Resilience of what to what?

Jack Kruf | April 2024 (update from August 2016)

What is resilience? Well, there is no simple answer to this. Especially not regarding that of the ecosystem of a city. The concept, you might say, is in development in different sciences and recently entered the public governance domain related to the social-ecological system of society.

Can resilience be measured as an indicator of an ecosystem’s state? How are the living and non-living factors of the measured system calculated? Can it create true insight into the tone of the city, society, and nature?

Resilience is the new buzzword among public leaders and managers, but it has played an essential role for millions of years in natural ecosystems. It was launched in 2013 with 100 Resilient Cities as a relatively new concept of thinking and acting from the government’s perspective. But what is it about? The ability to endure stress and still perform or the capacity to recover after a catastrophe? Maybe both.

The question can not be answered or is meaningless without putting it in the context of resilience of what to what? In our approach, we focus on the resilience of the ecosystem city to specific external (abiotic, climate change)) or internal (biotic, virus attack) caused disturbances.

“Resilience has multiple levels of meaning: as a metaphor related to sustainability, as a property of dynamic models, and as a measurable quantity that can be assessed in field studies of socioecological system (SES). The operational indicators of resilience have, however, received little attention in the literature. To assess a system’s resilience, one must specify which system configuration and which disturbances are of interest.”

– Carpenter et al. (2001)

Holling (1973) introduced the word resilience into the ecological literature as a way of helping to understand the non-linear dynamics observed in ecosystems. Since then, the concept has diversified in all directions. Resilience is widely interpreted and used; it is a difficult-to-understand concept and, therefore, possibly of limited use for precise diagnosis and related public governance. Like accountability, the new normal, alignment, roadmap, risk, streamlining and sustainability, it can become a container or a buzzword.

“Resilience,” like love, is difficult to define, yet everyone – from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to government agencies, company boards, and community groups – is talking about how to build or maintain it. So, is resilience a useful concept or a meaningless buzzword?

– Brian Walker (2015)

We might return to the forest for the core definition of resilience. It is simple and, therefore, generally applicable.

‘Resilience is the ability to bounce back, basically in the face of disturbance, maintaining functions and structures of the system and recovering from the disturbance.”

– Rupert Seidl (2019)

The resilience of the ecosystem city tells the story of the balancing act of the population in the present habitat of the city. Of course, there are many layers of habitats within the city, and some justify zooming in and considering resilience on a lower level. In general, it is like when you plan to invest your money in stocks and funds: results in the past are no guarantee for the future.

Resilience is like looking into the mirror: you know where you are and where you come from, not so much about where you are going and what will happen. It is hard to predict how future internal and external developments influence the habitat of communities, whether they will exceed the resilience of the system, and whether the system can tackle change properly.

To successfully introduce resilience into public governance—Brian Walker (2017) from the Resilience Alliance underlines the (urgent) need for this—it is wise to start by using it always in the context of the resilience of what to what (Carpenter et al., 2001)). Much work must be done to bring resilience into the public domain. The first steps are there.

One thing stands out. Resilience measurement can help find the tone of a city, society, and nature. But it is very complex. For that, it has to develop further towards a more complete and refined concept. The of-what-to-what question has to be built in. We are on our way.

Bibliography

Carpenter, S., Walker, B., Anderies, J. and Abel, N. (2001) From Metaphor to Measurement: Resilience of What to What?. Ecosystems 4, 765–781. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-001-0045-9

Holling, C.S. (1973) Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. Vol. 4:1-23 (Volume publication date November 1973). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.04.110173.000245

Seidl, R. (2019) Voices of Resilience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=755F__a5agM

Walker, B. (2015) What is resilience?. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/what-is-resilience-by-brian-walker?barrier=accesspaylog

Walker, B. (2017). Brian Walker at Resilience 2017. Stockholm: Omställningsnätverket Transition Network Sweden.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G2-IFfRwzM