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Working Paper Cultural Capital and Natural Capital Interrelations(1992) Folke, Carl; Berkes, Fikret"The importance of natural capital and the relationships between natural capital and human-made capital are of fundamental interest in ecological economics. But a consideration of these two kinds of capital alone fall short of providing the essential elements for the analysis of sustainability. A more complete conceptualization of the interdependency of the economy and the environment requires attention to social/cultural /political systems as well. We use the term cultural capital to refer to factors that provide human societies with the means and adaptations to deal with the natural environment. Cultural capital, as used here, includes factors such as social/political institutions, environmental ethics (world view) and traditional ecological knowledge in a society. The three types of capital are closely interrelated. Natural capital is the basis for cultural capital. Human-made capital is generated by an interaction between natural and cultural capital. Cultural capital will determine how a society uses natural capital to create human-made capital. Aspects of cultural capital, such as institutions involved in the governance of resource use and the environmental world view, are crucial for the potential of a society to develop sustainable relations with its natural environment."Conference Paper Resilience and the Co-Evolution of Ecosystems and Institutions(1995) Folke, Carl; Berkes, Fikret"Resilience is the ability of a system to cope with change without collapsing. It is the capacity to absorb external perturbations, by actively adapting to an ever changing environment. Reduction in resilience means that vulnerability increases, with the risk that the whole system flips from one equilibrium state to another. Such flips are often a consequence of the misuse of the environment and the inertia of institutions to change. Smaller unpredictable perturbations that previously could be handled turn into major crises when extreme events intersect with internally generated vulnerability due to loss of resilience. To avoid such situations there is a need for institutions with the ability to respond to and manage environmental feedbacks, institutions that can cope with unpredictable perturbations before they accumulate and challenge the existence of the whole social-ecological system. This implies that it is not enough to only understand the institution in question. The dynamics of the ecosystems that form the biophysical precondition for the existence of the institution need to be taken into account as well. This study focuses on the linked social-ecological system, and its dynamic interrelationships. We regard it as one system with its social and ecological components co-evolving over time. It is in this context that we study traditional and newly-emergent social-ecological systems. We are analyzing 1) how the local social system has adapted to and developed a knowledge system for dealing with the dynamics of the ecosystem(s) including the resources and services that it generates, 2) specifically, how the local system maintains ecosystem resilience in the face of perturbations, and 3) those combinations of property rights arrangements, institutions, and knowledge systems which accomplish the above successfully. Examples will be presented from the Cree Indians of the Canadian eastern subartic and their resource management, and pastoral herders and rangeland management in semi-arid Africa."Working Paper Linking Social and Ecological Systems for Resilience and Sustainability(1994) Berkes, Fikret; Folke, Carl"Traditional resource management systems or other local-level systems, based on the knowledge and experience of the resource users themselves, may have the potential to improve management of a number of ecosystems types. A considerable amount of evidence has accumulated to suggest that ecologically sensible indigenous practices have or had existed, for example, in the case of some tropical forests, island ecosystems, tropical fisheries, and semi-arid grazing lands. Given that Western resource management has not been all that successful in many of these environments, perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the cultural capital of societies which have elaborated these practices, a view echoed in Our Common Future. Ancient cultures and indigenous peoples do not have monopoly over ecological wisdom; there are cases of local, newly emergent or 'neo-traditional' resource management systems which cannot claim historical continuity over generations but which are nevertheless based on local knowledge and practice appropriately adapted to the ecological systems in which they occur."