building or reducing resilience in our social-ecological systems
DESCRIPTION
Presented by Nick Abel as part of the 2009 Place and Purpose Symposium run by the Landscape Science ClusterTRANSCRIPT
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Building or reducing resilience in our social-ecological systems.
Nick Abel
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How to adapt to an uncertain future: build resilience,
or transform?
Nick Abel
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
1/10/2009
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CSIRO.
A social ecological system can usually be in more
than one ‘regime’
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CSIRO.
The adaptive cycle
aΩ
rK
r: growth / exploitation
resources readily available
K: conservation
things change
slowly; resources
‘locked up’
W: release
things change very rapidly;
‘locked up’ resources suddenly
released
a: re-organization/renewal
system boundaries tenuous;
innovations are possible
MDB
N Aus
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CSIRO.
Cross scale linkages of adaptive cycles
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CSIRO.
Transforming the Murray Darling Basin
• Think cross-scale
• Social process
• Values – what do we want them to be?
• Possible alternative regimes, ‘good’ and ‘bad’
• Winners & losers
• Feedbacks and thresholds
• Windows of opportunity & feasible paths
• Pilot projects
• Disinvestments in the current regime
• Investments in the new regime
• Rule changes
• Incentive changes
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CSIRO.
Building resilience in Northern Australia
• Values
• Drivers and scenarios for them
• Cross scale influences
• Slow variables, feedbacks, & thresholds
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CSIRO.
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CSIRO.
groundwater
Following the flood...
Large floodplain, covered with healthy vegetation
dry rise healthy
vegetation
Surface water enlivens the landscape
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CSIRO.
groundwater
Once the surface water’s gone...
Healthy vegetation & animals concentrate in waterholes
maintained by groundwater
dry risewaterholehealthy
vegetation
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CSIRO.
groundwater
If groundwater extraction is excessive...
Waterholes dry up, area of healthy vegetation declines,
locals, tourists & animals suffer
healthy
vegetation
dry
waterhole
The landscape is sensitive to small changes in groundwater depth
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CSIRO.
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CSIRO.
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CSIRO.
Building Resilience in NA - continued
• Possible alternative regimes
• Winners & losers
• Potential shocks
• Vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities
• Institutions & investments for resilience
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CSIRO.
Institutions & investments for resilience
• Invest assuming climatic change will happen
• Invest in a diversity of resource uses
• Limit investments in enterprises & infrastructure that are
irreversible
• Identify thresholds of potential concern
• Can new land and water rights be time-bound?
• Develop ‘rules for changing the rules’
• Invest in self-organising capacity
• Invest in decentralised governance
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CSIRO.
Workbooks for practitioners and researchers
http://www.resalliance.org/1.php
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The Environment Institute