Welcome to Stockholm Resilience Centre – Research for Governance of Social-Ecological Systems
Resilience and Social-Ecological Systems
Linacre Lectures 2012 Carl Folke Beijer Institute
Stockholm Resilience Centre Resilience Alliance
Carpenter et al. 2009. E&S
Carpenter et al. 2009. Ecology and Society
Does the Resilience Lens help provide new pictures, and surprising ones?
Carpenter et al. 2009. Ecology and Society
Reconnecting to the Biosphere • Global change – new forms of interactions • The resilience lens – persistence, adaptability, transformability • Examples of transformations towards ecosystem stewardship and adaptive governance
A biosphere shaped by humanity
Scale increase – The Great Acceleration
Steffen et al. 2011. Ambio
Reconnecting to the Biosphere
“Welcome to the Anthropocene Humans have changed the way the world works. Now they have to change the way they think about it, too Humans have become a force of nature reshaping the planet on a geological scale—but at a farfaster-than-geological speed.” May 28th, 2011
New forms of interactions and feedbacks
Folke et al. 2011. Ambio, Walker et al. 2009. Science
In the Anthropocene –
opportunities and challenges • dealing with a new type of “great acceleration” with many people moving from poverty to middleclass • new global dynamics of connectivity, mobility, multiplications of linkages, speed of interactions and new combinations of socialecological shocks and surprises move humanity into new terrain • information technology, revolutions in microbiology and genetics and nanotechnology are now taking off
> 50% live in urban environments Many have lost contact with the Biosphere
florianotte.webseiten.cc/ alexhaensel/alex/pho...
Globalisation, seafood production and marine ecosystem support
Fishmeal imports to shrimp farming in Thailand
Deutsch et al. 2007. Global Environmental Change 17:238-249
Deuts
Ecosystem support to cities Cities in the Baltic Sea drainage basin > 250 000 inhabitants
Agriculture 10-30 km2 Lakes 50 km2
Forests 20 km2 Wetlands 30-75 km2 Agriculture 50 km2
Marine 135 km2
Folke et al. 1997. Ambio
City 1 km2
Forests 355-870 km2
Reconnecting to the Biosphere • Integrated economies and societies • The living resource base as the foundation for the integration • Strengthening the ability of people to enhance Earth’s life support capacity for societal development and human wellbeing Transformation towards global sustainability
Common Pool Resource Stewardship and Climate Change
Seafood management in Maine, USA a success story
Lobster aquaculture - a gilded trap?
Rhode Island – 72% loss from shell disease Loss of diversity - simplification Steneck et al. 2011. Cons Biol
Thresholds and tipping points
Transitions and regime shifts
Scheffer et al. 2001. Nature Folke et al. 2004. AREER
Social-ecological interactions – global markets, land use, disturbance, regional tipping and climate the case of the Borneo rainforests, and the weather event El Niùo
Turning El NiĂąo from creator to destroyer
1997 fires - 13–40% of the mean annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuels
e.g. Curran et al. 200. Science; Page et al. 2002. Nature
The risk of Catastrophic Tipping Points
Lenton et al. PNAS 2008
Last Glacial-Interglacial Cycle"
First migration of fully modern humans out of Africa
Aborigines arrive in Australia
Migrations of fully modern humans from South Asia to Europe
Beginning of agriculture
Great European civilisations: Greek, Roman
Young and Steffen. 2009. In: Chapin. Kofinas, Folke. (eds.). Principles of Ecosystem Stewardship. Springer
A SAFE OPERATING SPACE FOR HUMANITY to stay away from global tipping points
Rockstrรถm et al. 2009. Nature
Resilience thinking: Persistence, Adaptability and Transformability • Resilience as persistence - capacity of a SES to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds. • Adaptability - part of SES resilience, the capacity to adjust responses to changing external drivers and internal processes and thereby allow for development along the current trajectory (stability domain). • Transformability is the capacity to shift and cross thresholds into new development trajectories. • interrelate across multiple scales. Folke et al. 2010. E&S
The Resilience of the Earth System
Persistence at the global level requires social-ecological transformations
Regime shifts • - understanding and describing regime shifts and their implications • - how to manage and govern resilience of current social-ecological regimes (adaptability, staying on the current pathway/trajectory) • - how to break resilience of current socialecological regimes to – revive an “old” regime – transform into a new regime
Adaptability Goulburn-Broken agriculture •
Economically lucrative - thriving
•
Dryland cropping, grazing, irrigated dairy and fruit production, connecting the region to global markets - one quarter of the State of Victoria's export earnings
•
Thresholds with possible knock-on effects between them
•
widespread clearing of native vegetation and high levels of water use for irrigation have resulted in rising water tables, with severe salinization problems
•
Breaking the agricultural path
transform, requires changing deep values and creating a new identity
Walker et al. 2009. E&S
Turning crisis into opportunity in social-ecological systems • • • •
Hurricane Mitch – Honduras Storms and floods – Cayman Islands Great Barrier Reef – Australia Curbing illegal fishing – Southern Ocean
• Collaborative learning from crises/ shocks and responding by building adaptive capacity for turning crisis into opportunity; changes in management practice and governance e.g. McSweeney & Coomes 2011. PNAS; Tompkins et al. 2008 GEC; Olsson et al. 2008 PNAS
Reconnecting to the Biosphere social-ecological transformations
Perceived crisis – shift in mind set, shared vision From silo-management to integrative landscapes Window of opportunity, governance transformation Agency, organisations, institutions, networks Experimentation, learning Enabling environments – now MAB area Biosphere Reserve Kristianstads Vattenrike, Southern Sweden Olsson et al. 2004 E&S, Hahn et al. 2006 Human Ecol. Schultz et al. 2007 Env. Cons.
Transformations of SES towards ecosystem-based management
Chile’s coastal resources
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
Sweden’s urban landscapes
Window of opportunity
Preparing the system for change
Navigating the transition
Building resilience of the new direction
Olsson et al. 2008. PNAS Folke et al. 2005. ARER Chapin et al. 2010. TREE Gelcich et al. 2010. PNAS
Agency in navigating transformations, developing and retaining a social/collective memory of ecosystem management in the face of change
• Leaders, stewards, brookers, • • • • • • •
middlemen Knowledge carriers and retainers Interpreters and sense makers Networkers and facilitaters Visionaries and inspirers Innovators and experimenters Followers and reinforcers etc Berkes, Colding, Folke. 2003
Bridging organizations Bridging organization
• Performing essential functions in crafting effective responses to change in socialecological systems • Accessing and combining multiple sources of knowledge and interests for ecosystem stewardship • Linking groups, networks and organizations across levels, creating the right links, at the right time, around the right issues • Enhancing social learning and vertical and horizontal governance integration Folke et al. 2005 ARER, Olsson et al. 2007 E&S
Resilience and social-ecological transformation • under the “right conditions” - occur rapidly • often triggered by perturbation or surprise, perceived crisis – opportunity • requires sources of resilience, locally emerging or drawn upon from elsewhere, building on existing strengths, social structures, ecological knowledges, skills and perceptions and recombining them for new innovative solutions
Social-Ecological Systems Build knowledge and understanding of ecosystem dynamics Drivers
Drivers
Catchment, Land and Continen Seascapes tal shelf
Local ecosystems
Ecological knowledge & understanding
Management practices
processes, functions, dynamics, resilience
Nested Institutions, InstituOrganisations, tions, IncenSocial tives networks
Berkes and Folke 1998
Sources of resilience • Social-ecological memory • Collaborative learning platforms and communities of practice • retained and transmitted through participation in imitation practices, learning processes, oral communication, collective gatherings, • resides in structures of chalets and garden plots and other physical forms and artefacts as well as a number of rules-in-use (institutions) • various forms of media, markets, social networks, collaborative organizations, and legal structures. •
Barthel, Folke, Colding, 2010. GEC
e.g. gardens in urban areas
Reconnecting to the Biosphere
• Social adaptation and collective action detached from stewardship of ecosystem resilience may lead to traps and vulnerable SES • Political crises, disconnected from environmental issues, may open up opportunities for transformational change of SES • Open access and unsustainable extraction affecting ecosystems and livelihoods may be curbed through international adaptive governance
Resilience thinking: Persistence, Adaptability and Transformability • dynamic interplay between rapid and gradual change, between persistence and renewal • interrelations across multiple scales • combinations of old experiences, memories, knowledges for adaptation, transformation, and innovation • transformations towards Earth stewardship, reconnecting to the biosphere Gunderson and Holling 2002. Panarchy. Island Press Barthel et al. 2010. Global Environmental Change
3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability Folke et al. 2011. Reconnecting to the Biosphere
Steffen et al. 2011. The Anthropocene: from global change to planetary stewardship
Westley et al. 2011. Tipping towards sustainability: emergent pathways of transformation
• Planetary Boundaries • Planetary Opportunities • Planetary Stewardship
• Part of the biosphere – environment not a sector • Not about saving the environment – about us • Not just climate but global change
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-‐Moon High Level Panel on Global Sustainability
presented its report on 30 January 2012
Lack of SES resilience – expect surprise