Governing resilience building in Thailand's tourism-dependent coastal communities: Conceptualising stakeholder agency in social-ecological systems

In current scientific efforts to harness complementarity between resilience and vulnerability theory, one response is an ‘epistemological shift’ towards an evolutionary, learning based conception of the ‘systems-actor’ relation in social-ecological systems. In this paper, we contribute to this movement regarding the conception of stakeholder agency within social-ecological systems. We examine primary evidence from the governance of post-disaster recovery and disaster risk reduction efforts in Thailand's coastal tourism-dependent communities following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Through an emerging storyline from stakeholders, we construct a new framework for conceptualising stakeholder agency in social-ecological systems, which positions the notion of resilience within a conception of governance as a negotiated normative process. We conclude that if resilience theory is proposed as the preferred approach by which disaster risk reduction is framed and implemented, it needs to acknowledge much more explicitly the role of stakeholder agency and the processes through which legitimate visions of resilience are generated.     

Complex resource supply chains display higher resilience to simulated climate shocks

Global resource supply chains deliver products such as fish, rice and minerals from producers to consumers around the world, linking disparate regions and economies. These supply chains are increasingly exposed to the impacts of a changing climate, yet receive little attention relative to the study of the production phase. Too often, business learns from experience if and how their supply chains can withstand and recover from climate shocks with little insight on proactively developing climate resilient supply chains. We use a network-based simulation approach to estimate the resilience of supply chains, particularly to disruption experienced during climate-related extreme events. We consider supply chain examples from three Australian resource industries – fisheries, agriculture and mining – that have experienced climate shocks in recent years. We derive four supply chain indices – evenness, resilience, continuity of supply and climate resilience – to estimate the performance of simple and complex supply chains in each industry. As with ecological systems, we show that complex supply chains with a large number of nodes and links are more resilient to disruption. Critically, all chains, regardless of their complexity, will have diminished resilience as climate disruptions become more frequent. This highlights the importance of considering the broader economic benefits of diversified chains, leading to risk reduction and improved design post-disruption. It also reinforces the importance of a systems approach to risk management in supply chains, particularly in considering adaptation options for addressing direct and indirect impacts on the chain as well as the global challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.     

Governance,complexity, and resilience

This special issue brings together prominent scholars to explore novel multilevel governance challenges posed by the behavior of dynamic and complex social-ecological systems. Here we expand and investigate the emerging notion of “resilience” as a perspective for understanding how societies can cope with, and develop from, disturbances and change. As the contributions to the special issue illustrate, resilience thinking in its current form contains substantial normative and conceptual difficulties for the analysis of social systems. However, a resilience approach to governance issues also shows a great deal of promise as it enables a more refined understanding of the dynamics of rapid, interlinked and multiscale change. This potential should not be underestimated as institutions and decision-makers try to deal with converging trends of global interconnectedness and increasing pressure on social-ecological systems.     

Reflexive adaptation for resilient water services: Lessons for theory and practice

‘Adaptive management’ concern attempts to manage complex social-ecological and socio-technical systems in nimble ways to enhance their resilience. In this paper, three forms of adaptive management are identified, ‘scientific’ forms focused on collation of scientific data in response to management experiments, but more recent developments adding processes of collaboration as well as emphasising the need for reflexivity, that is, conscious processes of opening up debates to different perspectives and values. While reflexive adaptive management has been increasingly discussed in theory, there is a lack of examples of what its application means in practice.As a response, this paper examines an ‘Adaptive Planning Process’ (APP), seeking to apply reflexive adaptive management as a means to improve climate resilience in the UK water sector. The APP’s three inter linked workshops – Aspiration, Scenario and Roadmapping – were co-developed and trialled in a water utility. By describing and justifying the choices made in the development of the APP, the paper aims to reveal some of the challenges that arise when trying to design processes that achieve reflexive adaptation.The paper concludes that, if applied to planning for climate change, reflexive adaptation has the potential to explore multiple value positions, highlight different potential futures and acknowledge (and hence, partly address) power differentials, and therefore to offer the possibility of real change. On the basis of the trial, we argue that through tapping the depth and breadth of internal knowledge the APP process created the potential for decision making to be joined up across different parts of the utility, and hence offering new strategies and routes for addressing uncertainties and delivering more resilient water services.     

Institutional dynamics: Resilience,vulnerability and adaptation in environmental and resource regimes

Like all social institutions, governance systems that address human–environment relations – commonly know as environmental or resource regimes – are dynamic. Although analysts have examined institutional change from a variety of perspectives, a particularly puzzling feature of institutional dynamics arises from the fact that some regimes linger on relatively unchanged even after they have become ineffective, while others experience state changes or even collapse in the wake of seemingly modest trigger events. This article employs the framework developed to study resilience, vulnerability, and adaptation in socio-ecological systems (the SES framework) in an effort to illuminate the conditions leading to state changes in environmental and resource regimes. Following a discussion of several conceptual issues, it examines institutional stresses, stress management mechanisms, and the changes that occur when interactive and cumulative stresses overwhelm these mechanisms. An important conclusion concerns the desirability of thinking systematically about institutional reform in a timely manner, in order to be prepared for brief windows of opportunity to make planned changes in environmental regimes when state changes occur.     

Towards integrated governance for water, health and social–ecological systems: The watershed governance prism

This article proposes a shift toward the integrated governance of watersheds as a basis for fostering health, sustainability and social–ecological resilience. The authors suggest that integrated watershed governance is more likely when different perspectives, including health and well-being, are explicitly understood, communicated, and sought as co-benefits of watershed management. A new conceptual device – the watershed governance prism – is introduced in relation to the multiple facets of governance that characterize contemporary water resources management and examined as an integrative framework to link social and environmental concerns with the determinants of health in the watershed context. The authors assess the diagnostic and communicative potential of such a framework, discussing its utility as a concise depiction of multiple, interacting policy priorities and as a guide to integrate different research and policy domains into the governance of water, health and social–ecological systems.     

Governing geoengineering research: why, when and how?

Research on geoengineering – deliberate management of the Earth’s climate system – is being increasingly discussed within the science and policy communities. While justified as necessary in order to expand the range of options available to policy makers in the future, geoengineering research has already engendered public controversy. Proposed projects have been protested or cancelled, and calls for a governance framework abound. In this paper, we consider the reasons why geoengineering research might be subject to additional governance and suggest mechanisms that might be usefully applied in developing such a framework. We consider criteria for governance as raised by a review of the growing literature on geoengineering and other controversial scientific topics. We suggest three families of concern that any governance research framework must respond to: the direct physical risks of the research; the transparency and responsibility in decision making for the research; and the larger societal meanings of the research. We review what mechanisms might be available to respond to these three families of concern, and consider how these might apply to geoengineering research.     

An indicator framework for assessing livelihood resilience in the context of social–ecological dynamics

Livelihood resilience draws attention to the factors and processes that keep livelihoods functioning despite change and thus enriches the livelihood approach which puts people, their differential capabilities to cope with shocks and how to reduce poverty and improve adaptive capacity at the centre of analysis. However, the few studies addressing resilience from a livelihood perspective take different approaches and focus only on some dimensions of livelihoods. This paper presents a framework that can be used for a comprehensive empirical analysis of livelihood resilience. We use a concept of resilience that considers agency as well as structure. A review of both theoretical and empirical literature related to livelihoods and resilience served as the basis to integrate the perspectives. The paper identifies the attributes and indicators of the three dimensions of resilience, namely, buffer capacity, self-organisation and capacity for learning. The framework has not yet been systematically tested; however, potentials and limitations of the components of the framework are explored and discussed by drawing on empirical examples from literature on farming systems. Besides providing a basis for applying the resilience concept in livelihood-oriented research, the framework offers a way to communicate with practitioners on identifying and improving the factors that build resilience. It can thus serve as a tool for monitoring the effectiveness of policies and practices aimed at building livelihood resilience.     

Scalar capital as ingredient of success in conservation governance: evidence from Melanesia

Problems of scale abound in the governance of complex social-ecological systems. Conservation governance, for example, typically occurs at a single scale, but needs to inform governance and action at other scales to be truly effective at achieving social and ecological outcomes. This process is conventionally conceived as unidirectional – either scaling down or scaling up – in the way it both exploits and creates the natural, social, human, institutional, and financial resources and benefits that are collectively known as conservation ‘capital’. Here we analyse multiscale conservation governance and the different types of capital that impede or facilitate its effectiveness. Comparative analysis of conservation planning in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, through in-depth document review, key informant interview, and participant observation, reveals limited evidence of unidirectional processes. Instead, we observe multidirectional scaling pathways, cultivated by the following six scale-explicit characteristics of effective conservation governance: 1) multiscale understanding, 2) scale jumping, 3) scaled leadership characteristics, 4) scaled stakeholder engagement, 5) scaled policy frameworks, and 6) scaled institutional settings. While the latter four are familiar concepts, though not always recognised as explicitly scalar, we know little about the first two attributes of conservation governance. Based on this novelty and relevance, we propose a new form of capital – ‘scalar capital’ – to complement natural, social, human, institutional, and financial capitals as both input and outcome of effective conservation governance. We find that scalar capital facilitates flows of different resources (data, conservation objectives, practitioner experience, institutional support, and funding) in multiple directions. Critically, we present empirical evidence that conservation governance can foster scalar capital to improve outcomes across multiple scales.     

Navigating climate crises in the Great Barrier Reef

A dramatic escalation of extreme climate events is challenging the capacity of environmental governance regimes to sustain and improve ecosystem outcomes. It has been argued that actors within adaptive governance regimes can help to steer environmental systems toward sustainability in times of crisis. Yet there is little empirical evidence of how acute climate crises are navigated by actors operating within adaptive governance regimes, and the factors that influence their responses. Here, we qualitatively assessed the actions key governance actors took in response to back-to-back mass coral bleaching – an extreme climate event – of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017, and explored their perceptions of barriers and catalysts to these responses. This research was, in part, a product of collaboration and knowledge co-production with Great Barrier Reef governance actors aimed at improving responses to climate crises in the region. We found five major categories of activity that actors engaged with in the wake of recurrent mass coral bleaching: assessing the scale and extent of bleaching, sharing information, communicating bleaching to the public, building local resilience, and addressing global threats. These actions were both catalyzed and hindered by a range of factors that fall within different domains of adaptive capacity; such as assets, social organization, and agency. We discuss the implications of our findings as they relate to existing research on adaptive capacity and adaptive governance. We conclude by coalescing insights from our interviews and a participant engagement process to highlight four key ways in which the ability of governance actors, and the Great Barrier Reef governance regime more broadly, can be better prepared for, and more effectively respond to extreme climate events. Our research provides empirical insight into how crises are experienced by governance actors in a large-scale environmental system, potentially providing lessons for similar systems across the globe.     

Unpacking governance: Building adaptive capacity to climate change of river basins in Brazil

Governance and institutions are critical determinants of adaptive capacity and resilience. Yet the make-up and relationships between governance components and mechanisms that may or may not contribute to adaptive capacity remain relatively unexplored empirically. This paper builds on previous research focusing on integrated water resources management in Brazil to ‘unpack’ water governance mechanisms that may shape the adaptive capacity of water systems to climatic change. We construct a river basin index to characterize governance approaches in 18 Brazilian river basins, apply a reliability test to assess the validity of these governance indicators, and use in-depth qualitative data collected in a subsample of the basins to explore the relationship between the governance indicators and adaptive capacity. The analysis suggests a positive relationship between integrated water governance mechanisms and adaptive capacity. In addition, we carry out a cluster analysis to group the basins into types of governance approaches and further unveil potential relationships between the governance variables and overall adaptive capacities. The cluster analysis indicates that tensions and tradeoffs may exist between some of the variables, especially with equality of decision making and knowledge availability; a finding that has implications for decision makers aiming to build adaptive capacity and resilience through governance and institutional means.     

Vulnerability

This paper reviews research traditions of vulnerability to environmental change and the challenges for present vulnerability research in integrating with the domains of resilience and adaptation. Vulnerability is the state of susceptibility to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental and social change and from the absence of capacity to adapt. Antecedent traditions include theories of vulnerability as entitlement failure and theories of hazard. Each of these areas has contributed to present formulations of vulnerability to environmental change as a characteristic of social-ecological systems linked to resilience. Research on vulnerability to the impacts of climate change spans all the antecedent and successor traditions. The challenges for vulnerability research are to develop robust and credible measures, to incorporate diverse methods that include perceptions of risk and vulnerability, and to incorporate governance research on the mechanisms that mediate vulnerability and promote adaptive action and resilience. These challenges are common to the domains of vulnerability, adaptation and resilience and form common ground for consilience and integration.     

Addressing knowledge gaps for transboundary environmental governance

Knowledge is widely considered a key ingredient for the effective and sustainable governance of the environment. In transboundary settings – i.e., where political boundaries cross natural resource system boundaries – there are considerable barriers to knowledge production and use. Resulting knowledge gaps can be barriers to governance. This research examines three case studies in which international river basin organizations, tasked with facilitating cooperation in transboundary river basins, recognized and addressed knowledge gaps to support governance of shared waters. We synthesize across the three case studies to develop a typology of knowledge gaps and the strategies used to address those gaps. In identifying common types of knowledge gaps and the on-the-ground strategies used to fill them, this research provides an important framework for assessing and theorizing knowledge at the transboundary scale, as well as useful recommendations and examples for practitioners seeking to develop that knowledge.     

Making seed systems more resilient to stress

While seed security is key to food security, concrete means for building resilient seed systems remain unexplored in research and practice. A new toolkit, the Seed System Security Assessment (SSSA), examines what actually happens to seed systems during crises and highlights specific features that foster or undermine resilience. Drawing evidence from SSSAs in contexts of political and civil conflict (Zimbabwe and South Sudan), earthquake (Haiti) and drought (Kenya), the article shows that seed systems prove to be relatively resilient, at least in terms of meeting farmers’ planting needs for the upcoming season. Altering crop profiles, making use of multiple delivery channels, and innovating (for example, with new barter mechanisms) all become key, as does mobilizing cross-scale seed supply linkages. However, despite short-term survival, in the medium term, both formal and informal seed systems will have to be transformed to address agro-ecological and farming system challenges, partially shaped by global environmental changes. Key is that formal seed systems will play a catalytic but supporting role, with the onus on resilience response lying within informal systems, and especially with local markets and their traders. Also key is that achieving seed security in fluctuating environments will hinge on developing resilience-linked information systems which put as much weight on helping farmers strategize as on delivering the planting material itself. The article defines seed system resilience, identifies eight principles linked to processes that build such resilience, and makes 15 practical recommendations for enhancing seed system resilience in the short and medium term. Finally, drawing insights from seed systems, processes central for building resilience in other development sectors are highlighted.     

The anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations: Hybrid approaches and dominant perspectives

Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connect to attempts to guide policy and action toward transformative change. We analyze perspectives on anticipatory governance in a global network of food system foresight practitioners (Foresight4Food) – using a workshop, interviews, and a survey as our sources of data. We connect frameworks on anticipatory governance and on transformation to analyse different perspectives on the future and their implications for actions in the present to transform food systems and offer new insights for theory and practice. In the global Foresight4Food network, we find that most foresight practitioners use hybrid approaches to anticipatory governance that combine fundamentally different assumptions about the future. We also find that despite these diverse food futures, anticipation processes predominantly produce recommendations that follow more prediction-oriented forms of strategic planning in order to mitigate future risks. We further demonstrate that much anticipation for transformation uses the language on deep uncertainty and deliberative action without fully taking its consequences on board. Thus, opportunities for transforming future food systems are missed due to these implicit assumptions that dominate the anticipatory governance of food systems. Our combined framework helps researchers and practitioners to be more reflexive of how assumptions about key human systems such as food system futures shape what is prioritized/marginalized and included/excluded in actions to transform such systems.     

Governing epidemics in an age of complexity: Narratives,politics and pathways to sustainability

This paper elaborates a ‘pathways approach’ to addressing the governance challenges posed by the dynamics of complex, coupled, multi-scale systems, while incorporating explicit concern for equity, social justice and the wellbeing of poor and marginalised groups. It illustrates the approach in relation to current policy challenges of dealing with epidemics and so-called ‘emerging infectious diseases’ such as avian influenza and haemorrhagic fevers, which involve highly dynamic, cross-scale, often-surprising viral–social–political–ecological interactions. Amidst complexity, we show how different actors in the epidemics field produce particular narratives which frame systems and their dynamics in different ways, promote particular goals and values, and justify particular pathways of disease response. These range from ‘outbreak narratives’ emphasising threat to global populations, to alternative but often marginalised narratives variously emphasising long-term structural, land use and environmental change, local knowledge and livelihood goals. We highlight tendencies – supported by cognitive, institutional and political pressures – for powerful actors and institutions to ‘close down’ around narratives that emphasise stability, underplaying longer term, less controllable dynamics. Arguing that governance approaches need to ‘open up’ to embrace strategies for resilience and robustness in relation to epidemics, we outline what some of the routes towards this might involve, and what the resulting governance models might look like. Key are practices and arrangements that involve flexibility, diversity, adaptation, learning and reflexivity, as well as highlighting and supporting alternative pathways within a progressive politics of sustainability.     

Upscaling the resilience assessment through comparative analysis

Resilience is the capacity of any system to maintain its function, structure and identity despite disturbances. Assessing resilience has been elusive due to high levels of abstraction that are difficult to empirically test, or the lack of high quality data required once appropriate proxies are identified. Most resilience assessments are limited to specific situation arenas, making comparision one of the unresolved challenges. Here we show how leveraging comparative analysis can provide insights on how Arctic communities (N = 40) can best deal with social and environmental change. We found that the capacity to self-organize, and nurturing diversity are sufficient conditions for Arctic communities whose livelihoods have been resilient, or for communities whose livelihoods have been transformed. Our study provides an alternative perspective on how to assess resilience by leveraging comparsion across cases. It also identify governance patways to support adaptations and transformations in the Arctic, a geography with some of the most dramatic social and natural challenges to come.     

Resilient livelihoods in an era of global transformation

Much as development’s understanding of livelihoods became intertwined with notions of sustainability in the late 1990s, today livelihoods analysis is taking up the rise of resilience in the development and climate change adaptation communities of practice. The emergent concept of resilient livelihoods risks perpetuating problematic framings of both socio-ecological and livelihoods dynamics that limit the effectiveness of development and adaptation interventions. In this paper, I connect recent contributions to the livelihoods and socio-ecological resilience literatures to define resilient livelihoods as projects aimed at the achievement of well-being in a manner that preserves existing systems of meaning, order, and privilege. These projects (re)produce socio-ecologies, deeply human assemblages of socio-cultural and biotic elements. So framed, the idea of resilient livelihoods centers meaning, power, difference, and agency in both livelihoods and socio-ecological dynamics. It opens up new understandings of the character, sources, and importance of resilience in livelihoods, allows for the identification of new indicators of livelihoods fragility, points to previously-overlooked sources of potential livelihoods transformation and change, and suggests sites of productive engagement between development and adaptation interventions and transformation and change.     

冰冻圈影响区恢复力研究和实践:进展与展望

气候变化引起全球冰冻圈各要素普遍退缩,进而深刻影响着区域生态安全和社会经济发展。恢复力(resilience)以降低脆弱性为目标,维持和培育社会-生态系统应对外界胁迫和干扰的能力,为应对冰冻圈变化引起的负面影响、实现区域可持续发展提供了重要的理论和实践框架。文中辨识了全球变暖背景下冰冻圈过程和功能变化对主要社会-生态系统的影响,综述了当前冰冻圈影响区恢复力相关的主要研究和实践进展,探讨了加强冰冻圈影响区社会-生态系统恢复力的路径。我们认为未来要进一步加强区域和全球冰冻圈变化及其影响综合评估,深入研究冰冻圈影响区社会-生态系统变化的驱动机制、级联效应和稳态转换;在实践上将减缓、适应和转型有机结合,建立管控区域社会-生态系统演化的综合监测、评估、预警和决策系统,从而促进系统朝着更具恢复力和可持续的路径发展。