Team Resilience

Resilience is a complicated concept that means many different things to different people. Broadly, though, resilience is seen as the increased capacity for an environment — like Vermont as a whole — to absorb disturbances and remain essentially unchanged in its core functions and processes (Walker and Salt 2006).

 

The concept of resilience was initially developed as an ecological theory but can be applied to social systems and social-ecological systems (Folke 2006; Gallopín 2006). Although difficult, it is important to look at the world as an interconnected social-ecological system — this blurs conventional ideas and requires an interdisciplinary understanding of actions in a system as a whole, in this case Vermont. This kind of interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration is gaining traction with ecologists working with policymakers to confront ecological problems together and is one aspect of resilience that we kept in mind as we worked on our project (Carpenter and Gunderson 2001).

 

There are two specific types of social capital — bonding and bridging social capital (Adger 2003). Bonding social capital represents ties within a given socioeconomic group and refers to a connection based on obligation, kinship or friendship. Bridging social capital, however, is based on relationships outside a defined group and relies heavily on three core principles of trust, reciprocity and exchange. These two components play an important role in the development of social capital because they help individuals feel an emotional connection to diverse people, and therefore, engage in new and innovative ways. Bridging social capital contributes to resilience because it connects people with different skills and gives them access to different perspectives, all of which are needed in the challenges we face.

 

There are two ways for societies to develop resilience. The first is to bring stakeholders together to envision an alternative future and the pathways needed to get there (Folke et al. 2002). This likely, but not necessarily, is a precursor to the second method of active adaptive management — when a system has the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Vermont, being rural, tight knit and connected, has the upper hand in this kind of resilience because management on small, local scales creates more stability in a community, both socially and ecologically (Olsson and Folke 2004).

 

In Vermont we believe that there is already a framework for resilience that can be built upon. Town meetings — a time when residents routinely meet each other and exchange ideas — is similar to the structured scenarios described by Folke et al. (2002). In fact, the town meetings philosophy is a source of pride for many Vermonters and represents one component of the classic Vermont-way-of-life (Courtney 2012). Many characteristics of Vermonters, such as having a strong sense of community and love for the land, lend themselves to the creation of a more resilient state.

 

Literature Cited:

 

Adger, W.N. 2006. Vulnerability. Global Environmental Change 16:268-281.

 

Carpenter, S.R. and L.H. Gunderson. 2001. Coping with collapse: Ecological and social dynamics in ecosystem management. BioScience 51:451-457.

 

Courtney, E., and E. Zencey. 2012. Greening Vermont: The Search for a Sustainable State. Thistle Hill Publications, North Pomfret, VT.

 

Folke, C. 2006. Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change 16:253-267.

 

Folke, C., S. Carpenter, T. Elmqvist, L. Gunderson, C.S. Holling, and B. Walker. 2002. Resilience and sustainable development: Building adaptive capacity in a world of          transformations. Ambio 31:437-440.

 

Gallopín, G.C. 2006. Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity. Global Environmental Change 16:293-303.

 

Olsson, P., and C. Folke. 2004. Adaptive Comanagement for Building Resilience in Social–Ecological Systems. Environmental Management 34:75-90.

 

Walker, B., D. Salt, and W. Reid. 2006. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and Peoplein a Changing World. Island Press, Washington D.C.