Reframing Resilience

Engaging with resilience debates

Academic and policy interest in the complex dynamics of social, technological and environmental systems has risen in recent years.

A vigorous and sophisticated body of work has developed, focusing on links between social, ecological and sustainability resilience, building on the seminal work of Buzz Holling and notably led by the Resilience Alliance.

The STEPS Centre's theme for 2008 is resilience. Throughout the year we will be engaging with resilience thinking using the Centre’s distinctive approach of combining development studies with science and technology studies. The issues we are investigating include:

• Potentials and tensions in linking resilience thinking with an emphasis on social justice and reducing vulnerability
• Insights constructivist perspectives and the politics of knowledge might bring to resilience thinking
• Roles resilience can play in addressing long term structural change and radical transformations
• Potential for fruitful interchange between work on science and technology governance, and resilience studies
• Broader implications and dangers of resilience discourse

And we will be exploring the practical implications of these topics for policy challenges around agricultural livelihoods, water, peri-urban dynamics, epidemics and regulation in southern settings.

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STEPS Symposium 2008

• Symposium programme (pdf 83kb)
• Photos from the Symposium (Flickr)

The 2008 STEPS Centre Symposium, 24-26 September 2008, brought together leading protagonists from diverse disciplinary perspectives to explore some of the wider frontier challenges in the resilience field. We aimed at progress on both intellectual and practical fronts.

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STEPS Working Paper 13: Resilience

Re-framing Resilience: Trans-disciplinarity, Reflexivity and Progressive Sustainability – a Symposium Report (pdf 496kb)
Edited by Melissa Leach

How does resilience intersect with development and debates about it? What insights does resilience thinking bring to understanding
and action concerned with reducing poverty, vulnerability and marginalisation? What are some of the frontier challenges, tensions and gaps as resilience thinking engages with perspectives and debates from other angles and disciplines? The STEPS Centre Symposium, held at Sussex University from 24-25 September 2008, set out to explore these questions, and to consider their implications for practical policy challenges in fields such as climate change adaptation, agricultural innovation,
pharmaceutical and seed regulation, dealing with disease
epidemics, water management and peri-urban transitions.
Only available online, free to download.
Need help with downloading? See our help page

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Resilience on the blog

Resilience, adaption and transformation in turbulent times Melissa Leach, STEPS Centre director, blogged from the Resilience Alliance conference 2008

 

Complexity, simplification and resilience Adrian Smith, STEPS Centre member, blogged from the Resilience Alliance conference 2008

 

Will managing food systems for resilience maker us more food secure? (Slideshare) Polly Ericksen, Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University gave a STEPS Seminar. Read the blog

• All posts about resilience on our blog, The Crossing

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STEPS resilience resources

• Social-ecological resilience and socio-technical transitions: critical issues for sustainability governance, STEPS Working Paper 8 (pdf 763kb) by Adrian Smith and Andy Stirling
  
  
• The globalization of socio-ecological systems: An agenda
  for scientific research (pdf 218kb) by Oran R. Young, Frans Berkhout, Gilberto C. Gallopin, Marco A. Janssen, Elinor Ostrom, Sander van der Leeuw
  Frans Berkhout, Professor of Innovation and Sustainability and Director, Institute for Environmental Studies/Instituut voor Milieuvraagstukken (IVM), Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, is a keynote speaker at the STEPSSymposium.
  
  
•  "The social production of ecosystem service" (pdf 204kb) by Henrik Ernstson. This manuscript is part of a PhD thesis in Natural Resource Management from Stockholm University that will be publicly defended in September 2008. It is aimed at adding what has often been missing in resilience research, the social equity dimension. Ernstson strives to do this without loosing the management problem of ecosystems. How are ecosystem services distibuted? How do we sustain ecosystem services? How do decisions and the organizational forms (e.g. co-management) regarding the management of ecosystems effect the distribution of ecosystem benefits?
  
  
• Shaping technology systems: critical issues for sustainability governance (pdf 222kb) a presentation by Adrian Smith & Andy Stirling at the UKIHDP Berlin Conference 2008
  
  
• The Problem of Fit among Biophysical Systems, Environmental and Resource Regimes, and Broader Governance Systems: Insights and Emerging Challenges (pdf 216kb) Victor Galaz, Per Olsson, Thomas Hahn, Carl Folke, and Uno Svedin
  
  
• Navigating the transition to ecosystem-based management of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia (pdf 245kb) Per Olsson, Carl Folke, and Terry P. Hughes
  
  
• Shooting the Rapids: Navigating Transitions to Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems (pdf 104kb) Per Olsson, Lance H. Gunderson, Steve R. Carpenter, Paul Ryan, Louis Lebel, Carl Folke, and C. S. Holling
  
  
• Adaptive Governance of Socio-Ecological Systems (pdf 253kb) Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg - Centre for Transdisciplinary Environmental Research and Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden

 

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