESs and the challenges that this impliesadaptability of SESs to deal with such challengesincluding uncertainty and surprise and the abilityto steer away from undesirable attractors innovateand possibly transform SESs into trajectories thatsustain and enhance ecosystem services societaldevelopment and human well-being
CONCLUSIONS
In a nutshell resilience thinking focuses on threeaspects of socialndashecological systems (SES)resilience as persistence adaptability andtransformability Resilience is the tendency of a SESsubject to change to remain within a stabilitydomain continually changing and adapting yetremaining within critical thresholds Adaptability isa part of resilience Adaptability is the capacity ofa SES to adjust its responses to changing externaldrivers and internal processes and thereby allow fordevelopment within the current stability domainalong the current trajectory Transformability is thecapacity to create new stability domains fordevelopment a new stability landscape and crossthresholds into a new development trajectoryDeliberate transformation requires resiliencethinking first in assessing the relative merits of thecurrent versus alternative potentially more
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
favorable stability domains and second in fosteringresilience of the new development trajectory thenew basin of attraction
Transformations do not take place in a vacuum butdraw on resilience from multiple scales making useof crises as windows of opportunity andrecombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions from aregime in one stability landscape to anotherTransformation involves novelty and innovationTransformational change at smaller scales enablesresilience at larger scales while the capacity totransform at smaller scales draws on resilience atother scales Thus deliberate transformationinvolves breaking down the resilience of the old andbuilding the resilience of the new As the EarthSystem approaches or exceeds thresholds that mightprecipitate a forced transformation to some stateoutside its Holocene stability domain society mustseriously consider ways to foster more flexiblesystems that contribute to Earth System resilienceand to explore options for the deliberatetransformation of systems that threaten EarthSystem resilience
Responses to this article can be read online athttpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20responses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the volcanic eruption at theEyjafjalla Glacier Iceland for extending the stay inStockholm of some of the co-authors and enablingthe completion of the paper Support for the work tothe Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BeijerInstitute was provided by Mistra Formas and Kjelland Maumlrta Beijer Foundation
LITERATURE CITED
Berkes F J Colding and C Folke editors2003 Navigating socialndashecological systemsbuilding resilience for complexity and change Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK
Biggs R SR Carpenter and WA Brock 2009Turning back from the brink detecting an
impending regime shift in time to avert itProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America 106826-831
Brand FS and K Jax 2007 Focusing themeaning(s) of resilience resilience as a descriptiveconcept and a boundary object Ecology andSociety 12(1)23 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol12iss1art23
Buchanan D L Fitzgerald D Ketley RGollop JL Jones SSaint Lamont A Neathand E Whitby 2005 No going back a review ofthe literature on sustaining organizational changeInternational Journal of Management Reviews 7189ndash205
Carpenter SR 2003 Regime shifts in lakeecosystems pattern and variation EcologyInstitute OldendorfLuhe Germany
Carpenter SR and WA Brock 2008 Adaptivecapacity and traps Ecology and Society 13(2)40[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol13iss2art40
Carpenter SR BH Walker JM Anderies andN Abel 2001 From metaphor to measurementresilience of what to what Ecosystems 4765-781
Carson J and J Doyle 2000 Highly optimizedtolerance robustness and design in complexsystems Physical Review Letters 84(11)2529-2532
Chapin III FS SR Carpenter G P KofinasC Folke N Abel WC Clark P Olsson DMStafford Smith BH Walker OR Young FBerkes R Biggs JM Grove RL Naylor EPinkerton W Steffen and FJ Swanson 2010Ecosystem stewardship sustainability strategies fora rapidly changing planet Trends in Ecology andEvolution 25241-249
Chapin III FS GP Kofinas and C Folkeeditors 2009 Principles of ecosystemstewardship resilience-based natural resourcemanagement in a changing world Springer NewYork New York USA
Chapin III FS AL Lovecraft ES ZavaletaJ Nelson MD Robards G P Kofinas SFTrainor GD Peterson HP Huntington and RL Naylor 2006 Policy strategies to addresssustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
favorable stability domains and second in fosteringresilience of the new development trajectory thenew basin of attraction
Transformations do not take place in a vacuum butdraw on resilience from multiple scales making useof crises as windows of opportunity andrecombining sources of experience and knowledgeto navigate socialndashecological transitions from aregime in one stability landscape to anotherTransformation involves novelty and innovationTransformational change at smaller scales enablesresilience at larger scales while the capacity totransform at smaller scales draws on resilience atother scales Thus deliberate transformationinvolves breaking down the resilience of the old andbuilding the resilience of the new As the EarthSystem approaches or exceeds thresholds that mightprecipitate a forced transformation to some stateoutside its Holocene stability domain society mustseriously consider ways to foster more flexiblesystems that contribute to Earth System resilienceand to explore options for the deliberatetransformation of systems that threaten EarthSystem resilience
Responses to this article can be read online athttpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20responses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the volcanic eruption at theEyjafjalla Glacier Iceland for extending the stay inStockholm of some of the co-authors and enablingthe completion of the paper Support for the work tothe Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BeijerInstitute was provided by Mistra Formas and Kjelland Maumlrta Beijer Foundation
LITERATURE CITED
Berkes F J Colding and C Folke editors2003 Navigating socialndashecological systemsbuilding resilience for complexity and change Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK
Biggs R SR Carpenter and WA Brock 2009Turning back from the brink detecting an
impending regime shift in time to avert itProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America 106826-831
Brand FS and K Jax 2007 Focusing themeaning(s) of resilience resilience as a descriptiveconcept and a boundary object Ecology andSociety 12(1)23 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol12iss1art23
Buchanan D L Fitzgerald D Ketley RGollop JL Jones SSaint Lamont A Neathand E Whitby 2005 No going back a review ofthe literature on sustaining organizational changeInternational Journal of Management Reviews 7189ndash205
Carpenter SR 2003 Regime shifts in lakeecosystems pattern and variation EcologyInstitute OldendorfLuhe Germany
Carpenter SR and WA Brock 2008 Adaptivecapacity and traps Ecology and Society 13(2)40[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol13iss2art40
Carpenter SR BH Walker JM Anderies andN Abel 2001 From metaphor to measurementresilience of what to what Ecosystems 4765-781
Carson J and J Doyle 2000 Highly optimizedtolerance robustness and design in complexsystems Physical Review Letters 84(11)2529-2532
Chapin III FS SR Carpenter G P KofinasC Folke N Abel WC Clark P Olsson DMStafford Smith BH Walker OR Young FBerkes R Biggs JM Grove RL Naylor EPinkerton W Steffen and FJ Swanson 2010Ecosystem stewardship sustainability strategies fora rapidly changing planet Trends in Ecology andEvolution 25241-249
Chapin III FS GP Kofinas and C Folkeeditors 2009 Principles of ecosystemstewardship resilience-based natural resourcemanagement in a changing world Springer NewYork New York USA
Chapin III FS AL Lovecraft ES ZavaletaJ Nelson MD Robards G P Kofinas SFTrainor GD Peterson HP Huntington and RL Naylor 2006 Policy strategies to addresssustainability of Alaskan boreal forests in response
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
to a directionally changing climate Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the UnitedStates of America 10316637ndash16643
Cifdaloz O A Regmi JM Anderies and AARodriguez 2010 Robustness vulnerability andadaptive capacity in small-scale socialndashecologicalsystems the Pumpa Irrigation system in NepalEcology and Society 15(3)39 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss3art39
Derpsch R and T Friedrich 2009 Developmentand current status of no-till adoption in the worldFAO conference paper from the 18th TriennialInternational Soil Tillage Research Organization(ISTRO) conference June 15-19 2009 Izmir FAOpublications [online] URL wwwfaoorgagcaCA-PublicationsISTRO202009pdf
Fischer-Kowalski M and J Rotmans 2009Conceptualizing observing and influencingsocialndashecological transitions Ecology and Society 14(2) 3 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss2art3
Folke C 2006 Resilience the emergence of aperspective for socialndashecological systems analysesGlobal Environmental Change 16253-267
Folke C FS Chapin III and P Olsson 2009Transformations in ecosystem stewardship Pages103-125 in FS Chapin III GP Kofinas and CFolke editors Principles of ecosystem stewardshipresilience-based natural resource management in achanging world Springer Verlag New York USA
Folke C T Hahn P Olsson and J Norberg2005 Adaptive governance of socialndashecologicalsystems Annual Review of Environment andResources 30441-473
Fowler R and J Rockstroumlm 2001 Conservationtillage for sustainable agriculture an agrarianrevolution gathers momentum in Africa Soil TillageResearch 6193-107
Geels FW and R Kemp 2006 Transitionstransformations and reproduction dynamics insocio-technical systems Pages 227ndash257 in MDMcKelvey and M Holmeacuten editors Flexibility andstability in the innovating economy OxfordScholarship Online Monographs Oxford UK
Gunderson LH 2000 Ecological resilience intheory and application Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics 31425-439
Gunderson LH and CS Holling editors 2002Understanding transformations in human andnatural systems Island Press Washington DCUSA
Gunderson LH CS Holling and S Lighteditors 1995 Barriers and bridges to the renewalof ecosystems and institutions Columbia UniversityPress New York USA
Holling CS 1973 Resilience and stability ofecological systems Annual Review of Ecology andSystematics 41-23
Holling CS 1986 Resilience of ecosystems localsurprise and global change Pages 292-317 in WCClark and RE Munn editors Sustainabledevelopment and the biosphere CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge UK
Holling CS 1996 Engineering resilience versusecological resilience Pages 31- 44 in P Schulzeeditor Engineering within ecological constraintsNational Academy Press Washington DC USA
Huitema D and S Maijerink editors 2009Water policy entrepreneurs a research companionto water transitions around the globe EdwardElgar Cheltenham Gloucestershire UK
Kuznetzov Y 1998 Elements of appliedbifurcation theory Second edition Springer-Verlag New York USA
Loorbach D 2007 Transition management newmode of governance for sustainable developmentInternational Books Utrecht The Netherlands
Norberg J and G Cumming editors 2008Complexity theory for a sustainable futureColumbia University Press New York USA
Olsson P C Folke and T Hahn 2004 Socialndashecological transformation for ecosystem managementthe development of adaptive co-management of awetland landscape in southern Sweden Ecologyand Society 9(4)2 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss4art2
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
Ecology and Society 15(4) 20httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss4art20
Olsson P C Folke and TP Hughes 2008Navigating the transition to ecosystem-basedmanagement of the Great Barrier Reef AustraliaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesof the United States of America1059489-9494
Rockstroumlm J W Steffen K Noone Aring PerssonFS Chapin III EF Lambin TM Lenton MScheffer C Folke HJ Schellnhuber B NykvistCA de Wit T Hughes S van der Leeuw HRodhe S Soumlrlin PK Snyder R Costanza USvedin M Falkenmark L Karlberg RWCorell VJ Fabry J Hansen BH Walker DLiverman K Richardson P Crutzen and JAFoley 2009 A safe operating space for humanityNature 461472-475
Scheffer M 2009 Critical transitions in natureand society Princeton University Press PrincetonNew Jersey USA
Scheffer M SR Carpenter JA Foley CFolke and BH Walker 2001 Catastrophic shiftsin ecosystems Nature 413591-596
Smith A and A Stirling 2010 The politics ofsocialndashecological resilience and sustainable socio-technical transitions Ecology and Society 15(1)11[online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol15iss1art11
Steffen E PJ Crutzen and JR McNeill 2007The Anthropocene are humans now overwhelmingthe great forces of nature Ambio 36614-621
Walker BH N Abel JM Anderies and PRyan 2009 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in the Goulburn-Broken CatchmentAustralia Ecology and Society 14(1)12 [online]URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol14iss1art12
Walker BH CS Holling SR Carpenter andA Kinzig 2004 Resilience adaptability andtransformability in socialndashecological systemsEcology and Society 9(2)5 [online] URL httpwwwecologyandsocietyorgvol9iss2art5
