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Journal Article Enhancing the Fit through Adaptive Co-management: Creating and Maintaining Bridging Functions for Matching Scales in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve, Sweden(2007) Olsson, Per; Folke, Carl; Galaz, Victor; Hahn, Thomas; Schultz, Lisen"In this article, we focus on adaptive governance of social-ecological systems (SES) and, more specifically, on social factors that can enhance the fit between governance systems and ecosystems. The challenge lies in matching multilevel governance system, often characterized by fragmented organizational and institutional structures and compartmentalized and sectorized decision-making processes, with ecosystems characterized by complex interactions in time and space. The ability to create the right links, at the right time, around the right issues in multilevel governance systems is crucial for fostering responses that build social-ecological resilience and maintain the capacity of complex and dynamic ecosystems to generate services for human well-being. This is especially true in the face of uncertainty and during periods of abrupt change and reorganization. We draw on our earlier work in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve (KVBR), in southern Sweden, to provide new insights on factors that can improve such linking. We focus especially on the bridging function in SES and the factors that constrain bridging in multilevel governance systems, and strategies used to overcome these. We present two features that seem critical for linking organizations dynamically across multiple levels: 1) the role of bridging organizations and 2) the importance of leadership. Bridging organizations and the bridging function can be vulnerable to disturbance, but there are sources of resilience for securing these key structures and functions in SES. These include social mechanisms for combining multiple sources of knowledge, building moral and political support in social networks, and having legal and financial support as part of the adaptive governance structure."Journal Article Handful of Heuristics and Some Propositions for Understanding Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems(2006) Walker, Brian H.; Gunderson, Lance; Kinzig, Ann P.; Folke, Carl; Carpenter, Stephen; Schultz, Lisen"This paper is a work-in-progress account of ideas and propositions about resilience in socialecological systems. It articulates our understanding of how these complex systems change and what determines their ability to absorb disturbances in either their ecological or their social domains. We call them 'propositions' because, although they are useful in helping us understand and compare different social-ecological systems, they are not sufficiently well defined to be considered formal hypotheses. These propositions were developed in two workshops, in 2003 and 2004, in which participants compared the dynamics of 15 case studies in a wide range of regions around the world. The propositions raise many questions, and we present a list of some that could help define the next phase of resilience-related research."Journal Article Linkages Among Water Vapor Flows, Food Production, and Terrestrial Ecosystem Services(1999) Rockström, Johan; Gordon, Line; Folke, Carl; Falkenmark, Malin; Engwall, Maria"Global freshwater assessments have not addressed the linkages among water vapor flows, agricultural food production, and terrestrial ecosystem services. We perform the first bottom-up estimate of continental water vapor flows, subdivided into the major terrestrial biomes, and arrive at a total continental water vapor flow of 70,000 km3/yr (ranging from 56,000 to 84,000 km3/yr). Of this flow, 90% is attributed to forests, including woodlands (40,000 km3/yr), wetlands (1400 km3/yr), grasslands (15,100 km3/yr), and croplands (6800 km3/yr). These terrestrial biomes sustain society with essential welfare-supporting ecosystem services, including food production. By analyzing the freshwater requirements of an increasing demand for food in the year 2025, we discover a critical trade-off between flows of water vapor for food production and for other welfare-supporting ecosystem services. To reduce the risk of unintentional welfare losses, this trade-off must become embedded in intentional ecohydrological landscape management."Journal Article Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability(2010) Folke, Carl; Carpenter, Stephen; Walker, Brian H.; Scheffer, Marten; Chapin, Terry; Rockström, Johan"Resilience thinking addresses the dynamics and development of complex social–ecological systems (SES). Three aspects are central: resilience, adaptability and transformability. These aspects interrelate across multiple scales. Resilience in this context is the capacity of a SES to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds. Adaptability is part of resilience. It represents the capacity to adjust responses to changing external drivers and internal processes and thereby allow for development along the current trajectory (stability domain). Transformability is the capacity to cross thresholds into new development trajectories. Transformational change at smaller scales enables resilience at larger scales. The capacity to transform at smaller scales draws on resilience from multiple scales, making use of crises as windows of opportunity for novelty and innovation, and recombining sources of experience and knowledge to navigate social–ecological transitions. Society must seriously consider ways to foster resilience of smaller more manageable SESs that contribute to Earth System resilience and to explore options for deliberate transformation of SESs that threaten Earth System resilience."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."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."Journal Article Resilience: Accounting for the Noncomputable(2009) Carpenter, Stephen; Folke, Carl; Scheffer, Marten; Westley, Frances"Plans to solve complex environmental problems should always consider the role of surprise. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to emphasize known computable aspects of a problem while neglecting aspects that are unknown and failing to ask questions about them. The tendency to ignore the noncomputable can be countered by considering a wide range of perspectives, encouraging transparency with regard to conflicting viewpoints, stimulating a diversity of models, and managing for the emergence of new syntheses that reorganize fragmentary knowledge."Journal Article General Resilience to Cope with Extreme Events(2012) Carpenter, Stephen R.; Arrow, Kenneth J.; Barrett, Scott; Biggs, Reinette; Brock, William A.; Crépin, Anne-Sophie; Engström, Gustav; Folke, Carl; Hughes, Terry P.; Kautsky, Nils; Li, Chuan-Zhong; McCarney, Geoffrey; Meng, Kyle; Mäler, Karl-Göran; Polasky, Stephen; Scheffer, Marten; Shrogren, Jason; Sterner, Thomas; Vincent, Jeffrey R.; Walker, Brian; Xepapadeas, Anastasios; de Zeeuw, Aart"Resilience to specified kinds of disasters is an active area of research and practice. However, rare or unprecedented disturbances that are unusually intense or extensive require a more broad-spectrum type of resilience. General resilience is the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt or transform in response to unfamiliar, unexpected and extreme shocks. Conditions that enable general resilience include diversity, modularity, openness, reserves, feedbacks, nestedness, monitoring, leadership, and trust. Processes for building general resilience are an emerging and crucially important area of research."