Adaptation and resilience: responding to a changing climate

Adaptation and resilience are two concepts originally developed in dissimilar problem contexts but which are of significant importance for our ability to respond to a changing climate. While both concepts encompass processes of change they differ in several important areas. This article discusses the relationship between the two concepts and highlights three issues concerned with our ability to respond to and manage change. First, although adaptation responses can help to build resilience, they just as easily can undermine resilience. Second, the magnitude of change may be outside our abilities to adapt, and thus it is not always possible to maintain system resilience. Finally, resilience is not a normative concept. The desirability of a resilient system, or community, must be considered in light of social goals and how benefits and risks are distributed. Better appreciation of the relationship between the concepts of adaptation and resilience will provide more effective tools to plan for, and respond to, current and future change. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 113–120 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.91 This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Values‐Based Approach to Vulnerability and Adaptation

[1]  J. Anderies,et al.  Ecology and Society: Resilience, Adaptability, and Transformability in the Goulburn-Broken Catchment, Australia , 2009 .

[2]  Brian Walker,et al.  A handful of heuristics and some propositions for understanding resilience in social-ecological systems , 2006 .

[3]  W. Adger,et al.  Adaptation to Environmental Change: Contributions of a Resilience Framework , 2007 .

[4]  B. Wisner,et al.  Changing household responses to drought in Tharaka, Kenya: vulnerability, persistence and challenge. , 2008, Disasters.

[5]  Thomas Dietz,et al.  Structure, agency and environment: Toward an integrated perspective on vulnerability , 2008 .

[6]  C. S. Holling,et al.  Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–ecological Systems , 2004 .

[7]  G. Gallopin.  Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity , 2006 .

[8]  A. Kinzig,et al.  Resilience of past landscapes: Resilience theory, society, and the Longue Durée , 2003 .

[9]  B. Orlove.  Human adaptation to climate change: a review of three historical cases and some general perspectives , 2005 .

[10]  S. Eriksen,et al.  The effects of land tenure change on sustainability: human security and environmental change in southern African savannas , 2009 .

[11]  Jon Norberg,et al.  Resilience Management in Social-ecological Systems: a Working Hypothesis for a Participatory Approach , 2002 .

[12]  E. Tompkins,et al.  A less disastrous disaster: Managing response to climate-driven hazards in the Cayman Islands and NE Brazil , 2008 .

[13]  Richard S. J. Tol,et al.  The weakest link hypothesis for adaptive capacity: An empirical test , 2007 .

[14]  Garry D. Peterson.  Adapting to Climate Change: Ecological limits of adaptation to climate change , 2009 .

[15]  John M. Anderies,et al.  Hidden costs and disparate uncertainties: trade-offs in approaches to climate policy , 2009 .

[16]  H. Füssel.  Adaptation planning for climate change: concepts, assessment approaches, and key lessons , 2007 .

[17]  W. Adger,et al.  Defining and Experiencing Dangerous Climate Change , 2004 .

[18]  M. Oppenheimer,et al.  Climate change: helping nature survive the human response , 2010 .

[19]  J. Anderies,et al.  From Metaphor to Measurement: Resilience of What to What? , 2001, Ecosystems.

[20]  M. Lemos,et al.  Adaptation and the state: Latin America and the challenge of capacity-building under globalization , 2006 .

[21]  D. Nelson,et al.  Praying for Drought: Persistent Vulnerability and the Politics of Patronage in Ceará, Northeast Brazil , 2009 .

[22]  F. Chapin,et al.  A safe operating space for humanity , 2009, Nature.

[23]  Steve Rayner,et al.  Climate change 2007: Lifting the taboo on adaptation , 2007, Nature.

[24]  E. Ostrom.  A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems , 2009, Science.

[25]  M. Hulme.  Why we disagree about climate change : understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity , 2009 .

[26]  Graeme S. Cumming,et al.  An Exploratory Framework for the Empirical Measurement of Resilience , 2005, Ecosystems.

[27]  Gary Yohe,et al.  moving toward a working definition of adaptive capacity , 2002 .

[28]  S. Eriksen,et al.  Developing Credible Vulnerability Indicators for Climate Adaptation Policy Assessment , 2007 .

[29]  M. Janssen,et al.  Scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation within the human dimensions of global environmental change , 2006 .

[30]  Timothy A. Kohler,et al.  Sunk‐Cost Effects and Vulnerability to Collapse in Ancient Societies1 , 2003, Current Anthropology.

[31]  Charles L. Redman,et al.  Resilience Theory in Archaeology , 2005 .

[32]  B. Smit,et al.  Adaptation, adaptive capacity and vulnerability , 2006 .

[33]  C. Folke.  RESILIENCE: THE EMERGENCE OF A PERSPECTIVE FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ANALYSES , 2006 .

[34]  W. Adger,et al.  Are there social limits to adaptation to climate change? , 2009 .

[35]  Hallie Eakin,et al.  Linking local vulnerability to system sustainability in a resilience framework: two cases from Latin America , 2009 .

[36]  Petra Tschakert,et al.  Anticipatory Learning for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience , 2010 .

[37]  C. S. Holling,et al.  Insight, part of a Special Feature on Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems Shooting the Rapids: Navigating Transitions to Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems , 2006 .

[38]  Sophie A. Nicholson-Cole,et al.  Adaptive governance for a changing coastline: science, policy and publics in search of a sustainable future , 2009 .

[39]  C. S. Holling.  Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems , 1973 .

[40]  Amy Luers,et al.  Assessing the Vulnerability of Social-Environmental Systems , 2006 .

[41]  Coleen Vogel,et al.  Land-cover change and human–environment interactions in a rural cultural landscape in South Africa , 2007 .

[42]  W. Adger,et al.  Defining response capacity to enhance climate change policy , 2005 .

[43]  Lynn P. Nygaard,et al.  Why different interpretations of vulnerability matter in climate change discourses , 2007 .

[44]  Lynn P. Nygaard,et al.  Mapping vulnerability to multiple stressors: climate change and globalization in India , 2004 .

[45]  S. Moser.  Adapting to Climate Change: Whether our levers are long enough and the fulcrum strong? Exploring the soft underbelly of adaptation decisions and actions , 2009 .