Presented by Nick Abel as part of the 2009 Place and Purpose Symposium run by the Landscape Science Cluster

1. Building or reducing resilience in our
social-ecological systems.
Nick Abel

2. How to adapt to an uncertain future: build resilience,
or transform?
Nick Abel
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
1/10/2009

3. A social ecological system can usually be in more
than one ‘regime’
CSIRO.

4. K: conservation
The adaptive cycle
r: growth / exploitation things change
resources readily available MDB
slowly; resources
‘locked up’
N Aus K
r
Ω
a
a: re-organization/renewal W: release
system boundaries tenuous; things change very rapidly;
innovations are possible ‘locked up’ resources suddenly
released
CSIRO.

5. Cross scale linkages of adaptive cycles
CSIRO.

6. Transforming the Murray Darling Basin
• Think cross-scale
• Social process
• Values – what do we want them to be?
• Possible alternative regimes, ‘good’ and ‘bad’
• Winners & losers
• Feedbacks and thresholds
• Windows of opportunity & feasible paths
• Pilot projects
• Disinvestments in the current regime
• Investments in the new regime
• Rule changes
• Incentive changes
CSIRO.

7. Building resilience in Northern Australia
• Values
• Drivers and scenarios for them
• Cross scale influences
• Slow variables, feedbacks, & thresholds
CSIRO.

8. CSIRO.

9. Following the flood...
dry rise healthy
vegetation
groundwater
Large floodplain, covered with healthy vegetation
CSIRO. Surface water enlivens the landscape

10. Once the surface water’s gone...
dry rise
healthy waterhole
vegetation
groundwater
Healthy vegetation & animals concentrate in waterholes
maintained by groundwater
CSIRO.

11. If groundwater extraction is excessive...
healthy dry
vegetation waterhole
groundwater
Waterholes dry up, area of healthy vegetation declines,
locals, tourists & animals suffer
The landscape is sensitive to small changes in groundwater depth
CSIRO.

12. CSIRO.

13. CSIRO.

14. Building Resilience in NA - continued
• Possible alternative regimes
• Winners & losers
• Potential shocks
• Vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities
• Institutions & investments for resilience
CSIRO.

15. Institutions & investments for resilience
• Invest assuming climatic change will happen
• Invest in a diversity of resource uses
• Limit investments in enterprises & infrastructure that are
irreversible
• Identify thresholds of potential concern
• Can new land and water rights be time-bound?
• Develop ‘rules for changing the rules’
• Invest in self-organising capacity
• Invest in decentralised governance
CSIRO.

16. Workbooks for practitioners and researchers
http://www.resalliance.org/1.php
CSIRO.

17. Nick Abel
Thank you
CSIRO Sustainable
Ecosystems
02 6242 1534
nick.abel@csiro.au
www.csiro.au

18. The Environment
Institute