Transcript Document

Biosphere Reserves:
a resilience network for
nature and culture
in the C22nd.
Tonle Sap BR Cambodia
There is now a consensus among many scientists
about the strong potential of the resilience
concept to build and maintain options to
enhance social, economic and ecological security.
To bring this about requires fundamental understanding
of, and managing feedback and interrelations among,
ecological, social and economic components of systems
across temporal and spatial scales.
Biosphere reserves are a key asset of the MAB
Programme focus on resilience
Resilience has several implications for sustainable development:
Sustainable development should seek ways to build or
maintain resilience of desirable paths.
Create or maintain arenas for flexible co-operation among
diverse groups of people.
Watch indicators of slowly changing variables that provide
early warnings of resilience loss and approaching thresholds.
Stimulate incentives to build resilience, mechanisms for
learning, and technologies that are ecosystem-friendly.
When, through loss of resilience, the supply of
ecosystem goods and services is diminished,
human societies suffer from effects such as soil erosion,
floods and crop failure.
An example of loss of resilience is mankind's historical
Over-fishing of coastal ecosystems.
Reduction of the genetic pool for many traditional
food crops and domesticated animals is another example.
Attempts to manage social and economic capacity to adapt
to and shape change cannot easily be done by dividing
the world into economic sectors.
That approach overlooks too many interactions.
Instead, capacity needs to be managed in an integrated and
flexible manner at appropriate spatial and time scales to
tune and create synergies between economic development,
technological change and the dynamic capacity
of the natural resource base.
In social-ecological systems, the building of open,
flexible networks of institutions at multiple scales
seems to be crucial for resilience.
What we need to create are actor-oriented paradigms
with developed boundary institutions and
global regimes receptive to local institutions.
Policy-makers and managers must take into account
that "events" are socially constructed; responses vary
between stakeholders and across scales.
Therefore, they need to use models that are
dynamic, adaptive and event-based.
Some key issues for ensuring resilience in ecological systems
• Conservation of arable land
•Soil health care
•Water conservation and management
•Integrated gene management
•Integrated pest management
•Integrated nutrient supply
•Improved post-harvest technology
•Integrated Natural Resource Management Committee
The flip side of resilience is often denoted "vulnerability.
Vulnerability refers to the propensity of social and
ecological systems to suffer harm from exposure
to external stresses and shocks.
Is there a further dimension we need to include?
An additional view: Cultural diversity
Food security
Cultural Paradigm
Ecological security
Socio-economic;
Health Security
There is no optimal path for systems of people and nature,
but there are desirable and undesirable paths.
We can use resilience to break down undesirable paths,
and create or sustain desirable paths .
In resilient systems, change has the potential to create
opportunities for development, novelty and innovation.
In a vulnerable system even small changes may be
devastating to both social and ecological systems.
What are the ideas and concepts we need to embrace
to ensure the pathway of high resilience
and low vulnerability?
•
Learning to live with change and uncertainty,
Adaptive strategies of social-ecological systems accept
uncertainty and change. They take advantage of change
and turn it into opportunities for development.
•
Nurturing diversity for resilience.
Diversity is not just insurance against uncertainty
and surprise. It also provides a mix of components
whose history and accumulated experience help to
cope with change and facilitate redevelopment and
innovation following disturbances and crises.
•
Creating opportunity for self- organisation towards
socio-ecological sustainability.
This factor brings together the other factors in the
context of self-organisation. Sustaining the capacity
for a dynamic interplay between diversity and disturbance
is an essential part of self-organisation. The learning
process is of central importance to the social-ecological
capacity for building resilience.
•
Combining different types of knowledge for learning.
People's knowledge and experience of ecosystem
management embed lessons for how to respond to
change and how to nurture diversity.
all landscapes consist of a both a
natural and a cultural dimension.
(Tress et al 2001)
we cannot understand and manage the
‘natural’ environment unless we understand
the human culture that shaped it.
Our management itself becomes thus an
expression of that culture.
Mount Kenya BR
And the cultural paradigm is important in ensuring
resilient landscapes because we need:
an ability of the system to maintain a particular pathway
or set of conditions, despite disturbances;
a high degree of system self-organisation;
a high degree for the system to build and increase
the capacity for learning and adaptation.
Biosphere Reserves are one way to express these needs
Fontainebleau BR
In brief, Biosphere Reserves form a
world network of 425 sites in 95 countries.
They are nominated by countries, who see them
as useful ways to aid the conservation of
Nature, in tandem with sustainable development.
BR’s can show people how resilience is important and
how to work with it, as well as promoting ecological
and cultural memory – and even equity issues.
BR’s are in fact, ecological learning systems.
BR’s optimise the roles and efficacy of
formal science and traditional knowledge in
building a “learning management” system,
or adaptive management.
And monitoring changes in the natural,
social and cultural environment is key
to the management strategy.
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
Modern BR’s are also building Quality
Economies, (eco jobs, eco opportunities) to
help socio-economic resilience
Arganarie Biosphere Reserve, Morocco
Clayquot Sound BR, Canada
Biosphere Reserves are coupled human-environment
Systems par excellence.
In a way, a network of
resilience parachutes for the world!
I’m resilient because I live in a Biosphere Reserve
– How about you?
Thank you!