Can Cross-Scale Linkages Increase the Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems?

Abstract

"Resilience thinking helps commons researchers to look beyond institutional forms, and ask instead questions regarding the adaptive capacity of social groups and their institutions to deal with stresses as a result of social, political and environmental change. One way to approach this question is to look for informative case studies of change in social-ecological systems and to investigate how societies deal with change. From these cases, one can gain insights and construct principles regarding capacity building to adapt to change and, in turn, to shape change.

"A number of examples exist to indicate that cross-scale linkages, both horizontal (across space) and vertical (across levels of organization), speed up learning and communication, thereby improving the ability of a society to buffer change, speed up self-organization, and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation (Lee 1993; Young 1999). This paper will deal with two cases, one involving aboriginal co-management in the Canadian North, and the other, cross-scale management of ocean fisheries."