TRANSFORMING AUSTRALIA TO REMAIN RESILIENT

food

waterenergy

clim

ate

chan

ge

antibiotic

resistance, new

diseases

economic shocksre

fugees,

war, terro

rism

Links and feedbacks in the food-water-energy nexus

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It is a complex, self-organizing system

- cannot predict particular outcomes therefore

it is necessary to build resilience, to be able to cope with whatever happens

Resilience

The ability to cope with shocks and to keep functioning in much the same kind of way“The capacity to absorb disturbance and re-organize so as to retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks – to have the same identity”

Complex systems have threshold effects, sometimes irreversible

ball-in-a-basin metaphor for stability and resilience

resilience

instantaneousresilience

State of the system

Stable equilibrium

Unstable equilibrium

The shape and size of the basin can change

– thresholds move, and so resilience changes

resilience

The closer a system is to a threshold, the smaller the shock needed to shift it across

-- and thresholds can move, and interact

Effect of climate change and ocean pH on threshold positions After Bellwood et al, Nature 2004

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Coral reef thresholds and alternate states

Fishing pressure

Extr

a

nutr

ien

ts Healthy coral reef

Macro-algae

Social system thresholds / tipping points

- crowd behaviour (riots, fads, “crowd waves”) - economic systems (debt : income ratio, labour supply)

farm catchment country Shocks

bio

ph

ysic

al

socio

-econ

om

ic

values (environment vs. agriculture) /‘rules’

financial viability

agric. industry viability

soil salinity

infrastructure (irrigation)

biodiversity

tree cover and water table equilibrium

climate shocks

price / economic shocks

changes in markets

diseases

soil acidity river pollution

Multiple thresholds in an agricultural system

making a system resilient in one way can cause it to lose resilience in other ways and at other scales.

There are trade-offs in applying resilience

and therefore:-

There is a danger in focusing on a particular, known threshold :

It is necessary to understand and enhance

general resilience

- the capacity to cope with all kinds of shocks

What kinds of attributes confer general resilience ?

• high diversity (esp. response diversity) • ecological variability (vs. trying to control and

reduce it)• being modular (not over-connected) • responding quickly to change (having tight

feedbacks)• being open (emigration and immigration)• reserves, biophysical (seed banks) and social

(memory)• fostering learning, innovation, novelty (vs.

subsidies to continue doing the same thing that’s not working)

• social capital (trust, leadership, social networks)• adaptive and distributed governance

4 important points about resilience

1) You cannot understand or manage the resilience of a system at one scale

all complex systems function at multiple scales

the interactions across scales are critical to resilience

2) Resilience is NOT about NOT changing

trying to prevent disturbance and keepa system constant reduces its resilienceprobing the boundaries of resilience is necessary for maintaining and building resilience

- failure to recognize secondary effects

3) Most losses in resilience are unintended consequences of narrowly focused optimization

e.g. efficiency drives

(so-called ‘redundancy’ is often in fact ‘response diversity’)

4) Resilience, per se, is neither ‘good’ or ‘bad’

Undesirable states of systems can be very resilient (saline landscapes, inner city slums, debt-ridden economies)

A system state that once was considered to be in a ‘desired’ state can become ‘undesirable’ through changes in external conditions (context)

If a shift into a “bad” state has happened or is inevitable, and is irrecoverable, the only option is transformation

Adaptation or Transformation?

Does further adaptation simply amount to digging the hole deeper? (the first rule of holes!)

Which raises the issue of:

Resilience and transformation are not opposites

Maintaining resilience at one scale can require transformational changes at other scales

- the Murray Darling Basin as an agro-ecosystem

- most larger cities (urban complexes)

“where is there a need to build resilience, and where is there a need for transformational change?”

What’s necessary for transformation?

- Getting beyond the state of denial

- Creating options for change

- Building the capacity to change

“transformability” - capacity to transform into a different kind of system; a new way of living, and making a living

Transformability

i) preparedness to change

ii) options and opportunities for change new ‘trajectories’; timing

iii) capacity to change- levels of capitals (including ‘social capital’), - higher-scale support

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A resilience approach to the future- don’t aim for some particular “optimal” state; use “guided self-organization” - learn about thresholds, to avoid unwanted states- allow environmental/ecological variability- think about feedbacks and secondary effects (beware of partial solutions!)- promote and sustain diversity, of all kinds (don’t confuse ‘redundancy’ and ‘response diversity’)- encourage learning, innovation and experiments- be ready for transformational change

Celebrate change• resilience is largely about

learning how to change in order not to be changed

Embrace uncertainty• building systems that will be

safe when they fail, rather than trying to build fail-safe systems

• learning to ride the system piggyback

Summary