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A RESILIENCE APPROACH TO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE

A RESILIENCE APPROACH TO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE. Brian Walker. Why is it, that despite the best of intentions.…. Western Australian wheatbelt. rangelands in Australia. alternate states in N. Hemisphere lakes.

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A RESILIENCE APPROACH TO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE

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  1. A RESILIENCE APPROACH TO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE Brian Walker

  2. Why is it, that despite the best of intentions.…

  3. Western Australian wheatbelt

  4. rangelands in Australia

  5. alternate states in N. Hemisphere lakes

  6. Proposition 1 – there are two paradigms for managing natural resource systems: • MSY (maximum sustainable yield, in one form or another) • - Resilience management and governance

  7. Problem assumptions with MSY • extreme events can be ignored • problems from different sectors don’t interact (but partial solutions don’t work) • change will be incremental and linear (in fact, it’s mostly lurching and non-linear) • keeping the system in some optimal state will deliver maximum benefits. (There is no sustainable “optimal” state of an ecosystem, a social system, or the world. It is an unattainable goal.)

  8. Key assumptions underlying Resilience Management and Governance: - SESs have non-linear dynamics and can exist in alternate stability domains (regimes) - They go through different phases of organisation and behaviour

  9. Proposition 2- Sustainable use and development rests on three capacities of social-ecological systems: - resilience - adaptability - transformability

  10. Resilience “The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and re-organise so as to retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks – to have the same identity” (remain in the same system regime)

  11. Adaptability The capacity of actors in the system (people, in SESs) to manage resilience : (i) change the positions of thresholds between alternate regimes (ii) control the trajectory of the system – avoid crossing a threshold (or engineer such a crossing)

  12. Transformability The capacity to become a fundamentally different system when ecological, social and/or economic conditions make the existing system untenable.

  13. resilience places an emphasis on thresholds between alternate regimes of a system

  14. reversible, with hysteresis

  15. A THRESHOLD OCCURS WHERE THERE IS A CHANGE IN FEEDBACKS

  16. ∆Pw = 0 (courtesy Steve Carpenter)

  17. Alternate regimes in lake ecosystems

  18. The net effect of increasing level of grazing on rangeland composition Feedback change: effect of grass biomass (grazing effects) on the intensity of fire

  19. Feedback changes involved in regime shifts controlling variableassociated feedback changes Rainfall – evapotranspiration; leaching; water table level Temperature – soil moisture (E/T); germination (microclimate); symbiosis (coral bleaching) Nutrients – O2 in water (decomposition); competition (plant species) Acidification - calcification (diatoms) Vegetation - water interception (cloud forests); infiltration rates; water tables; nutrients (legumes); soil temp (insulation) Landscape cover - immigration/emigration rates; reproduction; survival Herbivory - regeneration; competition; fire (fuel) Harvesting - recruitment (depensation); E/T (forests) Frequency - seed bank viability; regeneration time (fires, fallows) Predation - recovery (depensation); herbivore behaviour (spiders, wolves) The economy - income:cost ratios; debt:income ratios (markets) Social preference - subsidies / taxes (through change in government)

  20. Feedback changes involved in regime shifts controlling variableassociated feedback changes Rainfall – evapotranspiration; leaching; water table level Temperature – soil moisture (E/T); germination (microclimate); symbiosis (coral bleaching) Nutrients – O2 in water (decomposition); competition (plant species) Acidification - calcification (diatoms) Vegetation - water interception (cloud forests); infiltration rates; water tables; nutrients (legumes); soil temp (insulation) Landscape cover - immigration/emigration rates; reproduction; survival Herbivory - regeneration; competition; fire (fuel) Harvesting - recruitment (depensation); E/T (forests) Frequency - seed bank viability; regeneration time (fires, fallows) Predation - recovery (depensation); herbivore behaviour(spiders,wolves) The economy - income:cost ratios; debt:income ratios (markets) Social preference - subsidies / taxes (through change in government)

  21. www.resalliance.org - thresholds database

  22. What determines resilience? • Diversity • Modularity (connectedness) • Tightness of feedbacks • Openness – immigration, inflows, outflows • Reserves and other reservoirs (seedbanks, nutrient pools, memory) • Overlapping institutions • Polycentric governance

  23. Rangeland in eastern Australia - lightly grazed photo by Jill Landsberg

  24. abundance of grass species in lightly grazed rangeland Relative abundance (%)

  25. Plant attributes determining ecosystem production (available data) • height • mature plant biomass • specific leaf area • longevity • leaf litter quality

  26. Functional similarities between dominant and minor species

  27. Heavily grazed site, close to water - 4 of the dominant species gone - 3 replaced by functional analogues Without the response diversity (the existence of the functional analogues), a regime shift would occur – different controls and processes

  28. - Ecosystem performance is promoted by high functional diversity (complementarity) • Resilience is promoted by high response diversity (in rainforests, coral reefs, lakes, rangelands) • ( cf Elmqvist etal; Response diversity, ecosystem change and resilience. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment)

  29. SYSTEM “REGIMES” VS OPTIMAL STATES ) ( Supply of ecosystem services as a function of ecosystem state B - lake services (fish, recreation) as a function of phosphate in mud A - rangeland services (wool production from grazing) as a function of shrubs Vc - critical threshold demarcating a shift from one attractor to another.

  30. N Goulburn Broken Catchment – Victoria, Australia

  31. % veg cleared in lower catchment Simulated clearing history equilibrium water table stable at surface equilibrium water table stable & at surface equilibrium water table stable & below surface % veg cleared in upper catchment

  32. SYSTEM “REGIMES” VS OPTIMAL STATES ) ( Supply of ecosystem services as a function of ecosystem state B - lake services (fish, recreation) as a function of phosphate in mud A - rangeland services (wool production from grazing) as a function of shrubs Vc - critical threshold demarcating a shift from one attractor to another.

  33. N Goulburn Broken Catchment - Victoria

  34. Can revegetation happen fast enough to avoid equilibrium? Is it worth trying? Should they transform to some other kind of SES, to a different way of making a living?

  35. Multiple regime shifts

  36. Sacred Forests – alafaly, Androy region, Madagascar

  37. Tombs in sacred forests

  38. Sacred forest approx. 150 ha surrounded by agricultural land (mainly beans and some maize)

  39. Thresholds in the Androy region of Madagascar

  40. Multiple, interacting thresholds (Causse Mejan in France, a catchment in SE Australia, southern Madagascar, Western Australia wheatbelt) Kinzig et al (2006, in press) Special Issue of Ecology & Society

  41. the “HOT” model (J. Doyle, SFI) general vs. specified resilience resilience of what, to what?

  42. There is a cost to resilience short term cost of foregone extra ‘yield’ vs. cost of being in an alternate regime (cost x prob. of a regime shift) cost of maintaining resilience (relatively easy to estimate) vs. cost of not maintaining it (difficult to estimate)

  43. Managing resilience - what determines Adaptability? – social capacity (capital) leadership trust • - human capital (skills, education, health) • - financial resources • natural capital • ongoing learning • ?

  44. What determines Transformability? still learning – but seem to be three classes: - preparedness to change (understanding, ‘mental models’, vested interests in not changing) - capacity to change (leadership, knowledge, capitals, higher level support) - options for change (diversity, knowledge of thresholds, experiments, markets,)

  45. Managing resilience, and/or achieving a transformation, requires knowing where, how and when to intervene Where - knowledge of potential and actual regime shifts in the system How - knowledge of the resilience and transformability attributes When - dictated by i) external events (crises and windows of opportunity) and ii) the phases of the system’s dynamics at various scales

  46. K: conservation things change slowly; resources ‘locked up’ r: growth / exploitation resources readily available K r Ω a a: re-organization/renewal system boundaries tenuous; innovations are possible W: release things change very rapidly; ‘locked up’ resources suddenly released

  47. K r Ω a

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