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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."Conference Paper Livelihood Systems, Adaptive Strategies and Sustainability Indicators in the Western Indian Himalayas(1996) Berkes, Fikret; Duffield, Colin E.; Ham, Laurie"The paper is based on an interdisciplinary team project in Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh, in the Western Indian Himalaya, and concentrates on three themes: land use and property-rights systems through which the local people interact with their environment; adaptive strategies used for sustainable livelihood security in the face of ecological, social and economic change, with focus on women's roles; and changes in the forest ecosystem and 'signs and signals' of sustainability as perceived by the people of the area. Local villagers are recognized as actors who define what is important and relevant, rather than merely the objects of study. Their perspectives provide two important findings: (1) adaptive strategies used by households and villages are diverse and contribute to the resilience of the social system and the natural system, and (2)villagers recognize a complex array of signs and signals, that are biophysical, social and economic in nature, and that may be seen as indices of sustainability. Village institutions are 'fuzzy' and resilient, and are the basis of both the system of adaptive strategies and the system of signs and signals. These institutions seem well adapted to fit into a decentralized, integrated, participatory resource management framework."Conference Paper Can Cross-Scale Linkages Increase the Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems?(2003) Berkes, Fikret"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."Conference Paper Knowledge, Learning and the Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems(2004) Berkes, Fikret"There are two broadly conceptualized ways in which conservation knowledge may evolve: the depletion crisis model and the ecological understanding model. Regarding the first one, R.E. Johannes argues that developing conservation thought and practice depends on learning that resources are depletable. Before they could develop conservation practice, points out Johannes, fishers of the Pacific islands first had to learn that their natural resources were limited -- but 'they could only have done so by depleting them.' Thus, such learning typically follows a resource crisis, as also seen in the James Bay caribou case and others. Regarding the second mechanism, there is large amount of evidence that suggests that the development of conservation practice often follows the elaboration of environmental knowledge by a group of people, leading to increasingly more sophisticated understanding of the ecosystem in which they dwell. "The adaptive co-management concept may be useful in suggesting a way in which these two mechanisms may be integrated. Adaptive co-management may be defined as a process by which institutional arrangements and ecological knowledge are tested and revised in a dynamic, ongoing, self-organized process of learning-by-doing. Adaptive comanagement combines the dynamic learning characteristic of adaptive management with the linkage characteristic of cooperative management. Local groups can self- organize, learn and adapt through social networks. This self-organizing process of adaptive co-management, facilitated by knowledge development and learning, has the potential to increase the resilience (shock-absorbing capability) of common property systems. Hence, it can be concluded that conservation and management knowledge develops through a combination of long- term ecological understanding and learning from crises and mistakes. It has survival value, as it increases the resilience of integrated socialecological systems to deal with change."Conference Paper Framework for the Study of Indigenous Knowledge: Linking Social and Ecological Systems(1995) Berkes, Fikret; Folke, Carl"A considerable amount of evidence has accumulated to indicate that ecologically sensible indigenous practices have indeed existed in diverse ecosystems. Based on these findings, there is potential for improvement of resource management in environments such as northern coastal ecosystems, arid and semi-arid land ecosystems, mountain ecosystems, tropical forest ecosystems, subarctic ecosystems and island ecosystems. As compared to the rather narrow set of prescriptions of Western scientific resource management systems, some of which may inadvertently act to reduce ecosystem resilience, indigenous management is often associated with a diversity of property rights regimes and common-property institutions and locally-adapted practices, and it may operate under systems of knowledge substantially different from Western knowledge systems. "The framework we propose distinguishes seven sets of variables which can be used to describe social and ecological system characteristics and linkages in any indigenous resource use case study: (1) ecosystem, (2) resource users and technology, (3) local knowledge, (4) property rights, (5) institutions, (6) pattern of interactions, and (7) outcomes. Our framework borrows from that of Oakerson for the analysis of common-property management, and that of Ostrom for institutional analysis. "The key concept in our framework is resilience, to emphasize the importance of conditions in which disturbances (perturbations) can flip a system from one equilibrium state to another. We use Holling's definition of resilience, the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before a system changes its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior. We hypothesize that: (1) maintaining resilience is important for both resources and social institutions, and therefore the well-being of social and ecological systems is closely linked; (2) successful traditional knowledge systems will allow perturbations to enter an ecosystem on a scale which does not threaten its structure and functional performance, and the services it provides; and (3) there will be evidence of co-evolution in such traditional systems, making the local community and their institutions "in tune" over time with the natural processes of the particular ecosystem."