I am posting the same information what I put in NRM group as a comment in resilience thinking as per request from Mike Victor.
I agree that Holling definition of resilience (1973) would be a starting point for ecologists who work for resource management. However, I think that this definition does not explicitly say about human roles in ecosystem changes. New researches actually have looked more deeper into human roles and often offering new insights that seeing resilience in social-ecological terms is more pragmatic. Certainly, defining resilience as a process of recovery spanned through many disciplines including recovery from natural disasters and even in health science. We may agree that with respect to ecosystems, using the term is more context specific. We often say resilient fisheries, resilient forestry etc. Often we mixed up the idea with sustainability but they are not certainly the same thing. In my idea establishing resilience may lead sustainable development. Here is the question like how can we achieve this overarching goal of resilience though meeting the social and ecological objectives of resources ? Very often we focus more on the biodiversity and neglect local livelihoods of local people (e.g. many marine reserves used as no-take zones). Although the idea of resources governance has changed with the scholarly works of Elianor Ostrom (1990), Fikret Berkes (1989) and many others who support common property systems and roles of users in governing a resource are acknowledged, the success of this type of framework is marred by local corruptions and issues of rigid political systems who are often disinterested to handover management rights to users. Many comanagement programs still topdown as government mostly control the process. So the success of building resilience through the widely used mechanisms such as comanagement, integrated management of natural resource has been mixed. I worked for WorldFish Center, Bangladesh for many years and did a Ph.D. recently on managing fisheries and related ecosystems through community participation. I tried to understand how the interests of both social system and ecosystem are maintained in comanagement programs. I found in my research that where outcomes from comanagement does not support livelihoods (no much incomes from fishing), community supports erode from engaging in joint actions over time. There are 100s of comanagement in fisheries in Bangladesh that ran from 1990-2006. Some of them are still working but many of them failed to operate when donor supports ended. I investigated ox-bow lakes comanagement program where comanagement could enhance resilience in social-ecological terms which may be a good read for who are interested in resilience thinking.
Here is the link:
I am posting the same information what I put in NRM group as a comment in resilience thinking as per request from Mike Victor.
I agree that Holling definition of resilience (1973) would be a starting point for ecologists who work for resource management. However, I think that this definition does not explicitly say about human roles in ecosystem changes. New researches actually have looked more deeper into human roles and often offering new insights that seeing resilience in social-ecological terms is more pragmatic. Certainly, defining resilience as a process of recovery spanned through many disciplines including recovery from natural disasters and even in health science. We may agree that with respect to ecosystems, using the term is more context specific. We often say resilient fisheries, resilient forestry etc. Often we mixed up the idea with sustainability but they are not certainly the same thing. In my idea establishing resilience may lead sustainable development. Here is the question like how can we achieve this overarching goal of resilience though meeting the social and ecological objectives of resources ? Very often we focus more on the biodiversity and neglect local livelihoods of local people (e.g. many marine reserves used as no-take zones). Although the idea of resources governance has changed with the scholarly works of Elianor Ostrom (1990), Fikret Berkes (1989) and many others who support common property systems and roles of users in governing a resource are acknowledged, the success of this type of framework is marred by local corruptions and issues of rigid political systems who are often disinterested to handover management rights to users. Many comanagement programs still topdown as government mostly control the process. So the success of building resilience through the widely used mechanisms such as comanagement, integrated management of natural resource has been mixed. I worked for WorldFish Center, Bangladesh for many years and did a Ph.D. recently on managing fisheries and related ecosystems through community participation. I tried to understand how the interests of both social system and ecosystem are maintained in comanagement programs. I found in my research that where outcomes from comanagement does not support livelihoods (no much incomes from fishing), community supports erode from engaging in joint actions over time. There are 100s of comanagement in fisheries in Bangladesh that ran from 1990-2006. Some of them are still working but many of them failed to operate when donor supports ended. I investigated ox-bow lakes comanagement program where comanagement could enhance resilience in social-ecological terms which may be a good read for who are interested in resilience thinking.
Here is the link:
https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.4172/2167-0587.1000115?locale=en
Thanks for reading my note on the resilience idea. Apologies if many typos have occurred or have unclear areas at my note.