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Resilience Practice: Building Capacity to Absorb Disturbance and Maintain Function PDF

235 Pages·2012·2.12 MB·English
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Resilience Practice Resilience Practice Building Capacity to Absorb Disturbance and Maintain Function Brian Walker & David Salt WASHINGTON | COVELO | LONDON Copyright © 2012 Brian Walker and David Salt All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009. ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Walker, B. H. (Brian Harrison), 1940- Resilience practice : building capacity to absorb disturbance and maintain function / Brian Walker, David Salt. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-59726-800-4 (hardback) -- ISBN 1-59726-800-3 (cloth) -- ISBN 978-1-59726-801-1 (paper) 1. Natural resources--Management. 2. Natural resources--Management--Case studies. 3. Resilience (Ecology)--Case studies. 4. Nature conservation--Case studies. 5. Environmental protection--Case studies. I. Salt, David (David Andrew) II. Title. HC59.15.W348 2012 333.7--dc23 2012016122 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: Island Press, complex adaptive systems, sustainability, tipping points, planetary boundaries, adaptive management, adaptive governance and state-and-transition models, natural resources management, sustainable development, human ecology, ecological resilience, resilience thinking, managing resilience, practicing resilience, resilience assessments, specified resilience, general resilience, transformability, self-organizing systems, adaptive cycles, adaptive systems, ecological threshold, panarchy, ecosystem services, resilience. Contents F oreword ix P reface xi A cknowledgments xv 1 Preparing for Practice: The Essence of Resilience Thinking 1 1 CASE STUDY Thresholds on the Range: A Safe Operating Space for Grazing Enterprises 27 2 Describing the System 35 2 CASE STUDY From Taos to Bali and Sri Lanka: Traditional Irrigation at the Crossroads 55 3 Assessing Resilience 67 3 CASE STUDY Assessing Resilience for “the Plan”: The Namoi and Central West Catchment Management Authorities 107 4 Managing Resilience 117 4 CASE STUDY People and Pen Shells, Marine Parks and Rules: Why Governance Is Central to the Resilience of Coastal Fisheries 135 5 Practicing Resilience in Different Ways 145 5 CASE STUDY Out of the Swamp: Lessons from Big Wetlands 169 6 A Resilient World 185 Postscript: A View from the Northwest Passage 201 References 205 Glossary 213 About the Authors 217 Index 219 Foreword T his is a timely and compelling book. The future of our planet and of ourselves is looking increasingly uncertain. We are beset by stresses and shocks—of all kinds, natural and human induced—that are grow- ing in frequency and size. We have shown enormous ingenuity in the past in applying science and technology to increase food production, reduce mortality, and improve the quality of human life, even though the ben- efits of these improvements have not always been shared equally around the planet. But we’ve been less effective in managing our impacts on the environment, whether in our backyard or for the planet as a whole. This book is in some respects a sequel to Brian Walker and David Salt’s 2006 book Resilience Thinking. Since the publication of that book, the number of serious environmental events and unwanted changes occurring in ecosystems, farming regions, forests, and the oceans has increased, as the world approaches planetary boundaries. And as peo- ple have begun to understand the severity of the challenges we face, there is growing interest in the concept of resilience, with more and more people wondering what might happen, and whether we could cope, if and when some of the looming shocks strike us. Resilience thinking has emerged as a valuable way for people to engage with the world. Indeed, interest has reached the point where the term resilience is considered by some to be the “new sustainabil- ity” and is developing into a buzzword. Its increasingly common use in political rhetoric involves various interpretations of what it means and carries the danger of its value being discounted. This book is a practical primer. It takes the reader through the ba- sics that underpin resilience thinking and then sets out how this valu- able set of ideas might actually be applied in assessing and managing resilience. Chapters on how an assessment might be approached are interspersed with case studies that describe how resilience applies in a range of real-world situations. Underlying resilience, in theory and practice, is the need to see the world as consisting of a large number of different systems—small x Foreword and large, natural and physical, often combined in complex ways—on which we depend. It focuses on the changes, and consequences of man- agement actions, that matter most in these systems. To be effective we need to understand how our activities in one part of the system affect other parts, better engage stakeholders to play active roles in working with their systems, and assist in designing fair and robust structures of governance that facilitate that engagement. Big challenges indeed, but we’ve demonstrated the power of systems thinking in the past. The Green Revolution that brought about dramatic increases in food production, increases that were able to keep up with population growth, was an example of a systems approach in practice. New genes were bred into wheat and rice varieties that made them able to take up high dosages of fertilizer and produce high yields. Alongside, the logistics of supplying large quantities of fertilizers, pesticides, and water were put into place. Farmers in the developing countries responded eagerly, and yields grew dramatically. But some of the key linkages in these sys- tems were ignored. For example, the pesticides, while only partially ef- fective at killing the pests, were very effective at killing their enemies, various parasites and predators. As a result the pests exploded, causing billions of dollars of damage. The Green Revolution was poorly resil- ient to the effects of modern pesticides, and the system only recovered when integrated pest management practices were adopted. The Green Revolution is but one example. Others, discussed in this book, include managing livestock grazing and wetlands, designing and managing irrigation systems, and overseeing marine fisheries. Understanding such system dynamics and the role of resilience en- ables managers to better deal with these problems. As a result, resilience thinking is now emerging as a valuable process for engaging with the complexity of the systems around us. This book makes a valuable con- tribution to our efforts to prepare for the growing challenges confronting our planet as the twenty-first century unfolds. Our current trajectory is imperiling future generations, our children and their children, as we approach and overshoot our planet’s safe operating limits. We need the thoughts and tools this book provides if we are to avoid catastrophe. Sir Gordon Conway Professor of International Development Imperial College, London

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