From defining to assessing social-ecological resilience: lessons learned

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Sustainable development has been the main paradigm driving international cooperation and development projects for the past decades. It has helped greatly in recognizing that long-term and inclusive positive change can only occur by adopting an integrated and multi-sectoral approach. Yet, the general development paradigm often falls short in addressing global risks associated with the carrying capacity of our planet and their social and ecological impacts. In addition, we need a framework that takes disruptive events into account and actively enhances the resilience of the planet and its inhabitants.

Social-ecological resilience (SER) offers this highly needed holistic paradigm. Putting SER at the centre of international cooperation projects will allow for a more holistic understanding of the context, which in turn will enable more effective results contributing to human well-being in harmony with nature. However, while SER offers a theoretical framework to guide international cooperation projects in a context of climatic and social changes and increased occurrence of extreme
events, it remains challenging to disseminate and popularise the concept and to translate it in practical tools and approaches.

It is this knowledge gap that SECORES aims to address. From 2022 onwards, SECORES has engaged in reviewing, testing and disseminating tools and insights around understanding and assessing social-ecological resilience in international cooperation. This publication aims to share these insights and inspire practitioners and other actors in international cooperation to learn with us about the added value of using a SER framework to develop, implement and evaluate development projects.

In this publication we present four lessons:

  1. defining the added value of SER;
  2. from measuring to assessing SER;
  3. incorporating SER in programme monitoring;
  4. finding a common language on SER.

Conclusions

  • Defining social-ecological resilience in theory is easy, but defining its added value in international cooperation requires asking questions about what the components of a system are and how possible solutions interact with these components. In particular, we learned that if we want to strengthen SER as part of any project, it is essential to understand your system, its components, the target audience, the disturbances of your system, and possible responses.
  • Measuring social-ecological resilience can be useful in specific studies and projects, but in the context of international cooperation programmes it may be more useful to focus on assessing the different components of resilience based on existing tools or approaches.
  • Monitoring progress on social-ecological resilience can be a goal in itself or a way to ignite a systemic conversation with stakeholders and collaborative development of a shared vision of a system and how different interventions link to resilience.
  • Finding a common language on social-ecological resilience is challenging across different sectors of international cooperation. However, more than actually using the same language on SER, it is important to recognise we all work in the same social-ecological systems and that our actions can have positive or negative impacts on other sectors within these systems.

Content

  • Introduction
  • Lesson 1 – Defining the added value of social-ecological resilience
    • Introducing social-ecological resilience
    • Towards a dynamic definition
    • Added value of social-ecological resilience
  • Lesson 2 – From measuring to assessing social-ecological resilience
    • Theory
    • Application
    • Summary
  • Lesson 3 – Social-ecological resilience in programme monitoring
    • Driving stakeholder conversation on resilience
    • Community-based monitoring of social-ecological resilience
  • Lesson 4 – Finding a common language on social-ecological resilience
    • Appropriation of the concept
    • Common understanding of social-ecological resilience in different sectors
  • Conclusion
  • References
  • Annex – Resilience assessment tools
    • References
    • 1. Wayfinder
    • 2. Assessing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: Workbook for Practitioners
    • 3. Toolkit for the Indicators of Resilience in Social-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS indicators)
    • 4. Resilience, Adaptation Pathways and Transformation Approach (RAPTA)
    • 5. Strategic Resilience Assessment (STRESS)