Resilience and Sustainable Development: Building Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformations
2002/08/01 by Carl Folke, Steve Carpenter, Thomas Elmqvist +3 · 2,906 citations
Decision Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · Psychology · #Adaptive capacity #Adaptive management #Business #Climate change #Complex Systems and Decision Making #Complex adaptive system #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Corporate governance #Ecological systems theory #Ecology #Economics #Engineering #Environmental resource management #Geography #Government (linguistics) #Management science #Natural resource #Political science #Process (computing) #Process management #Psychological resilience #Resilience (materials science) #Resource (disambiguation) #Socio-ecological system #Summit #Sustainability #Sustainability and Climate Change Governance #Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy #Sustainable development #Systems thinking #Underpinning
paper · doi:10.1579/0044-7447-31.5.437
published in AMBIO 31(5), 437-440 (Springer Science+Business Media)
openalex publication_date 2002/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Abstract
Emerging recognition of two fundamental errors underpinning past polices for natural resource issues heralds awareness of the need for a worldwide fundamental change in thinking and in practice of environmental management. The first error has been an implicit assumption that ecosystem responses to human use are linear, predictable and controllable. The second has been an assumption that human and natural systems can be treated independently. However, evidence that has been accumulating in diverse regions all over the world suggests that natural and social systems behave in nonlinear ways, exhibit marked thresholds in their dynamics, and that social-ecological systems act as strongly coupled, complex and evolving integrated systems. This article is a summary of a report prepared on behalf of the Environmental Advisory Council to the Swedish Government, as input to the process of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa in 26 August 4 September 2002. We use the concept of resilience--the capacity to buffer change, learn and develop--as a framework for understanding how to sustain and enhance adaptive capacity in a complex world of rapid transformations. Two useful tools for resilience-building in social-ecological systems are structured scenarios and active adaptive management. These tools require and facilitate a social context with flexible and open institutions and multi-level governance systems that allow for learning and increase adaptive capacity without foreclosing future development options.
Citations
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