A Resilience Perspective on Sustainability Transformations

Abstract

This talk provides some context to the need for a resource efficient and circular economy, by introducing the concept of social-ecological resilience and discuss how resilience thinking can support sustainability transformations. Social-ecological resilience is the apacity of complex adaptive systems of people and nature to live with change and continue to develop. I will also present seven principles for managing resilience in social-ecological systems, generated from decades of case studies and theory building in an interdisciplinary network of resilience scholars: maintain diversity and redundancy; manage connectivity; manage slow variables and feedbacks; foster complex adaptive systems thinking; encourage learning; broaden participation; and promote polycentric governance.