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Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World
 
 

Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World [Kindle Edition]

Brian Walker PhD , David Salt , Walter Reid
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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""Resilience Thinking "provides a much-needed accessible entree into a concept that holds the key to our future.... Full of wisdom, sophisticated science, and practical guidance, this book provides profound ideas, insights, and hope to scientists, students, managers, and planners alike."

--Jane Lubchenco "Distinguished Professor of Zoology, Oregon State University "

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Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency.



"Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down.



In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world.

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B. H. Walker
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book summarises some important empirical and theoretical studies on social-ecological systems. The important issue is to build a common framework for studying complex systems that couple social activities with their impact on the natural world. Essentially it summarises the more extensive treatment in Panarchy Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, which I also heartily recommend, but of course in a much more accessible way.
If you would like to get a more in depth understanding of how our actions impact on natural ecosystems, and what we may be able to do about it, then do read this book. I wish everyone on the planet would read it!
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Resilience thinking 11 Jun 2010
Format:Paperback
The Reslience thinking is a great book that takes the reader beyond sustainability to consider long term socio-economic impacts especially the impact of man's actions on the planet. The book presents a protocol for considering resilience and give some great examples that make the principles come alive. I'd recommend this book to anyone considering planning in relation to the environmental considerations. It should become a clasic reference for those in education considering environmental impact.
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Eye opening 16 May 2010
By geodoc
Format:Paperback
There's something very profound at the core of this book. If it's hard to fully understand exactly what, it's no fault of the authors who explain the ideas remarkably clearly. Rather, I think the concepts challenge the reader to think in such a fundamentally different way that understanding, applying and reconciling them with current models of management, problem-solving, and developed-world 21st century living, seems almost impossible.

The ideas cut across the natural and social sciences, and because they challenge us to alter our thinking and behaviour, they cross the boundary into the world of ethics and the humanities too. It's basically a book about systems thinking: it provides a theoretical basis for the law(s) of unintended consequences in the behaviour and management of complex systems. It's written engagingly with plenty of real-world examples, grounding all the conceptualising in reality.

It's a slim book: succinct, easy to read, and can be polished off in a clear afternoon. But it leaves you wanting to know more. Although there are tantalising glimpses of how resilience theory might be applied to human systems, and the examples all involve an element of human (mis)management in a wider ecosystem, the ideas remain firmly rooted in the science of ecology. Of course, we're all part of one big social-ecological-geological system, but the vast majority of people are only consciously aware of the 'social' part, and the focus on settings which might seem unusual for typical developed world suburban readers-- such as the Florida everglades, Caribbean coral reefs, a rural region of Australia-- might leave them wondering quite how the concepts apply to them.

That said, this is clearly a rapidly evolving field of study, and I don't know of a better introduction to it. Thoroughly recommended.
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Popular Highlights

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&quote;
The key to sustainability lies in enhancing the resilience of social-ecological systems, not in optimizing isolated components of the system. &quote;
Highlighted by 14 Kindle users
&quote;
The paradox is that while optimization is supposedly about efficiency, because it is applied to a narrow range of values and a particular set of interests, the result is major inefficiencies in the way we generate values for societies. &quote;
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A drive for an efficient optimal state outcome has the effect of making the total system more vulnerable to shocks and disturbances. &quote;
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