Authors: Brian Walker, David Salt, Walter Reid
ISBN-13: 9781597260930, ISBN-10: 1597260932
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Island Press
Date Published: August 2006
Edition: 1st Edition
Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency.
"Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down.
In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world.
"This is one of those books that barely mentions planning as such, but has lots of implications for it. It''s short but will repay some extra quiet time...Their goal is to get us to look at the world and its systems in a fresh new way."
1 | Living in a complex world : an introduciton to resilience thinking | 1 |
Case study 1 : carving up a national icon : the Florida Everglades | 15 | |
2 | The system rules : creating a mind space for resilience thinking | 28 |
Case study 2 : between a (salt) rock and a hard place : the Goulburn-Broken Catchment, Australia | 39 | |
3 | Crossing the threshold : be careful about the path you choose - you may not be able to return | 53 |
Case study 3 : losing the jewel in the crown : the coral reefs in the Caribbean | 64 | |
4 | In the loop : phases, cycles, and scales - adaptive cycles and how systems change | 74 |
Case study 4 : scenarios on the lakes : the Northern Highlands Lake District, Wisconsin | 96 | |
5 | Making sense of resilience : how do you apply resilience thinking? | 111 |
Case study 5 : building resilience in the wetlands : the Kristianstads Vattenrike, Sweden | 125 | |
6 | Creating space in a shrinking world : resilience and sustainability | 139 |
Postscript for a resilient world | 153 |