1. Resilience
Topic Working Group
Line Gordon,
Stockholm Resilience Centre
Basin Leader Meeting
Vientiane, Laos, 18. Jan. 2011

2. Resilience
Topic Working Group
1. What is a resilience perspective?
2. Examples of resilience research
2 E l f ili h
(mainly from CPWF 1)
3. How can the group work?
4. Questions for discussion

3. Landslides in Brazil,
Flooding in Queensland
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
QuickTime
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

4. Foley et al. 2005

5. Changing
preconditions
in the
Anthropocene
• Rapid environmental
change
• Altered and new
disturbance regimes
• How to ensure
capacity to cope,
adapt and transform?
Steffen et al. 2004

6. Regime shifts / Tipping points /
Critical transitions
Regime shifts are:
Suprising, sudden shifts of stability domains/
development trajectories
Once a threshold is crossed it is difficult to go back
(assymetry and/or hysteresis)
Management practices will need to adapt,
or try to transform
y

7. Resilience deals with the tension between persistence and
c a ge
change

8. Resilience is the capacity of a
system—be it an individual, a forest,
y , ,
a city, or an economy — to deal with
change and continue to develop
Rather than stability, change is seen as the underlying
variable, uncertainty (disturbances/shocks) inherent to
systems
Sven-Göran “Svennis” Eriksson (Swedish successful soccer coach): “It is a wrong strategy not
( ) g gy
to change a winning team”

9. Resilience is about:
a) withstanding shocks and disturbances (like climate
change or financial crisis), and
b) using such events to catalyze renewal novelty and
renewal, novelty,
innovation
The challenge in a nutshell:
How far can a system be perturbed before a regime shift
y p g
happens?
How much shock can a system absorb before it transforms
into something fundamentally different?
How can active transformations from an undesirable social-
ecological state into a better one be orchestrated?
(Folke 2010, Seeds magazine)

10. Three premises underpinning
resilience perspective:
1) Humans and nature are strongly coupled and coevolving,
coevolving
and should therefore be conceived of as one “social-
ecological” system.
2) Social-ecological systems are complex adaptive systems
(e.g. highly unpredictable, self-organizing)
3) Cross scale and dynamic interactions represent new
challenges for governance and management

11. Feedback theory - practice - theory
“Despite recent interest in resilience, there is still little empirical
evidence to demonstrate how resilience may be enhanced by
agriculture investments (Walker et al 2010)
investments” al.
CPWF uniquely suited to contribute to improved resilience
thinking i several areas - can contribute to resilience theory (
hi ki in l ib ili h (not
only practice) in e.g. these fields
• Understanding of resilience for development/poverty alleviation
• Understanding of resilience in human-dominated landscapes
• Global international network of local in-depth site-specific
knowledge/understanding/wisdom
•I
Improve the interplay of theory and practice - (
th i t l f th d ti (research f
h for
development).

12. Potential core themes of a TWG on Resilience
1. Linked social-ecological systems and the role of
ecosystem services trade offs and synergies
trade-offs
2. Regime shifts and the tension of persistence and
development (coping, adapting and transforming)
3
3. The role o d stu ba ces a d s oc s for innovation
e o e of disturbances and shocks o o at o
and persistence
4.
4 Operationalising adaptive management in
development context

13. 1. Linked social-ecological systems and the role
of ecosystem services trade offs and synergies
trade-offs
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Conceptual overview of wetland sub-systems, PN 30
a) Can management of regulating services help build resilience of
reg lating ser ices b ild
provisioning services?
b) Empirical link between poverty and ecosystem services (Poorer
households resilience often more directly dependent on ES’s)
- how does this dependence change in times of crises?

14. 2. Regime shifts and the tension of persistence and
development (coping adapting and transforming)
(coping,
Resilient Non resilient
Non resilient Resilient
From A. Vidal

15. Synthetic analysis and concetualisation of
resilience along a blue to g
g green continuum
Example from IWRM in Southern Africa
Paa Boong Paa Thaam Multiple use systems
Wetlands in the Mekong basin IWRM in water scarce Southern Africa
Productivity
Productivity
Green water Blue water Green water Blue water Productivity Green water Blue water
Vidal, van Koppen, Love & Blake, 2010

16. Review of CPWF adaptations and
transformation cases
t f ti
Re-greening
Re greening the Uganda
“Cattle Corridor”
Restoring river flows, quality
and ecosystem services
in the Andes
Restoring the sustainability
of the Mekong Delta
agro-ecosystem
16 Vidal, Mpairwe, Peden, Quintero, Tuong 2010

17. Lessons learnt on adaptability
and transformability
Degraded food producing systems are
often locked in resilient (poverty) traps
Institutional and technical innovations mostly enable
adaptation (transformation seems to require more time and
dramatic changes)
Long-term efforts required to
st e gt e t e es e ce o
strengthen the resilience of
desired states
17 Vidal, Mpairwe, Peden, Quintero, Tuong 2010

18. What does resilience mean
for big i
f bi river basins?
b i ?
Suggested basin closure as a
potential threshold for regime
shifts
Conceptual model of basin interactions
Basin resilience risk being undermined by
conventional development Cummings et al, in press

19. 4. Operationalising adaptive management in a
development context
Example from small-scale
fisheries on participative ways
of scoping the baseline for QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
adaptive management
Integrated assessment map
QuickTime™ d
Q i kTi ™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Identification of potential socially
defined thresholds Bene et al. PN 72 project report

20. WORKPLAN OF THE RESILIENCE TWG
1) D
Development of a position paper
l t f iti
Link theoretical approaches in resilience thinking to case studies
in the challenge program.
2) TWG establishment and launch
a) Together with BL’s identify resilience champions in the
different challenge program basins
b) Launch the Topic Working Group
An initial small, dynamic, creative, proactive and self-
organizing group
Ensure resilience is anchored in real cases in the basins
Together develop strategy for working w ph 2 projects
Launch of the working group during Resilience 2011
conference in Arizona (OBS!! 11-17 March)
( )
Connect to resilience scholars in other forums

21. 3) Synthesis of phase 1, overview of phase 2
Go through outputs from phase 1 and analyze linkages
to resilience.
Help with, a d initiate pape s that can provide sy t es s
e p t , and t ate papers t at ca p o de synthesis
and/or conceptual development that will facilitate the
future research in the group.
4) Forum
Participate actively in the organization of the Forum in
Nov 2011
5) Facilitation, learning and mentoring
) , g g
This activity will be developed together with the TWG
core group when that is established

22. Questions - conceptual to practical
To bring home:
• How is a resilience thinking different from other approaches
that deals with integrated/interdisciplinary issues related to
sustainability, sustainable livelihoods etc?
• Is resilience always desirable? Can we specifically think
about how cases in CPWF can contribute to understanding
transformations?
To discuss:
• What can a resilience approach bring to your projects?
• How can your projects contribute to resilience thinking theory
and practice?

23. Questions - operational
• What projects in your basins are relevant for the
resilience TWG?
• Who could be resilience champions in your basins?
• Do you have ideas based on your understanding of
ideas,
the basins, on what issues the resilience TWG
could/should address?