Applying resilience

Applying resilience thinking

Seven principles for building resilience in social-ecological systems

  • Applying resilience

    Introduction

    Over the past decades, few concepts have gained such prominence as resilience, the capacity of a system to deal with change and continue to develop. There has been an explosion of research into ways to promote or undermine the resilience of various systems, be it a landscape, a coastal area or a city. However, the multitude of suggested factors that enhance resilience has led to a somewhat dispersed and fragmented understanding of what is critical for building resilience and how an understanding of these factors can be applied.
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  • Principle one

    Maintain diversity and redundancy

    In a social-ecological system, components such as species, landscape types, knowledge systems, actors, cultural groups or institutions all provide different options for responding to change and dealing with uncertainty and surprise.
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“All the principles presented here require a nuanced understanding of how, where and when to apply them, and how the different principles interact and depend on one another.”