Resilience of ecosystems and social-ecological systems

Dr Steven Cork

Abstract
We can apply much of what we have learnt about the adaptive cycles and resilience of our disastrously declining natural ecosystems to understanding the operation and resilience of complex systems that involve the interactions of humans with nature and some of the systems devised exclusively by humans. Resilience is not desirable for its own sake; we need to ask “resilience of what to what?” Resilience in socialecological systems requires diversity, connectedness, openness, capacity for quick response, reserves of resources, and overlapping institutions, so that issues do not fall between the institutions and any issue does not rely on just one institution for a solution. Efficiency is often the enemy of resilience.

From, Brighter Prospects: Enhancing the resilience of Australia, Steve Cork (Editor)2009, p.63.

A publication of Australia 21 - Shaping the Future