Building or reducing resilience in our social-ecological systems.
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Building or reducing resilience in our social-ecological systems. Nick Abel
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Presented by Nick Abel as part of the 2009 Place and Purpose Symposium run by the Landscape Science Cluster
Transcript of Building or reducing resilience in our social-ecological systems.
Building or reducing resilience in our social-ecological systems.
Nick Abel
How to adapt to an uncertain future: build resilience,
or transform?
Nick Abel
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
1/10/2009
CSIRO.
A social ecological system can usually be in more
than one ‘regime’
CSIRO.
The adaptive cycle
aΩ
rK
r: growth / exploitation
resources readily available
K: conservation
things change
slowly; resources
‘locked up’
W: release
things change very rapidly;
‘locked up’ resources suddenly
released
a: re-organization/renewal
system boundaries tenuous;
innovations are possible
MDB
N Aus
CSIRO.
Cross scale linkages of adaptive cycles
CSIRO.
Transforming the Murray Darling Basin
• Think cross-scale
• Social process
• Values – what do we want them to be?
• Possible alternative regimes, ‘good’ and ‘bad’
• Winners & losers
• Feedbacks and thresholds
• Windows of opportunity & feasible paths
• Pilot projects
• Disinvestments in the current regime
• Investments in the new regime
• Rule changes
• Incentive changes
CSIRO.
Building resilience in Northern Australia
• Values
• Drivers and scenarios for them
• Cross scale influences
• Slow variables, feedbacks, & thresholds
CSIRO.
CSIRO.
groundwater
Following the flood...
Large floodplain, covered with healthy vegetation
dry rise healthy
vegetation
Surface water enlivens the landscape
CSIRO.
groundwater
Once the surface water’s gone...
Healthy vegetation & animals concentrate in waterholes
maintained by groundwater
dry risewaterholehealthy
vegetation
CSIRO.
groundwater
If groundwater extraction is excessive...
Waterholes dry up, area of healthy vegetation declines,
locals, tourists & animals suffer
healthy
vegetation
dry
waterhole
The landscape is sensitive to small changes in groundwater depth
CSIRO.
CSIRO.
CSIRO.
Building Resilience in NA - continued
• Possible alternative regimes
• Winners & losers
• Potential shocks
• Vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities
• Institutions & investments for resilience
CSIRO.
Institutions & investments for resilience
• Invest assuming climatic change will happen
• Invest in a diversity of resource uses
• Limit investments in enterprises & infrastructure that are
irreversible
• Identify thresholds of potential concern
• Can new land and water rights be time-bound?
• Develop ‘rules for changing the rules’
• Invest in self-organising capacity
• Invest in decentralised governance
CSIRO.
Workbooks for practitioners and researchers
http://www.resalliance.org/1.php
The Environment Institute
