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A resilience approach to the future Brian Walker

Explore the concept of resilience in the face of looming threats such as climate change, peak oil, food and water shortages, pandemics, social unrest, and increasing connectedness. Learn how resilience can help us absorb shocks and adapt to change, and discover the determinants of transformability. Embrace the need for diversity, innovation, and preparedness to enhance resilience and navigate an uncertain future.

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A resilience approach to the future Brian Walker

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  1. A resilience approach to the future Brian Walker

  2. looming threats - climate change • peak oil, energy prices - food shortages and prices - water shortages and wars (Tibet / China) - new and old diseases, pandemics - social unrest /terrorism - increasing connectedness (globalisation, financial risk correlation) - increasing numbers of people with increasing aspirations

  3. “Rising Above The Gathering Storm” (USA Academies 2008) - the need for investment in science and innovation

  4. less and less room to manoeuvre more and more need for ability to absorb shocks – for resilience

  5. Resilience “the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and re-organise so as to retain the same structure, function, feedbacks and identity”

  6. resilience places an emphasis on the limits to change it puts a focus on thresholds (tipping points) between alternate states, or ‘regimes’, of a system

  7. the water table rises as trees are cleared a threshold occurs at a depth of 2m

  8. 9 thresholds in the Goulburn-Broken catchment Shocks and slow drivers Region/ nation Farm/ landscape Landscape/catchment Tree cover and water table equilibrium (E/T) diseases Water table depth Native veg cover and biodiversity population (demand) biophysical Area salinized Riverine ecosystem condition markets Water infrastructure state technology Farm financial viability economic Size of dairy & fruit processing sectors long run energy cost climate change social Values (e.g. environment vs. agriculture) – water allocations governance

  9. Applying a resilience approach - resilience is maintained by probing its boundaries - ‘specified’ (targeted) resilience, vs. ‘general’ resilience - the cost of maintaining resilience vs. the cost of not maintaining it resilience vs. efficiency

  10. what determines resilience? • diversity • modularity • tightness of feedbacks • openness – immigration, inflows, outflows • reserves and other reservoirs (memory,seedbanks, nutrient pools) • overlapping governance/institutions

  11. The Longford gas explosion in Shepparton: 25 million litres of milk poured away - no alternate power source for pasteurisation machinery (no “response diversity”)

  12. “resilience” – “adaptability” – capacity to manage resilience; avoid thresholds (leadership, trust, ‘social capital’, governance)

  13. if a shift into a “bad” state has happened,or is inevitable, the only option istransformation “transformability” - capacity to transform into a different kind of system; a new way of living, and making a living (the first rule of holes!)

  14. determinants of transformability - preparedness to change - capacity to change • options for change

  15. Where do we need to enhance resilience of existing systems? Where do we need to transform?

  16. A resilience approach to the future • don’t aim for some “optimal” state • learn about thresholds and aim to avoid them • let the system self-organise within the range of acceptable states (‘command-and-control’ doesn’t work for very long) • maintain general resilience and embrace change - promote and sustain diversity, of all kinds • restrict control of environmental and ecological variability • be ready for and capable of transformational change • encourage learning, innovation and experiments • beware of partial solutions!

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