1. Resilience for the future…?
Ioan Fazey
School of Environment/CECHR
University of Dundee
i.fazey@dundee.ac.uk

2. Outline
• What is resilience?
• Trajectories of resilience…
• An ever changing world…
• Adaptive, interdisciplinary researchers to face the
future

3. What is resilience?
Social-Ecological Resilience
“The amount of change a system can undergo (its
capacity to absorb disturbance) and remain within
the same regime – essentially maintaining the
same function, structure and feedbacks”
Walker and Salt 2006 Resilience Thinking. Island Press

4. Resilience
Strength, Speed, Frequency
Vulnerability of the Hazard
1. Exposure
2. Sensitivity
3. Adaptive capacity

5. Property?
Sustainability
Social-ecological
Resilience
Normative?

6. Basic premises of social-ecological
resilience
1) Humans are part of the social-ecological system
(SES)
2) Systems are governed by feedback
3) Systems can exist as multiple stable states
4) Systems are complex and adaptive
osphere, I. Fazey 2008

7. element constraint
A ‘system’
part influence

8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaOFvG935eg

9. Resilience aims to increase
capacity to cope with
change…
Resilience as a property of a
system…
Resilience is related to
adaptive capacity…
Resilience thinking – a lens to
view the world

10. Outline
• What is resilience?
• Trajectories of resilience…
• An ever changing world…
• Adaptive, interdisciplinary researchers to face the
future

11. Trajectories of change (resilience) in Kahua

13. Number births
R +
Amount of land used +
Population
for cash crops Income from
growth
cash crops
+ Number of + Desire for prosperity +
people
R7
Policies and
R programmes
Intrinsic desire
+ + for economic + encouraging
Desire to make income generation
Pressure on money + prosperity
Pressure and Money in
ecological systems + +
stress communities
+
+ Stress in
communities
-
Ability to Cross R
+ +
adaptively community
manage change collaboration + R Tendency for
in Kahua
Ability to address individualistic
+ attitudes
R problems Maintaining R
Response to + + cohesion
environmental
change
Social cohesion -
and trust in
communities -
Fazey, I., et al. (2011) Global
+
Environmental Change 21, B Ability to respond
1275-1289 to problems

14. Trajectories
• Increasing inequality
• Increasing conflict
• Increase resource use per capita
• Loss social cohesion
• Possibly more education
• Increasing change
Number births
R +
Amount of land used +
Population
for cash crops Income from
growth
cash crops
+ Number of + Desire for prosperity +
people
R7
Policies and
R programmes
Intrinsic desire
+ + for economic + encouraging
Desire to make income generation
Pressure on money + prosperity
Pressure and Money in
ecological systems + +
stress communities
+
+ Stress in
communities
-
Ability to Cross R
+ +
adaptively community
manage change collaboration + R Tendency for
in Kahua
Ability to address individualistic
+ attitudes
R problems Maintaining R
Response to + + cohesion
environmental
change
Social cohesion -
and trust in
communities -
+
B Ability to respond
to problems

15. Number births
R +
Amount of land used +
Population
for cash crops Income from
growth
cash crops
+ Number of + Desire for prosperity +
people
R7
Policies and
R programmes
Intrinsic desire
+ + for economic + encouraging
Desire to make income generation
Pressure on money + prosperity
Pressure and Money in
ecological systems + +
stress communities
+
Future Change + Stress in
communities
(e.g. climate) -
Ability to Cross R
+ +
adaptively community
manage change collaboration + R Tendency for
in Kahua
Ability to address individualistic
+ attitudes
R problems Maintaining R
Response to + + cohesion
environmental
change
Social cohesion -
and trust in
communities -
Fazey, I., et al. (2011) Global
+
Environmental Change 21, B Ability to respond
1275-1289 to problems

16. Trajectories in Kahua highlight:
• Change creates responses which
create further change;
• Acceleration of change is
enabled by psycho-social desire;
• Climate change reinforces
further change and response
Are attempts to enhance ‘resilience’
accelerating change?

17. Outline
• What is resilience?
• Trajectories of resilience…
• An ever changing world…
• Adaptive, interdisciplinary researchers to face the
future

18. Great Acceleration
• Human response to
change fuels and is
fuelled by the great
acceleration
• People aren’t simply
standing by
• The future is change
(and more change…)
Steffen, W., et al. (2004) Global change
and the Earth System: A planet under
pressure. Springer

20. Red Queen and change
Alice: "Well, in our country, you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you
run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.“
Queen: "A slow sort of country! Now, here, you see, it takes all the running
you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else,
you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Lewis Carroll , Through the looking glass.

21. The Global Challenge…
How should we respond?

22. Quick summary
Resilience is
related to People adapt,
adaptive capacity and create
change Results in
acceleration of
change
So how should we
respond?
1. Become more 2. Try and ‘step
adaptive? (i.e. off’ the treadmill
resilient)

23. Outline
• What is resilience?
• Trajectories of resilience…
• An ever changing world…
• Adaptive, interdisciplinary researchers to face the
future

24. 1. Become adaptive learners and thinkers
• Adaptive expertise
– Practice
– Variation in practice
• Flexibility in learning ‘thinking’
• Thinking dispositions
– (Perkins et al. Unpublished)

25. Component
Disposition Inclination (examples) Sensitivity (examples) Ability (examples)
1) To be broad and Tendency to be open-minded, Alertness to binariness, Identify assumptions, empathic
adventurous impulse to probe assumptions, dogmatism, sweeping and flexible thinking, to look at
desire to tinker with boundaries generalities, narrow thinking things from other points of view
2) Toward sustained Zest for inquiry, urge to find and Alertness to unasked questions, To observe closely, focus and
intellectual curiosity pose problems, tendency to anomalies, hidden facets, persist in a line of inquiry
wonder detecting gaps in knowledge
3) To clarify and seek Desire to grasp the essence of Alertness to unclarity, discomfort Ability to ask pointed questions
understanding things, impulse to anchor ideas to with vagueness, a leaning and build complex
experience and seek connections towards hard questions conceptualisations, ability to
to prior knowledge make analogies and comparisons
4) To plan and be Urge to set goals, make and Alertness to lack of direction, lack Ability to formulate goals,
strategic execute plans, a desire to think of orientation, sprawling thinking evaluate alternative modes of
ahead approach, make plans and
forecast possible outcomes
5) To be intellectually Urge for precision, a desire for Alertness to possibility of error, Ability to process information
careful mental orderliness, organisation, disorder and disorganisation, precisely, to recognize and apply
and thoroughness inaccuracy and inconsistency intellectual standards
6) To seek and A leaning towards healthy Alertness to evidential Ability to distinguish cause and
evaluate reasons scepticism, the drive to pursue foundations, responsiveness to effect, to identify logical structure,
and demand justification, the urge superficiality and over reason inductively
to discover grounds and sources generalisation
7) To be metacognitive Urge to be cognitively self-aware Alertness to loss of control of Ability to exercise control of
and to monitor the flow of one’s one’s thinking, detection of mental processes, to conceive of
thinking, desire to be self complex thinking situations the mind as active and
challenging requiring self monitoring interpretive, to be self evaluative,
to reflect on prior thinking

26. Resilient thinkers?
A bit like seeing things from different
perspectives, but knowing when to take
those perspectives…

31. Different higher order perspectives:
Epistemology
e.g. is there a real world out there to be measured/understood?
Positivism Subjectivism
Sciences, some social Some social science,
science humanities

32. Physical
World
Natural and
Physical
Sciences
Social World Interaction of social
Social Sciences and Humanities and physical world
Epistemology – fundamental differences in
understanding the world…

33. We all have our own epistemological
beliefs
• Studies highlight there are 4 key dimensions
Nature of Certainty of knowledge Simplicity of knowledge
knowledge
Knowledge as fixed or fluid Accumulation of facts or highly
interrelated concepts
How we come to Source of knowledge Justification for knowing
know something
Where does knowledge How individuals justify what
come from? they know and how they
evaluate knowledge
Hofer 2000. Contemporary Educational
Psychology 25:378-405.

34. Personal epistemological beliefs –
common dimensions
• PEBs can change over
time
• Sophisticated views of
knowledge are rare
• They have profound
implications for how
we understand complex
real world problems
Fazey 2010 Ecol. & Soci
Hofer 2000. Contemporary Educational
Psychology 25:378-405.

35. Nature of Knowledge
Knowledge consists of discrete,
Simple concrete, knowable facts
Simplicity
Certain Uncertain
Knowledge is
Absolute truth and Certainty tentative and evolving
certainty exists
Knowledge is relative, contingent,
Complex and context dependent
Hofer 2000. Contemporary Educational Psychology 25:378-405.

36. How we come to know something
Knowledge originating from outside the self
External (e.g. an expert or external authority)
Source
Authority,
observation Evaluation
Justification
Justification of a view through Justification of a view through active
observation, authority, or on evaluation or assessment of the
the basis of what feels right evidence, expertise or authority involved
Knowledge is constructed by individuals through
Internal interaction with their environment and others

37. Relevance to interdisciplinary thinking
Groups of individuals from Individuals integrating
different disciplines knowledge from different
disciplines
Can we be
interdisciplinary
individuals?

38. So how should we
Quick summary respond?
To be ‘adaptive’
1. Become more 2. Try and ‘step
people need to be
adaptive? (i.e. off’ the treadmill
adaptive learners
resilient)
Adaptive learning requires But – this doesn’t
people to have flexible necessarily get us off the
higher order thinking treadmill of change
Also relates to developing
This includes beliefs about
skills as interdisciplinary
knowledge and knowing
researchers

39. 2. Stepping off the treadmill
• Adaptive capacity itself Systems
view Linear view
doesn’t reduce change;
Conventional
• Need to examine the
psycho-social aspects
that enable people to Postconventional
not react to change; Construct aware
• Lots of theories of stages
Unity Consciousness,
of development… Unitary Ground of Being,
Transpersonal Realm
view Model of Ego Development
Pre-conventional
Postpostconventional: ego transcendent
Cook-Greuter, S.R. (2000) Mature ego
development: A gateway to ego transcendence?
Journal of Adult Development 7, 227-240

40. Systems view
Model of Ego Aware of:
• Subject-object relationships Linear view
Development • Participant observer • Max. subject-object
Cook-Greuter 2000 • Cultural conditioning separation
• Contexts and perspective • Linear causality
• Circular causation • Analytic logic
Conventional
Resilience
Thinking
Ego
Stages
Unitary view Postconventional
Aware of:
• Illusion of separate self
and object world Construct aware
• Habits of mind (including
language and judgment
habit)
• Habits of the heart
Unity
Consciousness,
From thousands of subjects Ground of Being,
taking Loevinger’s SCTs Transpersonal Pre-conventional
and examination of Realm
‘spiritual’ development
Postpostconventional: ego transcendent

41. Can we enhance transformation?
Vipassana
http://www.dhamma.org/
Unpleasant Pleasant
Experience Experience
Seek less
Sensory
Response
Seek more
=
Aversion Craving
IMPERMANENCE
=
Changes in
= addictive,
aggressive
Bowen, S., et al. (2006) Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 20, behaviours
343-347

42. So how should we
Quick summary respond?
1. Become more 2. Try and ‘step
adaptive? (i.e. off’ the treadmill
But – this doesn’t resilient)
necessarily get us off the
Resilience ‘thinking’ is only
treadmill of change
one way of thinking
Such approaches help There are approaches that
people become more can help people
satisfied, calmer, happier understand dynamic
change
Do they help us step off
the treadmill?

43. Facing the future
• Resilience can enhance capacities to respond to
change
• But the future depends on how we approach and
understand change
• A crucial component of this is awareness of how our
thinking affects everything that we do
• Exploring and developing higher order thinking has
major relevance for interdisciplinary skills,
resilience, and the future…

44. 4 challenges for facing the future
Learn to:
1. Articulate your own epistemological assumptions
2. Understand the epistemological assumptions of others
3. See the world through different epistemological lenses
4. Be epistemological brokers to help others