How social-ecological resilience practice engages with complexity

• This study investigates how cases of social-ecological resilience practice are engaging with complexity across a diversity of contexts and approaches. Compared to some other resilience frameworks, social-ecological resilience thinking explicitly includes the perspective of complex adaptive systems. However, there is still a lack of knowledge of what this perspective means in practice when it comes to interventions aimed at assessing or building resilience, and there is a demand for practical guidance on how to address complexity. With a growing experience of resilience practice from different parts of the world there is now an opportunity to synthesize lessons across cases. In this study, we assessed twelve cases for how they engaged with complexity, according to a framework of six features of complex adaptive systems. The cases are situated in a diversity of contexts, such as rural villages in Tajikistan, a Swedish municipality, Australian catchment management authorities, a Canadian coastal fishery, and the Arctic council. We organized the cases of resilience practice into three types of approaches: 1) Assessment of theory-based resilience frameworks, 2) Participatory resilience assessment, and 3) Resilience-based planning and operations. Our results reveal alternative key strategies for engaging with complexity in each of these approaches, as well as different key tools and novel situated practices among the cases. The results can help practitioners to orientate their resilience practice, address multiple aspects of complexity, and prioritize strategies depending on their context, purpose, and type of approach. We also highlight two areas of advancing resilience practice methods and approaches: narratives for articulating and guiding desirable change, and an international and transdisciplinary community of practice.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Sustainability Science

vetenskap om hållbar utveckling

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)