Resiliency Thinking Resources!

06/15/2008

An incredible informational resource on all things related to resilience thinking… is available through the new Stockholm Resilience Center. A number of resiliency audio and video presentations are free on the site. The Center, as well as The Resilience Alliance, are two groups bringing together the biological, ecological, economic and social sciences to integrate and cross pollinate their resiliency wisdom.
I’ve been looking to write more detailed posts on some of the presentations and thinking, however you ought not have to wait to discover these resources for yourself. If you’re interested in the field of human resilience and how it is and can be informed by the living sciences… you owe it to yourself to check out:
Resilience 2008: Resilience: Adaptation and Transformation in Turbulent Times
Audio and videos of conference presentations:
A World of Possibilities Radio interviews with some conference presenters:
The Resilience Alliance

What is resilience?

Resilience refers to the capacity of a social-ecological system both to withstand perturbations from for instance climate or economic shocks and to rebuild and renew itself afterwards.
Loss of resilience can cause loss of valuable ecosystem services, and may even lead to rapid transitions or shifts into qualitatively different situations and configurations, evident in, for instance people, ecosystems, knowledge systems, or whole cultures.
The resilience lens provides a new framework for analyzing social—ecological systems in a changing world facing many uncertainties and challenges. It represents an area of explorative research under rapid development with major policy implications for sustainable development.
Why resilience?
Sometimes change is gradual and things move forward in roughly continuous and predictable ways. At other times, change is sudden, disorganizing and turbulent reflected in climate impacts, earth system science challenges and vulnerable regions. Evidence points to a situation where periods of such abrupt change are likely to increase in frequency and magnitude. This challenges the adaptive capacity of societies.
The resilience approach focuses on the dynamic interplay between periods of gradual and sudden change and how to adapt to and shape change.
Research at the Stockholm Resilience Centre will address these challenges in order to generate a deeper understanding of interdependent social-ecological systems for improved governance and policy.

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