Resilience

My Fellowship ‘Resilient Development in Social Ecological Systems’ was funded by the ESRC (2009-2012). This research examined theoretical and conceptual understanding of resilience across the social sciences and aimed to inform policy discussions and governance strategies which take a resilience approach. This included: developing a political ecology of resilience; investigating diverse social constructions of resilience in policy and practice; using discourse analysis and mental models and analysing the winners and losers in a resilience approach.
I wrote a number of key papers on resilience during my fellowship and I am currently writing a book, which will synthesise this work. The book will examine how resilience thinking potentially changes the theory, policy and practice of development and the key gaps in current resilience approaches. It has been argued that resilience approaches – focussing on systems – overlook issues of agency and capacity.

I wrote a number of key papers on resilience during my fellowship and I am currently writing a book, which will synthesise this work. The book will examine how resilience thinking potentially changes the theory, policy and practice of development and the key gaps in current resilience approaches. It has been argued that resilience approaches – focussing on systems – overlook issues of agency and capacity.

For example, listening to coastal communities explain their own resilience and vulnerability reveals quite different perspectives – people link resilience to resistance, to self-sufficiency and to standing up for themselves’.

My analysis also shows how the current popularity of resilience in policy – especially within climate change and international development, as evidenced through terms such as ‘Climate Resilient Development’ – promotes a business as usual approach. This is at odds with scientific perspectives on resilience which places it within a dynamic, complex systems-perspective.

I co-edited a special issue of Climate and Development on Sustainable Adaptation with Siri Eriksen. The papers were originally presented at the Global Environmental Change and Human Security Conference in Oslo in June 2009. The special issue includes these papers:
• Sustainable Adaptation: An Oxymoron? Climate and Development.
• Sustainable Adaptation to Climate Change Climate and Development.
• The Changing Environment for Human Security: New Agendas for Research, Policy, and Action.

This stream of research finds that in different policy arenas, very often resilience is being used in a conservative way, which promotes business-as-usual rather than radical approaches. This contrasts with scientific views of resilience as a characteristic of complex adaptive systems. I also analyse resilience as the new ‘sustainability’, as the term is now prevalent in many policies produced in preparations for Rio +20.

Publications from this work include:

• Policy Discourses of Resilience, In: Climate Change and the Crisis of Capitalism: A Chance to Reclaim Self, Society and Nature
• Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, IPCC Special report

I am also interested in understanding whether a resilience lens changes how we understand responses to environmental change. A number of meetings and publications explore this issue:
• Resilience implications of policy responses to climate change

This paper brings together literatures on resilience from human development and social ecological systems to inform analysis of agency in adaptive capacity:
• Agency, capacity and resilience to environmental change: Lessons from human development, well-being and disasters.
• Resilience: In Climate Change and Society

I am also examining how resilience relates to peoples own conceptualisations of social ecological systems and their constructions and assessment of their capacity to cope, adapt and shape responses to different types of change. I have co-edited (with Tim Lynam in Australia) a current issue of Ecology and Society Ecology and Society special issue on mental models in human – environment interactions: theory, policy implications, and methodological explorations co-edited with Tim Lynam from CSIRO in Australia. There are seven papers by international authors and an editorial by Brown and Lynam.