Linking Resilience, Risk and Sustainable Development – An inherently normative endeavour PER BECKER

Our world is in a precarious state

Uncertain Complex Ambiguous Dynamic Resilience

Concepts of resilience Not invented by ecologists! Utilized in various disciplines Three main approaches

Single-equilibrium approaches System has one stable state ”Bounce back” Resilience as “resistance to a disturbance and the speed of return to the equilibrium point” Not suitable for systems that explicitly include human beings over time

Multi-equilibrium approaches System has several stable states Resilience as a measure of robustness or buffering capacity before a disturbance forces a system from one stable equilibrium to another Not suitable for systems that explicitly include human beings over time

Complex adaptive systems System has no stable state Resilience as as ability to adapt in reaction to a disturbance Not suitable for systems that explicitly include human beings, as they ignore our ability to anticipate and learn

So what then? Focusing explicitly on human-environment systems over time Linking the conceptual and the practical, i.e. guiding what to look for in real communities

Uncertain Complex Ambiguous Dynamic Risk Systemic Participatory Resilience

Development Current state Desired state Preferred expected scenario Potential deviation

Risk Risk scenarios 1.What can happen? 2.How likely is that to happen? 3.If it happens, what are the consequences?

Resilience “the capacity of a human- environment system to continuously develop along a preferred expected trajectory, while remaining within human and environmental boundaries” (Becker 2014) “the capacity of a system to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds” (SRC 2012) “an emergent property determined by the ability of the human-environment system to anticipate, recognize, adapt to and learn from…”

Functions for resilience

Capacity to perform functions

Summary The world is in a precarious state and resilience has become a central concept There are many approaches to resilience, but few are suitable for human-environment systems over time The concepts of development and risk are normative and if resilience is to have any meaning in relation to sustainable development it becomes equally normative For an approach to resilience to be useful in practice, it must link between the conceptual and the actual, guiding us what to look for and address in real communities and societies