Resilience Practice: Building Capacity to Absorb Disturbance and Maintain Function

235 Pages·2012·2.12 MB·English

by  Brian Walker

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