Social-ecological resilience: A cornerstone of UNDP’s work in building nations that can withstand crisis

1. Social-ecological resilience:
A cornerstone of UNDP’s work in building
nations that can withstand crisis
Caroline Petersen
Brown Bag Lunch, UNDP HQ, August 2012

2. • Resilience: the ability of a system to absorb disturbances while
retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning
• Disturbances: armed conflict, resource scarcity, natural
disasters, economic recession, food price spikes, or climate
change
• Shocks and stresses
Themes emerging:
• Resilience vs resistance
• Importance of
environmental factors

3. Disaster • Feeling full effects of a disturbance
recovery Resilience but recovering quickly and fully
Climate
• Feeling fewer effects from same change
Resistance disturbance adaptation
Climate
Disaster change
prevention Avoidance • Disturbance prevented – no effects
mitigation

4. Supporting services
Provisioning
services
Regulating
services Cultural services

5. • Many of 1.2 billion people living in
severe poverty
• Food, fuel, shelter, medicines, clea
n water, grazing, harvesting forest
products
• Nature as a buffer –
droughts, landslides, floods, and
coastal erosion
• Most vulnerable to
loss, degradation and climate
change effects – poverty, disaster

7. A society with healthy, diverse and functioning ecosystems:
• is more resilient to external disturbances than one in which
natural ecosystems are destroyed or degraded
• has defense mechanisms against natural variability, increased
climate-induced variability, and human-induced disasters
• has a strong base from which to support sustainable
development for all its members

8. If natural ecosystems are destroyed or degraded society becomes
vulnerable:
• Communities may suffer intensified poverty, hunger and material
hardship
• Farmers’ livelihoods may be eroded, e.g. loss of pollinators in
natural habitats
• Loss of ecological infrastructure can leave people vulnerable to
natural and climate change-induced disasters, e.g. landslides
• Safety net and buffer effects crucial for politically fragile states, e.g.
post-conflict or fledgling democracy

9. Tree
Patch
RESILIENCE: The capacity of a system to Landscape
absorb disturbance and reorganize while
undergoing change so as to still retain
essentially the same function, structure,
identity and feedbacks Household
Village
Nation

10. Resilience
Condition of natural resources
Management of natural resources
People’s management capacity
Social and economic institutions

11. IPCC Vulnerability framework
Exposure
Vulnerability to Sensitivity
climate change
Adaptive capacity
Resilience
- Holling, Walker & Salt
- Swedbio / Stockholm Resilience Centre
- Resilience Alliance

12. ability to Resilience
adapt to
and benefit
from
Adaptability
change
Transformability

13. The capacity of a system
to absorb disturbance
and reorganize while
Resilience undergoing change so
as to still retain
essentially the same
function, structure,
identity and feedbacks

14. Latitude The maximum amount a system can be
changed before losing its ability to recover
Resistance The ease or difficulty of changing the system –
how resistant it is to being changed
Precariousness How close the current state of the system is to a
limit or threshold
Panarchy How much the system is influenced by states
and dynamics at scales above and below
Walker, B., Holling, C.S., Carpenter, S.R. and Kinzig, A. (2004) “Resilience, Adaptability and
Transformability in Social-ecological Systems, Ecology & Society 9 (2): 5

15. r - Growth and exploitation
K - Conservation
Ω - Collapse and release
α - Reorganisation

16. The capacity to create a
fundamentally new system
when ecological, economic
Transformability or social conditions make
the existing system
untenable

17. Basin of attraction for Regime 1:
lots of grass, few shrubs, plentiful livestock
Ω
Basin of attraction for Regime 2:
little grass, many shrubs, few livestock

18. The collective
capacity of human
Adaptability actors in a system
to manage
resilience

19. • Prevent the desirable basin from shrinking (L)
• Stay in the desirable basin (R)
• Move away from the threshold (Pr)
• OR… Facilitate a transition to another basin

20. The capacity to create a
fundamentally new system
when ecological, economic
Transformability or social conditions make
the existing system
untenable

21. Management interventions
Reduce
Eutrophic farming
Freshwater Too many inputs
Regime shift
lake Regime A Regime B
nutrients B
lake
Impacts of shift from A to
Evidence
Source of
evidence upstream
Reduced access to Observations
Freshwater Non-
Eutrophic recreation, reduced drinking Strong experiments
eutrophication eutrophic
water quality, risk of fish loss models
Reduced grazing for cattle, Observations
Bush Open Closed
reduced mobility, increased Medium experiments
encroachment grassland woodland
fuelwood models
Yield declines, salt damage Harvesting
Observations
High Bush
Low Closed
to infrastructure and biomass for
Open
Soil salinization
productivity productivity ecosystems, contamination
Strong experiments
encroachm woodland
of drinking water
models energy
grassland Reef Observations
Coral reef Diverse ent
dominated by
Reduced tourism, fisheries,
Strong experiments
degradation coral reef biodiversity
macro-algae models
Fishery decline, loss of
Observations
Coastal hypoxia Non-hypoxic Hypoxic marine biodiversity, toxic Strong
models
algae
River channel
Old channel New channel
Damage to trade and
Strong
Observations Connecting
position infrastructure models
Rainfall Observations
protected
Cloud forest
Vegetation Spatial No spatial Woodland Medium
Productivity declines, areas
patchiness pattern changes
pattern erosion
experiments
models
Wet savanna- Wet Dry savanna Loss of productivity, yield
Medium Models
Dry savanna savanna or desert declines, droughts/dry spells
Loss of productivity, reduced Observations
Cloud forest Cloud forest Woodland Medium
runoff, biodiversity loss models

22. Original state Altered state
High biodiversity Low biodiversity
Coral-dominated NPP Algae-dominated NPP
Medium productivity High primary productivity
High economic value Low economic value
Discussion: what are the management interventions to prevent this shift?

23. Useful to know about thresholds / tipping points at which:
• one regime shifts to another
• pull of alternate basin of attraction is stronger
Implications for management regimes in conservation,
agriculture, rangeland

25. Desertification in the Sahel:
Shift from open acacia scrub with perennial grasses shifted to a mosaic of bare ground
and unpalatable shrubs
Management model to avoid tipping points for soil fertility:
• 3/8 of arable land left fallow
• 1/3 ratio of vegetation grazed to total vegetation in wet season
• economic sustainability measured as a minimum threshold for the
basic needs of household members

26. Shifting cultivation in SE Asia & Africa:
Shift from tropical rainforest via repeated cycles of “slash-and burn”
to unproductive grasslands
But can shift back to productive forest:
• No more than 8 crop cycles
• Applying compost, growing legumes,
planting trees

27. Institutional and social resilience
• Capacity building political, judicial, disaster
response
• Clearing debris, building houses
• Cash for work scheme - 300,000
• Climate change adaptation strategies
• Renewable energy sources
Ecosystem resilience
• Managing watersheds
• Reforestation – 400 ha
• Green jobs in water and soil conservation
• Check weirs, gabions, gulley erosion, river
training, dam rehabilitation

33. • Soil erosion
• Food insecurity
• Water pollution – disease
• Landslides
• Floods
• Saltwater contamination of
groundwater
• Drought
• Impact of hurricanes

35. Land use Change
Prior to 1940’s intact Miombo
& Acacia woodland, low Restoration
population density resulting in 0.3
million ha of
Clearance for cash cropping, woodland restored
agricultural land, increased across 850 villages
population
Tsetse fly
eradication Governance changes
programme (“villagization”) resulting in
initiated loss of traditional
woodland management institutions
clearance
Tipping point reached 1985
If no restoration
1985: Tanzania President strong likelihood
Nyerere declares Shinyanga as of system failure
the “desert of Tanzania
< 1940’s 1950’s 1960’s 1970’s 1985 1986 - ongoing 2004

36. • Building on communities’ traditional knowledge and risk spreading
strategies – forage reserves, crop altitudes, forest clearing
prohibitions
• Increasing communities’ adaptive capacity to reduce vulnerability
to CC impacts – GLECRDS, engineered and natural solutions
• Biodiversity conservation work – ecosystem resilience at landscape
scale e.g. through Protected Area systems
• Sustainable land management
work on reducing degradation
and increasing productivity of
land

37. • How can we provide governments with technical
advice and support in accessing financing in ways
which promote social-ecological resilience at
appropriate scales?
• What what strategies can promote -
 Social resilience and adaptive capacity
 Ecosystem resilience and prevention of
undesirable regime shifts
 Desirable regime shifts?
• How can we achieve a more integrated
understanding of resilience in UNDP’s work?