SAMUELS Closing Symposium Huddersfield Project Lesley Jeffries, Brian Walker and Jane Demmen.
A resilience approach to the future Brian Walker.
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Transcript of A resilience approach to the future Brian Walker.
A resilience approach to the future
Brian Walker
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
“Rising Above The Gathering Storm” (USA Academies 2008)
- the need for investment in science and innovation
less and less room to manoeuvre
more and more need for ability to absorb shocks – for resilience
Resilience “the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and re-organise so as to retain the same structure, function, feedbacks and identity”
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
the water table rises as trees are cleared
a threshold occurs at a depth of 2m
bio
ph
ysic
al
Water table depth
Area salinized Riverine ecosystem condition
Native veg cover and biodiversity
eco
no
mic
Farm financial viability Size of dairy & fruit
processing sectors
Water infrastructure state
soci
al
Values (e.g. environment vs. agriculture) – water allocations
Farm/ landscape Landscape/catchment Region/ nation Shocks and slow drivers
climate change
long run energy cost
technology
markets
population (demand)
diseases
governance
Tree cover and water table equilibrium (E/T)
9 thresholds in the Goulburn-Broken catchment
- the cost of maintaining resilience vs. the cost of not maintaining it
resilience vs. efficiency
- ‘specified’ (targeted) resilience, vs. ‘general’ resilience
Applying a resilience approach
- resilience is maintained by probing its boundaries
what determines resilience?
- diversity - modularity- tightness of feedbacks- openness – immigration, inflows, outflows- reserves and other reservoirs (memory,
seedbanks, nutrient pools)- overlapping governance/institutions
The Longford gas explosion
in Shepparton:25 million litres of milk poured away- no alternate power source for pasteurisation machinery (no “response diversity”)
“resilience” –
“adaptability” – capacity to manage resilience; avoid thresholds(leadership, trust, ‘social capital’, governance)
if a shift into a “bad” state has happened, or is inevitable, the only option is transformation
“transformability” - capacity to transform into a different kind of system; a new way of living, and making a living
(the first rule of holes!)
determinants of transformability
- preparedness to change - capacity to change- options for change
Where do we need to enhance resilience of existing systems?
Where do we need to transform?
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!