Disastrous consequences: shortcomings of resiliency strategies for coping with accelerating environmental change

Abstract

Natural disasters driven by climate change have increased in frequency, intensity, and scale. The consequences of these disasters include the loss of human lives, property damage, increased economic costs, and decreased ability to respond effectively to both abrupt and more gradual disasters. Government responses to such disasters are often based on a desire to rapidly recover to normal, which is understandable, but is difficult in the Anthropocene because of rapidly changing social-ecological baselines that exceed the limits of adaptation and mitigation. Here we identify pitfalls of a narrow and singular focus on resiliency. Resiliency focuses on efficient and rapid recovery, which is laudable, but assumes linear responses, absence of tipping points, a single scale of cause and effect, and an implicit assumption of stationarity. In contrast, we highlight the importance of social-ecological resilience, which includes resiliency but also accounts for multiple spatial and temporal scales, cross-scale effects, and most importantly, the possibility of alternative system configurations (or regimes) separated by tipping points. Social-ecological resilience provides a more comprehensive and realistic framing, and therefore the ability to persist with change, prepare for, and perform adaptation and transformation of social-ecological systems. Accounting for social-ecological resilience is essential for governance of coupled systems of humans and nature as we collectively face a future in the Anthropocene that will contain more surprising and unpredictable events propelled by global change including climate change.