Aligning Key Concepts for Global Change Policy: Robustness, Resilience, and Sustainability

Abstract

"Globalization, the process by which local social-ecological systems (SESs) are becoming linked in a global network, presents policy scientists and practitioners with unique and dicult challenges. Although local SESs can be extremely complex, when they become more tightly linked in the global system, complexity spirals as multi-scale and multi-level processes become more important. Here, we argue that addressing these multi-scale and multilevel challenges requires a collection of theories and models. We suggest that the conceptual domains sustainability, resilience, and robustness provide a suciently rich collection of theories and models but overlapping denitions and confusion about how these conceptual domains articulate with one another reduces their utility. Here we attempt to eliminate this confusion and illustrate how sustainability, resilience and robustness can be used in tandem to address the multi-level and multi-scale challenges associated with global change."