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The resilience
renaissance?
Unpacking of resilience for
tackling climate change
and disasters
Aditya V. Bahadur, Maggie Ibrahim and
Thomas Tanner
Strengthening Climate Resilience Discussion Paper 1
2 The resilience renaissance?
Strengthening Climate Resilience (SCR) – through Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management’ is a UK
Department for International Development funded programme that aims to enhance the ability of developing
country governments and civil society organisations to build the resilience of communities to disasters and
climate change. It is co-ordinated by the Institute of Development Studies (UK), Plan International and
Christian Aid, who are working with a variety of organisations across ten countries (Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan in
East Africa; Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in South Asia and Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia in South
East Asia). SCR has developed the Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management Approach (see Climate Smart Disaster
Risk Management). If you would like to be involved in SCR meetings or work with the programme to trial the Climate
Smart Disaster Risk Management Approach with your organisation, please either visit the SCR website:
www.csdrm.org or send an e-mail to info@csdrm.org
Acknowledgments
The Strengthening Climate Resilience (SCR) consortium, composed of the Institute of Development Studies, Plan
International and Christian Aid, would like to thank all those who have contributed to this publication: Maarten Van
Aalst, Roger Few, Lars Otto Naess, Frauke Urban and Virinder Sharma for providing review comments on the
discussion series documents and Aditya Bahadur and Paula Silva Villaneuva for their support to the research process.
We would like to acknowledge the vital contributions from over 500 researchers, policymakers and practitioners who
have shared their experiences and feedback on the Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management approach through 14
national and regional consultations in East Africa, South and Southeast Asia. The SCR consortium is funded by the UK
Department for International Development (DFID).
The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reect the views of DFID, IDS,
Christian Aid or Plan International.
First published by the Institute of Development Studies in September 2010
© Institute of Development Studies 2010
All rights reserved. Reproduction, copy, transmission, or translation of any part of this publication may be made only
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• under the terms set out below.
This publication is copyright, but may be reproduced by any method without fee for teaching or non-prot purposes,
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copying in any other circumstances, or for re-use in other publications, or for translation or adaptation, prior written
permission must be obtained from the publisher and a fee may be payable.
Available from:
Strengthening Climate Resilience
Institute of Development Studies
at the University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
T: +44 (0)1273 606261
info@csdrm.org
www.csdrm.org
Aditya V. Bahadur is a PhD student at the Institute of Development Studies
Maggie Ibrahim is a Research Ocer at the Institute of Development Studies
Thomas Tanner is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies
The resilience renaissance? 1
Abstract 2
1. Introduction 4
1.1 The renaissance of resilience? 4
1.2 The resilience concept across disciplines 4
1.3 Resilience, vulnerability, adaptive capacity and scale 5
2. Conceptualising resilience 7
2.1 Disturbance as Opportunity (Folke 2006) 7
2.2 Resilience as Process (Manyena 2006) 7
2.3 Persistence of Systems (Holling 1973) 7
2.4 Five Capitals (Mayunga 2007) 8
2.5 Social Infrastructure (Adger 2000) 8
2.6 Survival and Recovery (Rockefeller Foundation 2009) 8
2.7 Self-organisation (Ostrom 2009) 9
2.8 Preparation and Performance (Foster 2006) 9
2.9 Stability, Self-organisation and Learning
(Resilience Alliance 2009; Carpenter et al. 2001) 9
2.10 The DROP Model (Cutter et al. 2008) 10
2.11 Convergence (Nelson et al. 2007) 10
2.12 Resilience Spectrum (Dovers and Handmer 1992) 11
2.13 Migration and Social Resilience (Adger et al. 2002) 11
2.14 Four Components of Resilience (Berkes 2007) 12
2.15 Resilience and Adaptation (Osbahr 2007) 12
2.16 Components and Characteristics of Resilience (Twigg 2007) 13
3. Characteristics of Resilient Systems 14
3.1 High diversity 14
3.2 Eective governance/institutions/control mechanisms 15
3.3 Acceptance of uncertainty and change 15
3.4 Community involvement and inclusion of local knowledge 16
3.5 Preparedness, planning and readiness 16
3.6 High degree of equity 16
3.7 Social values and structures 17
3.8 Non-equilibrium system dynamics 17
3.9 Learning 17
3.10 Adoption of a cross-scalar perspective 18
4. Conclusion 19
References 20
5. Appendix 1: resilience and its characteristics 21
The Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management pproach (CSDRM) 45
Contents
2 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance?
Abstract
The term ‘resilience’ is increasingly used in the context
of discussion, policies and programming around
climate change adaptation (‘adaptation’) and disaster
risk reduction (DRR).
It has become particularly popular to describe the intersection between these two elds and
those of poverty and development as ‘climate resilient development’, and ‘climate resilient
development’ is rapidly becoming a catch-all for tackling climate change impacts in a
development context’.
However, despite this growth in popularity, there has been little attempt to scrutinise the
literature to examine how it might underpin an operational approach to resilience. This
working paper reviews academic conceptualisation of the concept of ‘resilience’ in social,
ecological and socio-ecological systems. It reviews 16 overlapping conceptualisations of
resilience from the literature, outlining key characteristics and indicators of resilience. A meta-
table captures the key ndings of the paper, including detail on indicators.
Key ndings
• The idea of resilience is employed in diverse elds including psychology, structural
engineering and corporate strategy but in the social sciences it is primarily discussed in
the context of society and ecology.
• The relationship between vulnerability and resilience is contested, but most commonly
one is seen as the opposite of the other; i.e. high resilience in a community means that it
is less vulnerable and vice versa.
• Similarly, there is a lack of consensus on the relationship between adaptive capacity and
resilience. Adaptive capacity is sometimes seen as the ‘ability to be resilient’; at other
times it refers to ‘learning’ in response to disturbance in systems.
• In working towards an operational denition of resilience, we dene the ten main
characteristics of resilient systems. These are intended to provide a starting point for
those working to operationalise the resilience concept in the context of climate change
and disasters.
Ten main characteristics of resilient systems:
1. A high level of diversity in groups performing dierent functions in an ecosystem; in the
availability of economic opportunities; in the voices included in a resilience-building
policy process; in partnerships within a community; in the natural resources on which
communities may rely; and in planning, response and recovery activities.
2. Eective governance and institutions which may enhance community cohesion. These
should be decentralised, exible and in touch with local realities; should facilitate
system-wide learning; and perform other specialised functions such as translating
scientic data on climate change into actionable guidance for policymakers.
3. The inevitable existence of uncertainty and change is accepted. The non-linearity or
randomness of events in a system is acknowledged, which shifts policy from an attempt
to control change and create stability to managing the capacity of systems to cope with,
Unpacking of resilience for tackling climate
change and disasters
The resilience renaissance? 3
adapt to, and shape change.
4. There is community involvement and the appropriation of local knowledge in any
resilience-building projects; communities enjoy ownership of natural resources;
communities have a voice in relevant policy processes.
5. Preparedness activities aim not at resisting change but preparing to live with it; this
could be by building in redundancy within systems (when partial failure does not lead
to the system collapsing) or by incorporating failure scenarios in Disaster Management
(DM) plans.
6. A high degree of social and economic equity exists in systems; resilience programmes
consider issues of justice and equity when distributing risks within communities.
7. The importance of social values and structures is acknowledged because association
between individuals can have a positive impact on cooperation in a community which
may lead to more equal access to natural resources and greater resilience; it may also
bring down transaction costs as agreements between community members would be
honoured.
8. The non-equilibrium dynamics of a system are acknowledged. Any approach to building
resilience should not work with an idea of restoring equilibrium because systems do not
have a stable state to which they should return after a disturbance.
9. Continual and eective learning is important. This may take the form of iterative
policy/institutional processes, organisational learning, reective practice, adaptive
management and may merge with the concept of adaptive capacity.
10. Resilient systems take a cross-scalar perspective of events and occurrences. Resilience is
built through social, political, economic and cultural networks that reach from the local
to the global scale.
4 The resilience renaissance?
1. Introduction
1.1 The renaissance of resilience?
The term ‘resilience’ is becoming increasingly used within policies, programming and think-
ing around climate change adaptation (‘adaptation’) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). It has
become particularly popular to describe the intersection between these two elds and those
of poverty and development as ‘climate resilient development’, and ‘climate resilient develop-
ment’ is rapidly becoming a catch-all for tackling climate change impacts in a development
context. A meta-table captures the key ndings of the paper, including detail on indicators
The climate change and disasters communities have created their own specialist lexicon,
underpinned by the scientic synthesis eorts of the Intergovernnmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) and the Global Assessment Report, and international policy processes of the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Hyogo Framework for Action.
Those involved in international development eorts in the context of climate change and
extreme events have therefore been forced to adopt and absorb this language, creating am-
biguity and overlap between and within elds.
The increased use of resilience within the development, climate change and disasters com-
munities is possibly related to its semantic ability to represent a readily recognisable concept.
‘Resilient’ is a commonly used word, most popularly used to signify the ability to return
quickly to a previous (and good) condition. In contrast, academic resilience thinking has mul-
tiple and diverse meanings, traversing a number of disciplines and communities of practice.
However, there has been little attempt to scrutinise the literature to examine the variations in
its denition and how it might underpin an operational approach to resilience. This working
paper focuses on academic conceptualisation of the concept of ‘resilience’ in social, ecologi-
cal and socio-ecological systems. It reviews 16 overlapping conceptualisations of resilience
outlined to date from the literature. The paper does not attempt to critique the merits of
resilience as a goal, instead analysing these existing conceptions to distil these diverse views
into a set of key characteristics and indicators. A meta-table in Appendix 1 captures the key
ndings of the paper in a table, including detail on indicators.
1.2 The resilience concept across disciplines
The idea of resilience exists in a number of disciplines. In the eld of Psychology, resilience
is seen as the capacity to withstand the impact of stressors and ght stress. ‘Resilience is the
capacity to recover following a stress. From a genetic perspective, resilience is dened as the
quality that prevents individuals who are at genetic risk for maladaptation and psychopa-
thology from being aected by these problems’ (Chicchetti et al. 2004: 17325). Humanistic
psychology, the branch of the subject that stresses the importance of personal choice and
responsibility takes a slightly wider perspective of resilience and understands it to be, ‘... an
individual’s capacity to thrive and fulll potential despite or perhaps even because of such
stressors... resilient individuals seem not only to cope well with unusual strains and stressors
but actually to experience such challenges as learning and development opportunities’ (Neil
2006). Structural and engineering science is another eld to employ the idea of resilience, for
example the concept of seismic resilience of buildings understands it to be the property of a
system which has: ‘1. Reduced failure probabilities; 2. Reduced consequences from failures,
in terms of lives lost, damage, and negative economic and social consequences; 3. Reduced
time to recovery’ (Bruneau and Reinhorn 2006: 1).
The concept of resilience has also found its way into the body of knowledge on corporate
strategy where the idea of ‘enterprise resilience’ is being employed to make a case for main-
streaming ‘risk management’ into the everyday operations of a rm: ‘... enterprise resilience
marries risk assessment, information reporting, and governance processes with strategic and
business planning to create an enterprise-wide early warning capability’ (Booz Allen Hamilton
2004).
In the social sciences, resilience is largely discussed in terms of society and ecology – in the
context of social and ecological systems. There is widespread consensus amongst social and
The resilience renaissance? 5
natural scientists that studying resilience involves the adoption of cross-disciplinary and mul-
tidisciplinary methods, as natural and social systems are highly integrated. This acknowledges
the need to employ instruments such as systems thinking and complexity theory.
While a high degree of interconnectedness between social and ecological systems is undis-
puted, theorists from dierent backgrounds understand resilience in dierent ways. This con-
sequently aects their notions of the components, characteristics and indicators of resilient
systems. Theories have emerged that are based variously on an understanding of resilience
in social systems or social resilience, those that stress resilience in ecological systems, and
those that see the two as highly interconnected. These provide the core focus of this paper’s
analysis of the anatomy of the concept.
Where theorists have stressed interconnectedness, some have created the Socio-ecological
System (SES) as a specic conceptual entity in order to give the two the same weight in their
analysis (Folke 2006). These are ‘... linked systems of people and nature. The term emphasizes
that humans must be seen as a part of, not apart from, nature – that the delineation between
social and ecological systems is articial and arbitrary’ (Simon 2009). A good example of this
division is the ‘Five Capitals’ approach that acknowledges the interconnection of human
and ecological systems by stating that both natural capital (air, soil, etc.) and social capital
(trust, norms and networks) have a role in determining the resilience of a system (Mayunga
2007). This is in contrast to the ‘Disturbance as Opportunity’ approach which does not isolate
human/social and natural/ecological factors, seeing them instead as a highly integrated,
systemic ‘whole’ (Folke 2006). These concepts have been increasingly applied in the context
of resilience to natural hazards (Manyena 2006; Mayunga 2007; Cutter et al. 2008) and climate
change (Adger 2002; Rockefeller Foundation 2009; Osbahr 2007; Nelson et al. 2007).
1.3 Resilience, vulnerability, adaptive capacity and scale
Most understandings of resilience share a common interest in the concept of vulnerability,
with a general tendency to regard vulnerability and resilience as opposing values. This idea is
expressed in a number of dierent ways; some see an increase in vulnerability as a decrease
in resilience, others regard these concepts as two sides of the same coin, still others see vul-
nerability as a property that needs to be countered by resilience.
The ‘Resilience as Process’ approach claims that certain denitions overlap vulnerability with
resilience, whereas others lead to vulnerability being perceived as entirely separate from the
concept of resilience. Resilience and vulnerability can therefore seem like the opposite ends
of a continuum if vulnerability is understood to be the capacity of individuals to respond to
hazards, but there is no interrelation between these terms if vulnerability is seen purely as the
circumstances ‘... that put people at risk, including social, economic, political, technological,
biophysical and demographic aspects’ (Manyena 2006: 442).
Gallopin argues that vulnerability does not appear to be the opposite of resilience, because
the latter is dened in terms of state shifts between domains of attraction, while vulnerability
refers to structural changes in the system, implying changes in its stability landscape (2006).
Robustness, according to Gallopin, may be thought of as the ip side of vulnerability. The
fundamental distinction between vulnerability and resilience is that vulnerability refers to
the capacity to preserve the structure of the system while resilience refers to its capacity to
recover from non-structural changes in dynamics.
Adaptation and adaptive capacity, coined by the climate change community, also draw
parallels with resilience, but without consensus on their conceptual overlap.. There remains a
signicant research gap in understanding the relationship between these terms. One strand
of academic opinion argues that adaptation and adaptive capacity are terms that refer to the
capability/ability/potential of systems or components within systems to be resilient to distur-
bances (Berkes 2007; Osbahr 2007). Another strand sees adaptive capacity as a reference to
that component of resilience that relates to ‘learning’ by systems in response to disturbances
(Resilience Alliance; Carpenter et al. 2001, Mayunga 2007).
The ‘Resilience as Adaptation’ approach treats adaptive capacity as a synonym of resilience,
6 The resilience renaissance?
stating ‘... it refers to improving the capacity (resilience), and thereby reducing the vulner-
ability of individuals or states, to respond to climate change impacts’ (Osbahr 2007: 6). On the
other hand, the ‘Disturbance as Opportunity’ approach sees resilience as a means of achiev-
ing adaptive capacity (Folke 2006).
A review of the literature on resilience in social, ecological and SESs reveals a few clear trends
in academic opinion on its spatial dynamics and certain issues of scale. The rst resonates
with systems thinking in asserting that social and ecological systems ‘... are bound by invisible
fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their eects on each
other’ (Senge 1990: 43). This view underlines the importance of conceptualising resilience
across governance scales and across various parts of a system.
Approaches highlight the need for a macro view that considers: matters in a local and
regional context rather than only an individual or community context; the high degree of
interconnectedness across scales of governance and institutions; and the fact that ‘xed scale’
resilience can exist only under certain special circumstances (Folke 2006; Holling 1973; Foster
2006; Resilience Alliance; Carpenter et al. 2001; Cutter et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2007; Berkes
2007). Second, any programme or project aiming to build resilience should engage locally or,
possibly, use the community as an entry point. This acknowledges the importance of com-
munity participation in policy processes and decentralised institutions, and conceptualisation
of resilience often uses the community as the unit of analysis (Manyena 2006; Mayunga 2007;
Adger 2000; Cutter et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2007; Adger 2002; Osbahr 2007).
The resilience renaissance? 7
2. Conceptualising resilience
This section reviews 16 overlapping understandings of resilience in social, ecological and
socio-ecological systems, proposing a breakdown of their respective components, and the
characteristics and indicators of these components. In doing so, this review aims to contrib-
ute to the operationalisation of the resilience concept in order to promote resilient develop-
ment in a changing climate. Literature for the following review was gathered through a two
staged process – rst, the authors conferred with individuals engaged in research on relevant
topics to source an initial bank of references, they then snowballed from these documents
to gather more relevant documents till a certain degree of conceptual repetition entered the
process.
A conscious attempt was made to focus on views on resilience that discussed the concept in
the context of social, ecological and socio-ecological systems, enhancing the degree of over-
lap in the conceptualisations. Note also that the labels of each of the following paragraphs
are not necessarily those that are used by the theorists who developed views of resilience
contained in these sections but, instead are formulated by the authors of this review to best
encapsulate the distinct quality of each of these views in comparison to others. The narrative
summary below is summarised in Appendix 1.
2.1 Disturbance as opportunity (Folke 2006)
This conceptualisation of resilience treats disturbances in socio ecological systems as an op-
portunity. It equates resilience with the ability to use disturbances as occasions for doing ‘new
things, for innovation and for development’ (Folke 2006: 253). This understanding encapsu-
lates the idea that surprises in any system are inevitable and resilience will result from learn-
ing to live with uncertainty. This is in contrast to ‘command and control’ perspectives that
seek to control the degree of variability and are successful only in the short term. A complex,
interacting and dynamic system is therefore seen as a resilient system.
In this conception, a resilient system is also reliant on groups performing dierent functions
and responding dierently to the same environmental change. Resilient systems have ‘far
from equilibrium dynamics’ meaning that the complexities of systems make it impossible to
predict paths of recovery as socio-ecological systems can never be the same after a distur-
bance. Instead of conceptualising the system as one that has an equilibrium to which it must
return after a disturbance, it is therefore more useful to look at it as having a ‘domain of at-
traction’, a dynamic state where dierent system elements have dierent equilibriums around
which they are organised. A number of indicators can be conceptualised around these char-
acteristics to deduce whether a particular system is resilient or not (see Appendix 1).
2.2 Resilience as Process (Manyena 2006)
Here, resilience is conceptualised as the ability of a system to adapt to environmental shocks
and continue functioning without there being a change in its fundamental characteristics
(Manyena 2006). This understanding underlines the importance of viewing resilience as a
‘process’ rather than only an outcome. Characteristics of a system resilient to natural disasters
would therefore include a focus on recovery as opposed to a singular concentration on resist-
ing shocks, eective adaptation to disturbances as opposed to attempts at only risk mitiga-
tion, and an attribution of importance to local knowledge and culture.
2.3 Persistence of systems (Holling 1973)
C.S. Holling understood resilience to be a measure of the ability of ecological systems to
persist in the face of disturbance and maintain relationships between dierent elements
of the system (Holling 1973). Holling’s view of resilience springs from his understanding of
natural systems as dynamic and being away from an ‘equilibrium’ or stable state at any point,
instead being organised in a domain of attraction in which dierent elements of a system are
organised around dierent, individual equilibriums.
Events in ecological systems are essentially non-linear and the ‘randomness’ of events within
a system will be further exacerbated by human actions. Indeed, Holling argues that a certain
degree of uctuation in a system may actually improve the system’s ability to persist in the
face of change. Therefore while a disturbance might change the position of particular ele-
8 The resilience renaissance?
ments in this system, the system will persist if the nature of the relationships between these
elements broadly remains the same.
Holling also stressed the importance of adopting a regional perspective on events in a system
rather than a narrower, local one as relationships within a system might not be immedi-
ately clear at the micro level. He also argued that heterogeneity in systems contributes to
enhanced resilience and spatially and temporally homogenous environments have a lower
resilience. Holling substantiated this claim by talking of how the Great Lakes eco-system is
fairly homogenous and hence has low resilience in comparison to spatially spread-out pest
populations.
This conceptualisation has been used in particular in ecosystem management approaches,
with resilience based on keeping options open, recognising that perfect knowledge can
never be achieved, that future events can never be perfectly anticipated and drawing on
complexity theory and systems thinking. Emphasis is also given to exibility in management
approaches, stressing adaptable generic guidelines instead of rigid steps.
2.4 Five capitals (Mayunga 2007)
This understanding of community resilience to disasters springs from the sustainable liveli-
hoods approach where social, economic, human, physical and natural capital are seen as
the determinants of resilience (Mayunga 2007). Each of these ve capitals corresponds to
a number of characteristics of resilient systems. For example, a strong base of social capital
in the form of trust, norms and networks would lead to a high degree of coordination and
cooperation in the community, evidenced by the presence of a large number of non prot
organisations. Similarly, human capital in the form of education, health, skills, knowledge and
information will lead to, for instance, a high capacity to develop and implement an eective
risk reduction strategy. Indicators of this would include high levels of educational attainment
and good health.
2.5 Social infrastructure (Adger 2000)
This conceptualisation of resilience is unique as it explores the notion of social resilience,
dened as the ability of communities to withstand shocks to their social infrastructure. Social
resilience is composed of components such as economic growth, stability and distribution
of income, degree of dependency on natural resources, and diversity in the kind of activities/
functions being performed within systems (see Appendix 1 for more detail) (Adger 2000).
Broadly, a resilient system is one in which people are dependent on a variety of natural
resources (so that a shock to one does not upset the entire system), has a low frequency
of extreme weather events as these can lead communities to depend on particular natural
resources, and where institutions in this systems are seen to be legitimate.
An important social factor that contributes to resilience is the nature of migration and mobil-
ity, so that migration caused by lucrative opportunities elsewhere may lead to increased
resource ows that may enhance resilience but ‘displacement migration may be caused by a
deleterious state of aairs in the home locality (such as loss of assets) and often has negative
impacts on social infrastructure in both sending and receiving areas’ (ibid.: 355). Each of these
characteristics has a number of possible indicators that can be used to gauge resilience (see
Appendix 1).
2.6 Survival and recovery (Rockefeller Foundation 2009)
This understanding of resilience is in specic reference to climate change and here it is under-
stood to be the capacity to respond to the impact of a changing climate while continuing to
function regularly (Rockefeller Foundation 2009). Resilience results from:
• An individual, organisation or system having a high degree of exibility in responding to
climate change, when there is large variety in the skill sets contained within the system;
• A substantial degree of redundancy ‘... of processes, capacities, and response pathways
within an institution, community, or system, to allow for partial failure within a system or
institution without complete collapse’ (ibid.: 2);
• Substantial planning in the preparation of identied impacts (it is acknowledged that
accurately planning for future impacts of climate change is not useful but it nonetheless
leads to learning and builds skills);
The resilience renaissance? 9
• A high degree of diversity of response and recovery options and a high level of decen-
tralisation;
• Existence of plans for failure so that ‘break-downs happen gracefully, not catastrophically’
(ibid.: 2); and
• A number of dierent sectors come together to plan, execute and recover from climate-
related impacts.
Each of these characteristics of resilience has a number of potential indicators that can be
used to gauge the level of resilience (see Appendix 1).
2.7 Self-organisation (Ostrom 2009)
This conceptualisation denes resilience in terms of sustainability, itself determined by the
ability of users (e.g. shermen) within a system to self-organise and reorganise to sustainably
manage resources (Ostrom 2009). The socio-ecological system is broken into four constituent
elements – resource systems (e.g. a coastal shery), resource units (e.g. lobsters), users (e.g.
shermen) and governance systems (e.g. organisations that regulate shing). Each of these
elements has a number of variables which impact the system’s ability to self-organise which
in turn determines system resilience.
Under this conception, resource systems should be of moderate size as very large territories
are ‘unlikely to be self-organized given the high costs of dening boundaries, monitoring use
patterns, and gaining ecological knowledge. Very small territories do not generate substantial
ows of valuable products’ (ibid.: 420).
For self-organisation to take place there should be a certain amount of availability and scar-
city in the resource system to provide the incentive for self-organisation for better manage-
ment, enhanced when a high value is attached by users to the resource being oered by the
system. It also relies on an ability to deduce how resource systems behave in order to gauge
the impact of any regulation on supply and demand.
Self-organisation becomes easier when leadership structures at the local level are in place
and some users have entrepreneurial skills and/or advanced educational degrees, where trust
and respect amongst users reduces transaction costs of monitoring, and where users have
the ability to develop their own rules to govern the resource system. Knowledge sharing is
also key, as where ‘... users share common knowledge of relevant SES attributes, how their
actions aect each other, and rules used in other SESs, they will perceive lower costs of organ-
izing’ (ibid.: 421).
2.8 Preparation and performance (Foster 2006)
This view of resilience is dierent from the others discussed up to this point in that it takes the
metropolitan area as its unit of analysis (Foster 2006). It provides two complementary forms
of resilience. Preparation resilience is formed of assessment and readiness and performance
resilience is formed of response and recovery. Each of these four elements has a number of
indicators that can be used to measure system resilience. For example, gauging the level of
preparation resilience would be possible by looking at the capacity for trend analysis within a
system and by analysing the exibility of any policies and processes aimed at building readi-
ness. Performance resilience, on the other hand, can be gauged by the cost-eectiveness,
sustainability and viability of services delivered in the face of disturbances and the speed with
which activity in a system returns to normal after a disturbance.
2.9 Stability, self-organisation and learning (Resilience Alliance 2009; Carpenter et al. 2001)
This understanding of resilience is developed by the Resilience Alliance, a research organi-
sation comprised of scientists and practitioners who study socio-ecological systems. Very
broadly, they see resilience as the amount of change a system can bear and ‘... still retain the
same controls on structure and function’, the capacity of a system to self-organise and the
ability of a system to learn and adapt (Resilience Alliance, Carpenter et al. 2001: 766). Here
resilience is seen to depend on four main components:
1. ‘the magnitude of disturbance required to fundamentally disrupt the system causing a
dramatic shift to another state of the system, controlled by a dierent set of processes’
10 The resilience renaissance?
(Resilience Alliance)
2. the policy, regulatory and governance structures which allow dierent parts of the sys-
tem to reorganise;
3. the variety of groups performing dierent functions in an SES; and
4. the nature of learning processes that exist within a system (Carpenter et al. 2001).
Indicators within such an approach include fundamental variables which maintain a domain
of attraction, such as the land tenure systems. Resilience is dependent the degree to which
legal and regulatory environment gives control over natural resources to its users, and a num-
ber of dierent species that perform a variety of ecological functions. It also relies on local
knowledge being used in any system of managing resources; the users (e.g. shermen) within
this system have a good understanding of how a socio-ecological system works, certain insti-
tutions test various methods of building resilience, monitor the results of these tests, update
existing data on resilience building and have the capacity to modify policy as new knowledge
is gained.
There is a certain degree of overlap between this concept and that which is discussed in
section 2.7 but Ostrom’s views on self-organisation are specically in the context of resource
management at the local level whereas ideas of self-organisation included here are more
general and have a wider applicability.
2.10 The Drop Model (Cutter et al 2008)
In the Disaster Resilience of Place (DROP) model, existing concepts are analysed to form a
dynamic and cyclical understanding of inherent resilience of a system to natural hazards
(Cutter et al. 2008). Essentially, this model begins with an understanding that social systems,
natural systems and the built environment determine the inherent vulnerability and inherent
resilience of a system. This interacts with the nature of the hazard (i.e. frequency, duration,
intensity, etc.) and the eects of the event are then amplied or reduced depending on the
coping capacity of the system. If the absorptive capacity is exceeded the community will
experience low recovery unless it can improvise and learn.
This model is cyclical, with the inherent resilience being determined by ecological, social,
economic, infrastructural and institutional components as well as the level of community
competence. Each of these components has indicators such that, for example, high biodiver-
sity and low soil erosion are ecological factors that would lead to high inherent resilience in
an ecosystem, while substantial presence of social networks and faith-based organisations
are indicators of high inherent resilience in the social sphere. See Appendix 1 for more details.
2.11 Convergence (Nelson et al 2007)
This applies the resilience approach to climate adaptation. Adaptation to ‘... environmental
change primarily takes an actor-centred view, focusing on the agency of social actors to
respond to specic environmental stimuli’, whereas the resilience framework is more systems-
focused and takes a more dynamic view (Nelson et al. 2007: 395).
This thinking on adaptation benets from thinking on resilience primarily through four con-
cepts:
1. Multiple states: A resilience framework argues that systems are dynamic and can
organise around a number of possible states and therefore makes a case for moving
beyond adaptation that is reactionary (where action succeeds disturbance) to one that
is more fundamental and can alter system dynamics to deal with shocks better in a more
sustained manner. Resilience thinking also deals with the idea of ‘thresholds’ which are
the boundary between one system state and another ‘... because thresholds are not fully
predictable, system characteristics such as self-organisation and learning are critical to
negotiate the changes’ (ibid.: 402). Extending this point analytically, there are a number
of indicators that can stem from resilience thinking and contribute to gauging the quality
of adaptation, such as the degree to which ocial policies regarding use of resources in
a system are decentralised and exible. This is because if these policies are decentralised/
devolved then those that are directly aected by changes in the SES can ensure that it
stays in a state that is suitable for them.
2. Adaptive capacity: While much eort has gone into understanding how exposure to risk
can be minimised, a system also needs to be ready for the unexpected. A system should
The resilience renaissance? 11
foster positive surprises that carry the potential to create opportunities and curtail nega-
tive surprises. Also, the resilience framework takes a systems perspective that informs
adaptation by underlining the importance of working across governance and timescales.
Indicators for this would include the existence of social networks that scale from local to
the international level as well as processes of learning and reection within systems.
3. Trade-os: A resilience perspective also brings to the fore a dilemma regarding ‘trade-
os’. Adaptation in a resilience framework... promotes managing the capacity of a system
to cope with future change. It is premised on managing uncertainty and on having the
right mix of system characteristics in place to deal with uncertain future events. These
dierences result in achieving high adaptedness and maintaining sucient sources of
resilience... A balance must be negotiated between what is an acceptable level of risk
to current system stressors and the breadth of exibility necessary to respond to future
change (ibid.: 407).
One way of ensuring this balance would be to include all stakeholders in a genuinely
participatory process so that those most impacted by the environmental changes can
themselves decide the level of exibility that should be retained in order to best respond
to the exigencies of change.
4. Governance and normative issues: ‘A resilience perspective assumes that vulnerability
is an inherent characteristic of any system. Reducing vulnerability in one area creates or
increases vulnerability in another area or time’ (ibid.: 408). Employing this perspective
would then lead to stressing co-management of resources, local knowledge, exibility
of governance strategies and internal learning within governance systems. Indicators for
this would include the presence of a large variety of interests in platforms for managing
natural resources within a system, appropriation of local knowledge in policy and the
explicit mention of justice and equity issues in any tools for measuring vulnerability.
2.12 Resilience spectrum (Dovers and Handmer 1992)
Here an element is added to resilience thinking as it is thought of as a continuum or spectrum
broadly made up of three levels. Type 1 resilience is characterised by resistance to change;
type 2 resilience is when marginal changes are made in order to make a system more resilient;
and type 3 is when there is a high degree of openness, adaptability and exibility (Dovers and
Handmer 1992).
No one society would ever exhibit only one type of approach, although at an institutional
level a clear preference may be discernible. The three approaches should be seen as a con-
tinuum of three levels, each with validity in dierent circumstances, and in which the next
level subsumes the previous one (ibid.: 271).
The major dierence between types 1 and 2 and type 3 seems to be that type 3 carries the
potential for transformative action: ‘... its key characteristic is an ability to change basic operat-
ing assumptions, and thus institutional structures’ (ibid.: 270). There are several indicators that
can be analytically deduced to gauge the type of resilience being pursued in a system. Type 1
and 2 are characterised by policies that take a more reactive stance to disturbance, are more
response-focused, have centralised institutional structures and ‘... seek to optimize available
resources to maximize return in terms of desired production and consumption. Intentional
spare capacity in the system, as a contingency in the face of change, is not favoured’; there-
fore, under an environment that favours this approach to resilience, manufacturing units will
not follow sustainable business practices (ibid.: 271). Type 3, on the other hand, is character-
ised by readiness, organisational learning, decentralised organisational structures and the
pursuit of sustainable business practices.
2.13 Migration and social resilience (Adger et al 2002)
Here, migration is discussed as a central pillar of social resilience (dened as the ‘the ability
to cope with and adapt to environmental and social change mediated through appropriate
institutions’) (Adger et al. 2002: 358). Migration carries the potential to exert a substantial
inuence on communities, ‘altering economic well-being, changing the structure of the com-
munity, and aecting the natural resource base’ (ibid.: 359). If remittances from migration are
not controlled by eective institutions they can create severe inequity in society through re-
duced access to natural resources for some groups and reduced resilience. Similarly, eective
12 The resilience renaissance?
and responsive institutions would help in ensuring equitable social and economic trends and
more equal access to natural resources; one possible indicator of institutional strength would
be the eectiveness of mechanisms to collect taxes and employ this revenue usefully. Also,
the manner in which remittance income is employed can increase or decrease social resil-
ience. For example, if in an agricultural economy it is used for investing ‘in human or physical
capital to enhance household production’ in a sustainable manner then the social resilience
of individuals within the household is increased (ibid.: 359). On the other hand, if remittances
are used to increase conspicuous consumption or for unsustainable agricultural production,
this will have a negative eect on social resilience.
2.14 Four components of resilience (Berkes 2007)
Here, a review of literature is conducted to distil four components that are important in build-
ing the resilience of socioeconomic systems. First, resilience thinking requires an acknowl-
edgement of the fact that systems must learn to live with uncertainty and that change is
inevitable (Berkes 2007). ‘“Expecting the unexpected” is an oxymoron, but it means having
the tools and the codes of conduct to fall back on when an unexpected event happens’ (ibid.:
288); these tools and codes can spring from memories held by societies of similar events in
the past.
Secondly, diversity is important to building resilience as it extends multiple options for
dealing with perturbations, reducing risks by spreading them. This diversity can be nurtured
ecologically through high biodiversity, both economically through livelihood diversication
and through the inclusion of diverse points of view in policymaking processes.
Thirdly, to build resilience, dierent types of knowledge should be appropriated in any
learning process. This can be done through the appropriation of local knowledge in policy
processes; ‘the creation of platforms for cross-scale dialogue, allowing each partner to bring
their expertise to the table, is a particularly eective strategy for bridging scales to stimulate
learning and innovation’ (ibid.: 290).
Fourth, as renewal and reorganisation are essential parts of natural cycles, the ability of
systems to reorganise is a critical determinant of their resilience. This is possible through
strengthening community-based management and ‘maintaining the local capacity for social
and political organization in the face of disasters. Response by the community itself, through
its own institutions, is key to eective response and adaptation’ (ibid.: 291). Also, building
linkages across scales of governance is another component of giving communities the ability
to self-organise; community organisations need to work with regional and national organisa-
tions. ‘The creation of governance systems with multilevel partnerships is a fundamental shift
from the usual top-down approach to management’ (ibid.: 291).
Lastly, ... a dynamic learning component is crucial for providing a rapid ability to innovate
in terms of the capacity to create new responses or arrangements. Such learning can be
improved by adaptive co-management, dened as a process by which institutional arrange-
ments and environmental knowledge are tested and revised in a dynamic, ongoing, self-
organized process of learning-by-doing (Folke et al. 2002). Learning organizations allow for
errors and risk-taking behaviour as part of the learning process (ibid.: 291).
2.15 Resilience and adaptation (Oshbar 2007)
Here, a deeper understanding of resilience in the context of climate change is constructed
through an analysis of climate change adaptation interventions/projects (Osbahr 2007). This
is in order to identify ‘... specic elements of adaptation practice and intervention that might
be important in enhancing longer-term resilience to climate change in developing countries’
(ibid.: 4). Multiple characteristics of resilience are identied (see Appendix 1), including:
• The need for institutions that eectively translate scientic data into guidance for policy-
makers;
• Governments that are accountable for the distribution of risks in society;
• Donors engaged in climate change interventions over the long term (possibly through
projects that last for more than ve years);
• Formal training of communities using new thinking on adaptation;
The resilience renaissance? 13
• The employment of existing social and economic networks in spreading awareness on
climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction;
• Adaptation being thought of as a nancially and commercially viable activity, possibly
through the formulation of a business case for adaptation in the national budgets of
countries.
2.16 Components and characteristics of resilience (Twigg 2007)
Twigg (2007) in his guidance note on ‘Characteristics of a Disaster-resilient Community’
denes resilience to be the ability of a community to absorb stress, capacity to manage, or
maintain certain basic functions and structures, during disastrous events and the bounce
backability of a community after a disaster. He takes building blocks provided by the Hyogo
Framework for Action (the global framework to guide disaster risk reduction eorts) to dene
ve thematic areas for action: governance, risk assessment, knowledge and education, risk
management and vulnerability reduction, and disaster preparedness and response. He then
devises three columns for each thematic area: components of resilience; characteristics of a
disaster-resilient community; and characteristics of an enabling environment (dealing with
wider institutional, policy and socioeconomic factors in supporting community-level resil-
ience).
An illustrative example of this approach under the rst thematic area, governance, argues
that a component of resilience is ‘accountability and community participation’; under this
component a characteristic of a disaster-resilient community is ‘access to information on
local government plans, structures etc.’, and one characteristic of an enabling environment is
‘citizen demands for action to reduce disaster risk’. Taking another thematic area, hazard/risk
data assessment, a characteristic of a disaster-resilient community is that hazard/risk assess-
ment is a participatory process in which all sections of the community are represented, and
one characteristic of an enabling environment is that ‘hazard/risk assessments are mandated
in public policy legislation, etc., with standards of preparation, publication and revision’.
14 The resilience renaissance?
3. Characteristics of resilient systems
After examining a range of 16 dierent approaches to conceptualising resilience in section
2, this section draws out major areas of convergence to distil ten characteristics of resilient
systems. Figure 1 illustrates the number of times they are referred to in the approaches to
resilience discussed in the previous section. While attempting to be scientically precise, this
methodology provides an indicative approach to characterising resilient systems based on
a robust review of literature on the subject. Analysis of the literature in the previous section
revealed that some concepts, for example the presence of ‘high diversity’, are stated to be
characteristics of resilient systems in a number of dierent pieces of literature. Others such
as ‘community involvement’ are discussed by comparatively few authors. To accurately judge
the signicance of each of the following ten concepts is beyond the scope of this review (and
possibly something that would need extensive eld testing); the aim here is to provide a
more practical guide to the overlapping characteristics of resilience as discussed by a range
of theorists who have come to dene research in this eld.
Figure 1: Characteristics of resilience by frequency of reference in reviewed literature
3.1 High diversity
The most important characteristic of resilient systems is diversity. High diversity in the range
of functional groups within a system is seen to contribute greatly to the resilience of systems
(Folke 2006; Holling 1973; Resilience Alliance 2009; Carpenter et al. 2001). This idea of ecologi-
cal diversity is extended by a large number of theorists. The Four Components of Resilience
approach underlines the importance of nurturing ecological diversity but also stresses the
need for a range of available economic opportunities, a diversity of partnerships, and ‘the
signicance of bringing additional constituencies into the policy arena’ (Berkes 2007: 289).
Dierent forms of diversity are interrelated. For instance, ‘rural livelihoods and well-being are
strongly dependent on the diversity and health of ecosystems and the services they provide’
(ibid.: 289).
The Resilience and Adaptation approach uses a case study to demonstrate that variety in
stakeholders is also important to the continued operation and success of a project (Osbahr
2007). This led to the involvement of individuals ‘with external networks, education or history
of migrant work’ which made the processes associated with the project more robust (ibid.:
12). The Social Infrastructure approach emphasises the importance of communities relying
on diverse natural resources as it insulates them from the ‘boom and bust nature of markets’,
environmental variability and extreme weather events, which may adversely impact some
resources (Adger 2000).
The Survival and Recovery approach sees a diversity of planning, response and recovery
activities as an essential component of resilience to climate change because ‘a diversity of op-
tions has greater potential to match the particular scenario of impacts that occur’ (Rockefeller
The resilience renaissance? 15
Foundation 2009: 2). Each of these interpretations of diversity can have a number of analyti-
cally deduced indicators; for example, diversity in natural resource use could be measured by
the degree of variety in livelihood activities being pursued within a system; and high eco-
nomic diversity could be measured by the number of groups performing dierent economic
functions.
3.2 Effective governance/institutions/control mechanisms
A number of dierent approaches stress the need to have eective institutions and institu-
tional structures to build resilience in a system. The Five Capitals approach stresses the im-
portance of ‘trust, norms and networks’ within a system, perhaps manifested through a large
number of credible civil society institutions such as religious organisations and recreational
clubs (Mayunga 2007). The Social Infrastructure approach examines how institutions must
be seen as legitimate which in turn is a product of the level of ‘inclusivity or exclusivity, and
hence how eective they are in oiling the wheels of society’ (Adger 2000: 351). A number of
possible indicators that range from the turnout for local elections to the number of meetings
of local councils can be employed to measure the legitimacy of institutions at the community
level.
Closely associated with this notion of eective institutions is the idea of eective governance
and a key theme running through thinking on resilience is the need for decentralised organi-
sational structures and policies that are more exible and in touch with the needs of commu-
nities and local realities (Folke 2006; Rockefeller Foundation 2009; Ostrom 2009; Dovers and
Handmer 1992; Osbahr 2007). The Resilience and Adaptation approach notes that ‘govern-
ance, the structures and processes by which societies share power, shapes individual and col-
lective actions and can be formally institutionalised’. There is therefore a need for ‘polycentric
and multi-layered institutions to improve the t between knowledge, action and the context
in which societies can respond more adaptively at appropriate scales’ (Osbahr 2007: 14).
Another domain of thinking on the importance of institutions deals not with their structure
but the nature of the roles they can play in order to increase resilience. The Stability, Self-
Organisation and Learning approach underlines the importance of institutions that can facili-
tate learning and ‘experiment in safe ways, monitor results, update assessments, and modify
policy as new knowledge is gained’ (Carpenter et al. 2001: 778). Similarly, in the Resilience
and Adaptation approach, institutions that can eectively translate scientic data on climate
change into guidance for policymakers are seen as critical to building resilience in a system.
3.3 Acceptance of uncertainty and change
Another key theme is the ability of systems to accept uncertainty, change, the randomness of
events. There seems to be a general consensus on how resilience results not from working to-
wards resisting changes/perturbations but from setting up systems that work eectively with
these. ‘The resilience perspective shifts policies from those that aspire to control change in
systems assumed to be stable, to managing the capacity of social-ecological systems to cope
with, adapt to, and shape change’ (Folke 2006: 254). This is closely associated with Holling’s
idea that due to the non-linear (random or ‘change-ridden’) functioning of ecological systems,
it is more appropriate to think of the persistence of relationships between system compo-
nents as a measure of resilience rather than working towards a state of stability or systemic
equilibrium (Holling 1973).
This idea of working with change manifests itself in dierent ways across the range of re-
viewed approaches. The Survival and Recovery approach stresses the need for ‘exibility at an
individual, organizational, and systemic level, with each level able to respond and contribute
to each situation, and to respond to shifting and unpredictable circumstance” (Rockefeller
Foundation 2009: 2). This can be manifested as decentralised decision-making systems within
organisations that have a role in determining the resilience of systems (Rockefeller Founda-
tion 2009). The Four Components of Resilience approach argues that remembering how
societies have endured events in the past is critical to successfully dealing with unexpected
events (Berkes 2007). This idea can be analytically extended to see that resilience of a com-
munity may be gauged by their memory of past disturbances and the existence of protocols
that determine community action in the face of disturbance.
16 The resilience renaissance?
3.4 Community involvement and inclusion of local knowledge
Community engagement, ownership, participation and indigenous/local knowledge are
commonly stressed in the reviewed literature (Manyena 2006; Mayunga 2007; Ostrom 2009;
Nelson et al. 2007; Dovers and Handmer 1992; Berkes 2007; Osbahr 2007). Manyena critiques
the United Kingdom’s Resilience Programme and nds that while ‘it will improve the coordi-
nated response capabilities of emergency services and other government agencies’, it does
not involve the community, who will inevitably have to combat emergency situations if the
scale of disturbance overwhelms the ocial response capacity (2006: 438). Ostrom advocates
greater ownership of natural resources within the system by its users arguing that when users
have ‘full autonomy at the collective-choice level to craft and enforce some of their own rules,
they face lower transaction costs as well as lower costs in defending a resource against inva-
sion by others’ (Ostrom 2009: 421).
This notion of co-management or greater ownership of resources by communities is dealt
with directly in the Convergence approach where it is argued that ‘the strong normative
message from resilience research is that shared rights and responsibility for resource manage-
ment (often known as co-management) and decentralisation are best suited to promoting
resilience’ (Nelson et al. 2007: 409). Berkes highlights the use of dierent forms of knowledge
as one of four key areas of resilience in the context of climate change, ‘Community-based
monitoring and indigenous observations are signicant in this regard because they ll in the
gaps of global science and provide insights regarding local impacts and adaptations. Bringing
dierent kinds of knowledge together helps increase the capacity to learn’ (Berkes 2007: 409).
3.5 Preparedness, planning and readiness
Preparing and planning for disturbances also characterises resilient systems. This refers to
accepting that change will occur and preparing to live with this change. This is incorporated
into the Survival and Recovery approach, rstly through redundancy being seen as an at-
tribute of resilient systems. This is when ‘processes, capacities, and response pathways within
an institution, community, or system allow for partial failure within a system or institution
without complete collapse’ (Rockefeller Foundation 2009: 2).
Secondly, this approach underlines the necessity of ‘planning for failure’, ‘so that break-downs
happen gracefully, not catastrophically – for example, when ood gates break, they do so in
a way that channels oodwaters to uninhabited ood zones (ibid.: 2). Planning for failure can
be operationalised by decentralised organisational structures, so that the failure of the central
authority does not lead to system collapse, and through the explicit inclusion of system fail-
ure scenarios in any response plans. The Preparation and Performance approach adds ‘assess-
ment of a system to vulnerability’ as a critical activity necessary for the adequate preparation
of any system to a disturbance (Foster 2006).
3.6 High degree of equity
While a number of approaches engage with the idea that a high degree of equity in a system
leads to its increased resilience, the Migration and Social Resilience approach adds a unique
dimension to this view through a discussion of the impact of remittance income (Adger
2002). Here, it is argued that while remittances increase resilience to disturbances, they could
lead to unequal access to resources and so enhance the vulnerability of some individuals
within a community. There is therefore a need for institutions that would reduce the adverse
impact of remittances and foster greater economic equity.
A dierent take on the notion of equity is that any programme of resilience building engages
with the notion of gauging, sharing and distributing risk from disturbances and Nelson et al.
(2007) argue that systems may become less resilient where issues of justice and equity are not
taken into account. Adger also argues that stable livelihoods contribute to social resilience,
that stable livelihoods are derived from sustained economic growth, and that economic
growth over the long term is also promoted by the ‘equitable distribution of assets within
populations’ (Adger 2000: 355). ‘These linkages include the arguments made by Keynsian
[sic] economists that equitable wealth enhances aggregate demand within the economy...
and further evidence that the economic productivity of the workforce is jeopardized by the
The resilience renaissance? 17
consequences of large-scale inequality’ (ibid.: 355). Twigg (2007) speaks of sustainable liveli-
hoods as an essential component of resilience and species the equal distribution of wealth
and assets as well as a strong and equitable economy as essential to building the resilience of
a community.
3.7 Social values and structures
Social values and structures are also highlighted as having a signicant role in resilience
building. The Five Capitals approach sees social capital or trust norms and networks as one
of ve important elements needed for building resilient systems (Mayunga 2007). Here, it
is argued that robust civil society institutions can foster cooperation and coordination in a
community which can, in turn, lead to a greater amount of trust and respect amongst its
members. This can result in more equitable access to resources and greater resilience. Ostrom
(2009) discusses the capability of system users to organise for better ecosystem management,
arguing that a high degree of trust and shared ethical standards makes it easier to reach
agreements and also reduces the need to carefully monitor resource use by dierent users.
Twigg (2007) also underlines this when he identies cultures, attitudes and motivation to
be a component of resilience and says that shared community values are a characteristic of
disaster-resilient communities.
3.8 Non-equilibrium system dynamics
This notion is related with that noted in section 3.3 about uncertainty and change. Holling
engaged with this idea most substantially in his analysis of the resilience of ecosystems,
arguing that ‘an equilibrium centred view is essentially static and provides little insight into
the transient behaviour of systems that are not near the equilibrium. Natural, undisturbed
systems are likely to be continually in a transient state’” (Holling 1973: 2).
Rather than stable states to which they should return after a disturbance, Holling argues that
the sets of relationships amongst a number of dierent system elements are each organised
around individual equilibriums. A disturbance may change the position of these compo-
nents within a system, but the system will persist as long as the relationships between these
components remain similar. This persistence of relationships then becomes a measure of the
system’s resilience.
Folke also discusses this when he writes: ‘Old dominant perspectives have implicitly assumed
a stable and innitely resilient environment where resource ows could be controlled and na-
ture would self-repair into equilibrium... The resilience perspective shifts policies from those
that aspire to control change in systems assumed to be stable, to managing the capacity of
social-ecological systems to cope with, adapt to, and shape change.’ (Folke 2006: 253).
Essentially, a non-equilibrium approach argues that restoring equilibrium may return a sys-
tem to a state where it is vulnerable to the impact of the same perturbation again.
3.9 Learning
Learning from experience is another characteristic of resilient systems highlighted by the
reviewed literature. A number of approaches reviewed highlight the need for iterative pro-
cesses and organisational learning in initiatives to promote resilience. Learning is one of three
core components of resilience for the Stability, Self-organisation and Learning approach,
which merges learning with the idea of adaptive capacity; ‘a component of resilience that
reects the learning aspect of system behaviour in response to disturbance’ (Carpenter et al.
2001: 766).
Learning is also central to the notion of adaptive management (Gunderson and Holling 2001).
This considers a range of plausible hypotheses about future changes in the system, weighs
a range of possible strategies against this wide set of potential futures, and then favours ac-
tions that are robust to uncertainties. Others have highlighted the high degree of uncertainty
that exists in socio-ecological systems and argued that eective and continual learning is a
way of dealing with this (Folke 2006). Indicators for learning are complex, but certain steps
like exibility in guidelines issued by authorities, employment of accepted organisational
learning techniques and undertaking exercises of reective practice within organisations may
contribute to eective learning.
18 The resilience renaissance?
3.10 Adoption of a cross-scalar perspective
At the heart of the resilience concept seems to be an acknowledgement of the high level of
interconnectedness between the various components of a system. This in turn means that
resilient systems have perspectives that transcend the specicities of the local and take a
regional view of events. It also means that resilience can be derived from high spatial and
temporal variability.
Holling (1973) compares the resilience of sh stocks in a closed, local ecosystem like that of
a lake to that of pest populations which are highly dispersed in space and time to nd that
the latter are far more resilient. The Convergence approach looks at the issue of transcend-
ing scales of governance but in the context of networks and systems and nds that networks
that transcend scales are found to have greater resilience (Nelson et al. 2007). The importance
of cross-scalar networks is acknowledged in a number of places and is possibly evidenced
through societal or kinship networks that connect the local to the global, or simply through
the existence of strong social, political, cultural, economic and natural links of one system
with other systems/groups/communities. Twigg (2007) does not acknowledge this directly
but this characteristic is implied in a number of points that he outlines, but especially when
he discusses early warning systems and outlines the importance of the local being integrated
with the regional.
The resilience renaissance? 19
4. Conclusion
The operationalisation of resilience thinking is founded upon the understanding that ecologi-
cal and social systems are highly integrated. This implies the need to work with the high de-
gree of complexity and connectedness that exists in and between these systems. The notion
of ‘complexity’ manifests itself in particular through understanding processes and events in a
system as non-linear. All of the points discussed above have a critical link to tackling a chang-
ing climate as most of the material discussed in the preceding sections seeks to make SESs
more resilient to ‘disturbances’ and, be it hydro-meteorological disasters, change in rainfall
patterns/quantity or temperature variability, it is projected that climate change is likely to
change the nature, and increase the intensity and frequency, of disturbances that SESs will
face across the globe.
While reviewing literature on the resilience concept has yielded insight into the essential
components, characteristics and possible indicators of resilient systems, a number of gaps in
understanding remain. Firstly, there remains a lack of conceptual clarity on the relationship
between adaptation, adaptive capacity and resilience. This results in a lack of understand-
ing of the additional benet that taking a resilience approach brings to adaptation, whether
resilience pertains to an idealised form of adaptation or whether the terms can be used inter-
changeably. This problem is compounded by the paucity of robust, documented case studies
on the operationalisation of the resilience concept.
Secondly, most theorists refer to resilience in the context of a ‘system’ but no part of the re-
viewed literature provides a substantial explanation of how this entity and its boundaries are
dened. The use of ‘system’ in the context of resilience stems largely from ecological theory
where theorists such as Holling discussed the resilience of ‘ecosystems’. However, this review
highlights how theorists have taken many of the original ideas developed in the context of
ecosystems research and applied them to understanding socio-ecological systems. While
this has yielded a range of insights outlined in the previous sections, insucient thought has
been given to understanding the limits and contents of a system in the context of interpre-
tations outside ecology. It has variously been understood to be a sum of resource systems,
resource units, governance systems and resource users. It has also been understood to be a
community or even a contained ecological space such as a lake (Ostrom 2009; Mayunga 2007;
Holling 1973).
Thirdly, it is clear that there is major gap in understanding how ‘resilience’ should be meas-
ured. This problem is inherently linked to the two issues discussed above. If there is a lack of
clarity on the spatial dynamics of resilience building through a confusion about the limits of
system and a lack of clarity on how resilience and adaptation are separated, then measuring
the concepts naturally becomes dicult. While some theorists propose tentative indicators
and formulas (see, for example, Twigg 2007), there is little guidance on how indicators should
be developed and tailored for specic situations or direction on the kind of data that needs
to be collected. Appendix 1 provides an initial set of analytically deduced indicators from the
basic ndings of this literature review.
Lastly, the vast majority of the available literature on the resilience concept still tends to be
largely conceptual and, while some empirical examples are discussed, there remains a lack of
robust case studies that prove or test the theories put forward. The development of this paper
and the work within the Strengthening Climate Resilience Programme has stimulated com-
munication with a range of experts engaged in research on relevant topics and concluded
that few case studies exist on operationalising resilience concepts. We hope that this paper
goes some way to advancing the discussion and practice of operationalising resilience, both
through understanding the overlapping conceptualisations and the initial plotting of poten-
tial indicators for its key characteristics.
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20 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 21
5. Appendix 1: Resilience and its characteristics
22 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 23
24 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 25
26 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 27
28 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 29
30 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 31
32 The resilience renaissance?
1Overall it is argued that a
resilience framework provides
a dynamic perspective on
adaptation processes and the
eects of these processes at
dierent spatial and temporal
scales. Actor-based analyses look
at the process of negotiation,
decision-making, and action.
Systems-based analyses
complement this approach by
examining the implications of
these processes for the rest of the
system (Nelson et al. 2007).
The resilience renaissance? 33
34 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 35
36 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 37
38 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 39
40 The resilience renaissance?
The resilience renaissance? 41
42 The resilience renaissance?
1. 2. 3.
Tackle changing disaster
risks and uncertainties
Enhance adaptive
capacity Address poverty & vulnerability
and their structural causes
1a
Strengthen collaboration and integration
between diverse stakeholders working on
disasters, climate and development
To what extent are climate change
adaptation, disaster risk management and
development integrated across sectors and
scales? How are organisations working on
disasters, climate change and development
collaborating?
3a
Promote more socially just and equitable
economic systems
How are interventions challenging
injustice and exclusion and providing
equitable access to sustainable livelihood
opportunities? Have climate change
impacts been considered and integrated
into these interventions?
2a
Strengthen the ability of people,
organisations and networks to
experiment and innovate
How are the institutions, organisations
and communities involved in tackling
changing disaster risks and uncertainties
creating and strengthening opportunities
to innovate and experiment?
1b
Periodically assess the eects of climate
change on current and future disaster
risks and uncertainties
How is knowledge from meteorology,
climatology, social science, and
communities about hazards,
vulnerabilities and uncertainties being
collected, integrated and used at
dierent scales?
2b
Promote regular learning and reection
to improve the implementation of policies
and practices
Have disaster risk management policies
and practices been changed as a result of
reection and learning-by-doing? Is there a
process in place for information and learning
to ow from communities to organisations
and vice versa?
3b
Forge partnerships to ensure the rights
and entitlements of people to access
basic services, productive assets and
common property resources
What networks and alliance are in place to
advocate for the rights and entitlements
of people to access basic services,
productive assets and common property
resources?
1c
Integrate knowledge of changing risks
and uncertainties into planning, policy
and programme design to reduce the
vulnerability and exposure of people’s lives
and livelihoods
How is knowledge about changing
disaster risks being incorporated into and
acted upon within interventions? How
are measures to tackle uncertainty being
considered in these processes? How are
these processes strengthening partnerships
between communities, governments and
other stakeholders?
2c
Ensure policies and practices to tackle
changing disaster risk are exible,
integrated across sectors and scale and
have regular feedback loops
What are the links between people
and organisations working to reduce
changing disaster risks and uncertainties
at community, sub-national, national
and international levels? How exible,
accountable and transparent are these
people and organisations?
3c
Empower communities and local
authorities to inuence the decisions
of national governments, NGOs,
international and private sector
organisations and to promote
accountability and transparency
To w hat extent are decision-making
structures de-centralised, participatory and
inclusive? How do communities, including
women, children and other marginalised
groups, inuence decisions? How do they
hold government and other organisations
to account?
1d
Increase access of all stakeholders
to information and support services
concerning changing disaster
risks, uncertainties and broader
climate impacts
How are varied educational approaches,
early warning systems, media and
community-led public awareness
programmes supporting increased access
to information and related support
services?
2d
Use tools and methods to plan for
uncertainty and unexpected events
What processes are in place to support
governments, communities and other
stakeholders to eectively manage
the uncertainties related to climate
change? How are ndings from scenario
planning exercises and climate-sensitive
vulnerability assessments being
integrated into existing strategies?
3d
Promote environmentally sensitive
and climate smart development
How are environmental impact
assessments including climate change?
How are development interventions,
including ecosystem-based approaches,
protecting and restoring the environment
and addressing poverty and vulnerability?
To what extent are the mitigation of
greenhouse gases and low emissions
strategies being integrated within
development plans?
The Climate Smart Disaster Risk
Management Approach
Strengthening Climate Resilience
The questions in the approach are suggestions only and
there may well be others
For more information contact:
Strengthening Cllimate Resilience
Institute of Development Studies
Brighton BN1 9RE UK
T: +44 (0)1273 606261
info@csdrm.org
www.csdrm.org
This publication is part of the Strengthening Climate
Resilience Discussion Series, which aims to
elaborate concepts and application of the Climate
Smart Disaster Risk Management approach. All
papers are available free to download through the
Strengthening Climate Resilience (SCR) website:
www.csdrm.org
The Resilience Renaissance? Unpacking of Resilience for Tackling
Climate Change and Disasters
. Bahadur, A.; Ibrahim, M. and
Tanner, T. (2010) Strengthening Climate Resilience Discussion
Paper 1, Brighton: IDS
Assessing Progress on Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction and
Climate Change Adaptation in Development Processes
. Mitchell,
T., Van Aalst, M. and Silva Villanueva, P. (2010) Strengthening
Climate Resilience Discussion Paper 2, Brighton: IDS
Greening Disaster Risk Management: Issues at the Interface of
Disaster Risk Management and Low Carbon Development
.
Urban, F. ; Mitchell, T. and Silva Villanueva, P. (2010)
Strengthening Climate Resilience Discussion Paper 3, Brighton:
IDS
Integrating Climate Change into Regional Disaster Risk
Management at the Mekong River Commission
. Polack, E. (2010)
Strengthening Climate Resilience Discussion Paper 4, Brighton:
IDS
Building Climate Resilience at State Level: DRM and Rural
Livelihoods in Orissa
. Hedger, M., Singha, A. and Reddy, M.
(2010) Strengthening Climate Resilience Discussion Paper 5,
Brighton: IDS
Post-Disaster Housing Reconstruction in a Conict-aected
District, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka: Reecting on the Climate Smart
Disaster Risk Management Approach
. Ibrahim, M. (2010)
Strengthening Climate Resilience Discussion Paper 6, Brighton:
IDS
Other publications from SCR on the Climate Smart
Disaster Risk Management Approach:
Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management in Brief.
Mitchell, T. and
Ibrahim, M. (2010) Strengthening Climate Resilience, Brighton:
IDS
Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management.
Mitchell, T.;
Ibrahim, M.; Harris, K.; Hedger, M.; Polack, E.; Ahmed, A.; Hall, N.;
Hawrylyshyn, K.; Nightingale, K.; Onyango, M.; Adow, M., and
Sajjad Mohammed, S. (2010), Strengthening Climate Resilience,
Brighton: IDS
