[Scpg] Book Review: Resilience Thinking – Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World by Owen Hablutzel June 4, 2010

[Margie Bushman, Coordinator, SBCC Center for Sustainability]

<http://permaculture.org.au/2010/06/04/book-review-resilience-thinking-sustaining-ecosystems-and-people-in-a-changing-world/>Book 
Review: Resilience Thinking – Sustaining 
Ecosystems and People in a Changing World

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/06/04/book-review-resilience-thinking-sustaining-ecosystems-and-people-in-a-changing-world/


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<http://permaculture.org.au/2010/06/04/book-review-resilience-thinking-sustaining-ecosystems-and-people-in-a-changing-world//author/Owen 
Hablutzel>Owen Hablutzel June 4, 2010

[]

Book by Brian Walker and David Salt
Island Press – 2006
174 pages

Reviewed by Owen Hablutzel

When is the last time you were surprised? It 
might have been a brand new volunteer plant in 
the garden, bizarre and beautiful fungi in the 
pasture, an incredible storm on the horizon, or a 
blessed windfall on the balance sheets! Given the 
inherent unpredictable nature of wholes – 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system>complex 
adaptive systems from cells, to bodies, to farms, 
societies and all of nature – we can be sure that 
surprise and unexpected change will happen quite 
frequently. If this is true at the home, farm or 
business scale it is all the more so at the 
regional, national, and global scales in today’s 
always changing and increasingly interconnected world.

In this shifting environment resilience – defined 
in 
<http://www.resalliance.org/2963.php>Resilience 
Thinking as the capacity of a system to absorb 
change while still maintaining its basic 
structure and function – becomes all the more 
critical. This essential ability enables systems 
of all sizes, ecological and social, to continue 
providing the goods and services humans value and 
need, regardless of the inevitable surprises. As 
the book notes, the more resilient a ranch, 
business, ecosystem, or planet the more flexible 
and open it is to multiple options or uses, and 
the more forgiving of design or management mistakes.

The book, Resilience Thinking (a slim volume from 
Island Press), introduces the reader to a partly 
philosophical and partly practical, whole-systems 
framework (which could also describe 
Permaculture, of course) that has over 30 years 
of research and a library of scientific 
literature behind it (much of that theory and 
case-study literature is worth a look as well – 
for those with an interest in ecological 
resilience – but the introductory Resilience 
Thinking is the place to begin). Resilience 
concepts are explained clearly and concisely 
here, and offer a variety of crucial insights 
with great potential to further the creation of a 
sustainable future on many scales. Designers, 
managers, watershed and policy groups, and others 
will find well developed analytical tools and 
practical strategies for increasing the 
resilience of the systems they interact with. 
Included here are regional, resilience-based, 
case-studies from around the globe – stories 
about encroaching salinity in an Australian 
Catchment system, policy in the Florida 
Everglades, coral reef stability in the 
Caribbean, lakes in Wisconsin, and land use in 
Sweden. All demonstrate a resilience framework 
approach to the complex issues involved and help 
the reader extrapolate the principles and approaches to their own situations.

For those already designing and managing their 
systems by using the ethics, principles and 
directives of Permaculture, Resilience Thinking 
will integrate almost seamlessly with your 
current practice. It may also add a synergistic 
creative ‘juice’ to evolve and improve your 
design strategies through its fresh insights, 
emerging and effective ecological understanding, 
as well as novel analytical tools and design 
approaches that can greatly improve flexibility, 
diversity, and the odds of long-term success. 
Along with Permaculture thinking, resilience 
thinking is a major step towards the resilience 
doing that the planet, and its linked 
ecological-social systems, so urgently require!

Some key insights from this book:
    * Change Happens! Ignoring or resisting the 
element of change and surprise in systems only 
increases risks and vulnerabilities. Resilience 
Thinking explains why the more a system is 
managed or designed towards one factor alone – 
like ‘maximum yield,’ the conventional 
mono-cultural, change-resisting strategy – the 
more that system’s resilience is actually 
diminished. Conversely, the authors articulate 
precisely how and why natural changes within 
systems actually function to increase the overall 
resilience of those systems, as well as how to best work with those changes.
    * Systems have multiple stable states. A 
classic example of alternative stable states in 
brittle, dryland environments is grassland versus 
a shrub dominated system. Both states are in fact 
ecologically stable, but they are otherwise quite 
different states – with different rates of 
production, different responses to disturbance, 
different effects on the hydrological, mineral, 
bio-geo-chemical and energy cycles, and 
presenting different options and limitations to 
designers, managers and users. An example, in an 
aquaculture system, would be a clear water 
stable-state versus an algal bloom scenario, with 
effects of each right up the entire aquatic food 
chain, and beyond. Both are stable states of the 
system, yet completely different.
    * Between stable states are thresholds that 
can be crossed. A system can shift quickly from 
one stable state into another, often with 
unwelcome surprises (grass to shrubs, clear pond 
to murky, or forest to desert on longer time 
scales). The more diminished the resilience of a 
system the closer that system is to a threshold. 
Being closer to a threshold, the system is far 
more likely to cross that threshold into an 
undesired state. Also, the closer a system is to 
a threshold the smaller the disturbance needed to 
cause a system transition (usually quite rapid) 
to an alternative stable state. Think ‘the straw 
that broke the camel’s back.’ Additionally, once 
a threshold is crossed it becomes far more 
difficult to manage the system back to its 
previous and often more desirable stable state. Think Humpty-Dumpty.
    * Cross-Scale interactions are very important 
to how the whole system operates. Interactions 
across different scales affect the entire system. 
One example, a policy or legislative decision at 
the state scale can affect a policy or operations 
decision at the farm scale. Think ‘Noxious 
Weeds,’ or ‘Building Codes.’ Likewise, if enough 
land holders in a watershed adopt Permaculture, 
or resilience enhancing models of operation, 
those actions and their cumulative positive 
effects have much improved potential to link-up 
with scales beyond that region, and trigger 
changes in practice and policy for a much wider 
area (Quail Springs Permaculture Farm’s natural 
building work that is creating serious policy 
discussion at wider scales, for example). Another 
way to think about this is in terms of 
Permaculture Zones. What you learn in Zone 5 
affects your evolving design strategies in Zone 
1, and vice versa, making this a cross-scale 
relationship that affects the entire system. Or, 
birds (and other wildlife) with territories of a 
far larger scale than your backyard or small farm 
influence your system by dropping seeds and 
nutrient into your system, and likewise by taking 
seeds, microorganisms, etc, from your system out 
into the wider territory starting mini-groves, 
guilds, and new microbe colonies all over the 
place! These are all interactions across scales 
that impact our systems all the time and are key 
components of the resilience-creating dynamics.
    * Change happens in an Adaptive Cycle. This 
is among the more novel and potentially useful 
insights of this framework. Not only does ‘change 
happen,’ but it tends to occur in a specific 
cycle called the Adaptive Cycle. This typically 
has four phases. 1. Rapid Growth phase. In a 
recently burned patch of forest this phase could 
be the explosive re-growth that can occur, 
characterized by pioneer plants and organisms. 
Next, 2. the Conservation phase. In our forest 
patch we would eventually see later successional 
species emerging, leading ultimately to a more 
mature forest ‘climax.’ 3. The Release phase 
follows and is often a very rapid phase. A new 
fire sweeps through the now overgrown (if never 
grazed or thinned) matured forested patch. The 
fire disturbance unlocks and releases all the 
nutrient and biomass built up during the Rapid 
Growth and Conservation phases, freeing these 
materials for new assignments in the next phase 
of the cycle, 4. Re-Organization. During the 
Re-Organization phase chance events and changes 
often play the largest role in defining the 
system’s new trajectory. In our forest patch this 
could be determined by which new seeds, fungi or 
organisms happen to establish a foothold first. 
Once this foothold is gained the Adaptive Cycle 
begins again, with a new Rapid Growth phase. 
Understanding the basic dynamics of this cycle 
provides insight into how and why systems change, 
as well as where and when different design or 
management options would and would not be likely 
to work. Knowing what phase of the 
<http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://wiki.resalliance.org/images/3/33/AdaptiveCycle.jpg&imgrefurl=http://wiki.resalliance.org/index.php/Forest_fires_-_an_ecological_example_of_the_adaptive_cycle&usg=__Zsp80Esam0AK2BStuC8ev0_ohXA=&h=457&w=523&sz=42&hl>Adaptive 
Cycle a system is currently in, and how the 
system’s resilience and responses will vary in 
accordance with those phases, is likewise, useful 
knowledge for many kinds of vital decisions.
    * Managing for resilience does not require 
any fancy degree in Science. A basic and general 
understanding of the essential concepts 
elaborated in the book is plenty to begin using 
the resilience perspective in design planning, 
observing system feedbacks, and everyday activity.

So how resilient is your Permaculture system? And 
what of your local community? Your bioregion? 
Your watershed? This short introduction to 
thinking resiliently gives you the tools to 
decide. In these times of rapidly decreasing 
regional and global resilience, Resilience 
Thinking is a valuable addition to the library 
and toolbox of Permaculture designers, teachers, 
land managers, transition organizations, policy 
folk, and people everywhere working for a 
healthier, more regenerative, adaptive and resilient world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Owen Hablutzel performs international work in 
Permaculture systems design, consultation, 
speaking, and education. He is a director of the 
<http://www.permacultureusa.org/>Permaculture 
Research Institute, USA, and can be reached at owen (at) permacultureusa.org

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