Resilience Practice

Building Capacity to

Absorb Disturbance and

Maintain Function

Brian Walker & David Salt

WASHINGTON | COVELO | LONDON

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means

without permission in writing from the publisher:

Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009.

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walker, B. H. (Brian Harrison), 1940-

Resilience practice : building capacity to absorb disturbance and maintain

function / Brian Walker, David Salt.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59726-800-4 (hardback) -- ISBN 1-59726-800-3 (cloth) -- ISBN

978-1-59726-801-1 (paper) 1. Natural resources--Management. 2. Natural

resources--Management--Case studies. 3. Resilience (Ecology)--Case studies.

4. Nature conservation--Case studies. 5. Environmental protection--Case

studies. I. Salt, David (David Andrew) II. Title.

HC59.15.W348 2012

333.7--dc23

2012016122

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Keywords: Island Press, complex adaptive systems, sustainability, tipping

points, planetary boundaries, adaptive management, adaptive governance

and state-and-transition models, natural resources management, sustainable

development, human ecology, ecological resilience, resilience thinking,

managing resilience, practicing resilience, resilience assessments, speciﬁed

resilience, general resilience, transformability, self-organizing systems,

adaptive cycles, adaptive systems, ecological threshold, panarchy, ecosystem

services, resilience.

Contents

Foreword ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xv

1 Preparing for Practice:

The Essence of Resilience Thinking 1

CASE STUDY 1

Thresholds on the Range:

A Safe Operating Space for Grazing Enterprises 27

2 Describing the System 35

CASE STUDY 2

From Taos to Bali and Sri Lanka:

Traditional Irrigation at the Crossroads 55

3 Assessing Resilience 67

CASE STUDY 3

Assessing Resilience for “the Plan”:

The Namoi and Central West Catchment

Management Authorities 107

4 Managing Resilience 117

CASE STUDY 4

People and Pen Shells, Marine Parks and Rules:

Why Governance Is Central to the Resilience

of Coastal Fisheries 135

5 Practicing Resilience in Different Ways 145

CASE STUDY 5

Out of the Swamp: Lessons from Big Wetlands 169

6 A Resilient World 185

Postscript: A View from the Northwest Passage 201

References 205

Glossary 213

About the Authors 217

Index 219

Foreword

his is a timely and compelling book. The future of our planet and of

ourselves is looking increasingly uncertain. We are beset by stresses

and shocks—of all kinds, natural and human induced—that are grow-

ing in frequency and size. We have shown enormous ingenuity in the past

in applying science and technology to increase food production, reduce

mortality, and improve the quality of human life, even though the ben-

eﬁts of these improvements have not always been shared equally around

the planet. But we’ve been less effective in managing our impacts on the

environment, whether in our backyard or for the planet as a whole.

This book is in some respects a sequel to Brian Walker and David

Salt’s 2006 book Resilience Thinking. Since the publication of that book,

the number of serious environmental events and unwanted changes

occurring in ecosystems, farming regions, forests, and the oceans has

increased, as the world approaches planetary boundaries. And as peo-

ple have begun to understand the severity of the challenges we face,

there is growing interest in the concept of resilience, with more and

more people wondering what might happen, and whether we could

cope, if and when some of the looming shocks strike us.

Resilience thinking has emerged as a valuable way for people to

engage with the world. Indeed, interest has reached the point where

the term resilience is considered by some to be the “new sustainabil-

ity” and is developing into a buzzword. Its increasingly common use in

political rhetoric involves various interpretations of what it means and

carries the danger of its value being discounted.

This book is a practical primer. It takes the reader through the ba-

sics that underpin resilience thinking and then sets out how this valu-

able set of ideas might actually be applied in assessing and managing

resilience. Chapters on how an assessment might be approached are

interspersed with case studies that describe how resilience applies in a

range of real-world situations.

Underlying resilience, in theory and practice, is the need to see

the world as consisting of a large number of different systems—small