Managing Resilience in Landscapes and Personal Praxis

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Managing Resilience in Landscapes and Personal
Praxis

• Roger Attwater and Marnie Campbell
• Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute

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• A story about dynamics and resilience
• Socio-ecological systems
• Resilience Network
• Build upon landscape application
• Develop understanding of concepts and application
• Implications for personal resilience
• Renewal in our praxis is crucial to personal
  resilience

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What I feel is important

• Systemic practice and practical action research
• Experiential
• Phronesis practical wisdom
• Culturally sensitive / adaptive
• Praxis concepts and applications
• Methodological and conceptual pluralism
• Creatively mix interpretive, analytical, critical
• New concepts and application
• Mentoring
• Present current challenges / what were doing now
• Predictability

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Conceptual foundations

• Evolving concepts and practices of adaptive
  management
• as metaphors that engage these tensions of
  stability and change,
• as testable hypotheses to inform our
  understanding of the dynamics involved.
• Concept of panarchies in socio-ecological
  systems
• investigated to inform questions regarding roles
  in landscape management, and how these are
  expressed and acted upon.

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Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute (BMWHI)

• The Blue Mountains World Heritage Area lies to
  the west of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.
• The Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute
• a non-profit research organization that supports
  and promotes the conservation of the cultural and
  natural heritage of the Area.
• Broad membership including UNSW, SU, UWS, NPWS,
  Aust. Museum, Botanical Gardens, BMCC
• Being so close to Sydney, pressures of
  urbanization and land use change around the edges
  of the World Heritage Area are an important area
  for research, community engagement and advocacy.

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A case study agri-industries near the Blue
Mountains World Heritage Area

• 4 year project funded by Rural Industries
  Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC)
• The basic premise of this study is that there is
  an important landscape niche and role for
  agri-industries as a buffer between the
  encroaching urban sprawl of Sydney and the World
  Heritage Area.
• intent is to support an approach to advocacy
• responsive to the numerous relevant perspectives
  operating at different scales,
• grounded upon an adaptive methodology reflecting
  relevance, co-construction, and critical rigour.

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Sustainability and Social-Ecological Systems

• Issues of sustainability reflect a recognized
  need for more creative collaborations between
  science and society.
• The nature of the problems are increasingly seen
  as complex systems, and the integrative nature of
  humans-in-nature reflected in the term
  social-ecological systems.
• Key questions include
• how our societies can deal with change in
  social-ecological systems, and
• how a capacity to adapt to change can help shape
  a shift towards sustainability (Berkes et al.
  2003).

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Resilience, adaptability and landscapes

• Resilience is the capacity to respond to a
  disturbance so that the essential nature of the
  system is retained, with adaptability the
  capacity of actors to influence or manage this
  resilience (Walker et al. 2004).
• The institutional landscapes within which
  actors try to develop appropriate co-management
  are critical to the resilience of
  social-ecological systems (Olsson et al. 2004).
• Also transformability ability to change into
  completely new form

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A crisis of partial solutions

• movement towards sustainable solutions requires
  that we recognize, and seek to overcome the
  partial nature of our perspectives through
  conceptual and methodological pluralism.
• In the case of landscape management, the
  complexities of contextual dynamics and partial
  perspectives have contributed to an ongoing
  crisis
• translating science and inquiry into management
• translation and communication with communities
  and
• translating guidelines into governance.

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Systemic intervention

• Systemic intervention is the need for critical
  reflection on the question of the boundaries
  placed upon inquiry
• about whose perspectives are relevant and how
  this will impact upon the intervention (e.g.
  Midgley and Ochoa-Arias 2004).
• The authors view of integrated catchment
  management is
• as a systemic intervention that attempts to
  connect and translate between the emergent issues
  and perspectives, which occur at different levels
  of scale (Attwater et al. 2005).
• The inquiry becomes a search for practical and
  strategic leverage in management and policy an
  exercise in advocacy.

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Communities of practice

• Related to the question of whose voices are heard
  is the way in which we consider aggregates of
  individual perspectives.
• Shortcomings in processes of stakeholder
  representation
• led to attempts that focus on communities of
  practice as a workable alternative (e.g.
  Attwater and Derry 2005).

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Transformational change as panarchy

• Developed from the work on adaptive management by
  members of the worldwide Resilience Alliance
  (Gunderson and Holling 2002).
• The nature of this broad model of change as
  another partial perspective indicates the need
  for requisite simplicity while retaining
  generality.
• almost so general to be more like a metaphor of
  change,
• used as a testable dynamic against a range of
  transformational changes
• In essence, the panarchy has two key aspects
• a nested hierarchy of critical processes
  operating at different scales and speeds in a
  nonlinear fashion and
• an adaptive cycle reflecting phases of
  exploitation, conservation, creative destruction,
  and renewal.

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Developmental case study

• This study is still in its early developmental
  stages.
• A participatory and co-constructed approach is
  being developed
• The plan is to allow an emergent methodology,
  responsive to issues and activities of the
  participants.
• Analytical tools will be chosen throughout this
  fluid process depending upon these issues.
• Aspects of the methodology briefly considered
  here are
• an initial schema which attempts to address the
  problem of what values and risks are internalized
  or externalized
• attractors around which issues and methodologies
  cluster and
• emergent communities of practice and
  methodological implications.

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An Initial Schema Internalization of Values and
Risks

• key issues in relation to the extent to which
  values and risks were internalized at different
  scales (Figure 1).
• This follows the critical aspects of systemic
  intervention outlined above, and is based upon
  the view that alternative perspectives and
  methodologies define themselves as much by what
  they dont include, i.e. implicit assumptions.
• This preliminary schema reflects a need to
  recognizing what values are externalized, i.e.
  outside the boundary of decision-making and key
  driving forces.

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A Preliminary Schema Scale, Issues and
Values Scale Societal Role
agri-industry near World Heritage (Nat/intern.)
land use change fragmentation /
urbanisation State fire legislation and devel.
control opportunity for local innovation Region
al land prices and subdivision suitability near
World Heritage rural redevelopment role
agriculture in region Local govt. Role zoning
instruments rates and income fire risk and
env. impacts Locality infrastructure / devel.
constraints identity / character Agri-indust
ry clusters Household income /
livelihood economic and env. Buffers
Values / risks internalized
------------------------ Values / risks
externalized
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Contestability and dialogue

• focus on key contestable concepts common
  values held by players with very different
  worldviews, but interpreted very differently
  (Attwater et al. 2005).
• Heritage is one such contestable concept what
  worth conserving can mean very different things,
  and potentially be a clash of different
  historical, contemporary, and cultural values.
• World Heritage listing has a certain defined set
  of values and characteristics.
• Other contemporary views of heritage held by
  those who live and work around the periphery of
  the World Heritage area are also critically
  relevant to the search for resilience through
  practical and strategic co-management.

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Brokerage and advocacy

• supported by an ongoing dialogue with a broad
  range of local government and agency
  representatives
• responsibilities overlap the geographic area of
  concern.
• This dialogue will seek opportunities for
  brokerage in relation to
• enabling policies,
• potential funding for initiatives, and
• other options of likely shared benefit.

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The Panarchy a Metaphor of Transformational
Change

• theoretical basis of the panarchy builds on
• complex systems thinking, and
• the interactions of processes through
  self-organization and attractors.
• It is a challenge for the authors to try to apply
  this to the situation of concern and interpret
  how this theory reveals the dynamics behind the
  patterns we perceive.
• The following sections flip between summary
  statements of theory, examples drawn from other
  complex systems, and a preliminary application to
  the case study.

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Nested key processes

• Based initially on ecological applications, it
  has been found that hierarchical structures are
  regulated by a small set of key processes, each
  at particular frequencies and spatial scales.
• These processes produce patterns and are
  reinforced by these, reflecting
  self-organization.
• the work of the resilience alliance over the past
  decade has increasingly considered questions of
  resilience in socio-economic and institutional
  systems.
• A summary of key variables for a range of systems
  is shown below in Table 1.

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Examples of key variables and speeds for a range
of systems (adapted from Holling et al. 2002a)
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Lumpy distributions and attributes

• The broad ranges of living systems, both social
  and ecological, have shown discontinuous
  distributions over time and space, entraining
  attributes of variables into distinct lumps.
• This is not just with regard to discrete
  aggregates, but also attributes of frequency of
  fluctuations, sizes and morphological aspects,
  and scales of decision processes.
• The pattern of variables entrained by this
  lumpiness determines the resilience and
  robustness to modification or exogenous change.
• This is in part due to the interactions between
  these variables as overlapping reinforcement of
  function both within and across scale.
• These lumps that emerge from these
  self-organizing biological and social processes
  represent attractors (Holling et al. 2002b).

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Implications for emergent methodology

• interdependent lumpy sets of attractors -
  interpreted by building upon the preliminary
  schema with respect to key clusters, or
  attractors, at different scales and dimensions.
• The design and interpretation of an initial
  series of semi-structured discussions was based
  on the following key clusters
• the family business,
• local spatial arrangements,
• networks of practice
• product life cycle and
• policy enablers.

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• From this initial series the responses were then
  interpreted in relation to what communities of
  practice emerged.
• The example shown in figures below reflect
  different strategies and practices.
• One figure reflects orchardists who avoid central
  markets and are associated with alternative local
  and regional arrangements.
• Another grouping have high investment and high
  return orchards and focus on large national
  markets.
• This preliminary analysis tended to support the
  utility of focusing on emergent communities of
  practice.

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Example of mapping issues described by local
focus orchardists
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Example of mapping issues described by market
oriented orchardists
International terms of trade
Policy
Agri-industry duopoly
High investment to maintain edge on competition
Regional advantage / timing to market
Product
Market contacts agents, transport, pickers
C o P
Water storages and recycling
Spatial
Interest of son, changing attitudes compared to
dad
Family
Internalized ---------- values -------------------
Externalized
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• A key aspect of the panarchy model is the nature
  of the fast and slow variables that interact.
• A preliminary attempt to interpret these in
  relation to the clusters used is presented below.
  
• an important implication is that a suite of
  management and policy tools are needed which
  engage these different variables collectively.
• A focus on merely one aspect may contribute to a
  destabilization of these interacting variables.
• This is consistent with strategic integrative
  frameworks such as integrated catchment
  management.

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Possible slow and faster variables
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Phases and Interactions in the Adaptive Cycle

• Another key aspect of the panarchy is the
  description of a dynamic of phases in an adaptive
  cycle, which then interact through cross scale
  interactions of faster and slower systems.
• The dimensions of this adaptive cycle are
  potential, connectedness, and resilience (Figure
  4 a b).
• The adaptive cycle is described in relation to
  four general phases
• exploitation ( r ),
• conservation ( K ),
• creative destruction ( O ) and
• renewal ( a ).

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• The key feature identified from ecological
  systems was that change is neither gradual nor
  chaotic, but episodic,
• with the slow accumulation of natural capital
  punctuated by sudden releases and reorganization.
  
• This cascading panarchical collapse is due to a
  period of success leading to the accumulation of
  rigidities and brittleness.
• Release or creative destruction occurs rapidly
  (O) along with a rapid reorganization or renewal
  phase (a).

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Dimensions and phases in the adaptive cycle
(Holling and Gunderson 2002 reproduced from
Holling 2004)
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• Movement through the exploitation to the
  conservation phase means resilience is reduced.
• Release and reorganization brings with it
  increased resilience.
• The backloop has been clearly identified as
  critical to issues of resilience and adaptability
  (e.g. Holling 2004).

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Dimensions and phases in the adaptive cycle
(Holling and Gunderson 2002 reproduced from
Holling 2004)
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Cross scale interactions

• The interactions between panarchies at different
  scales are also fundamental, with
• faster cycles of renewal creating revolt, or
  diffusing larger episodes of creative
  destruction, and
• biotic legacies or memory from larger slower
  cycles can contribute to the reorganization.
• Maladaptive cycles and traps can also be
  generated.

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Cross scale interactions (Holling and Gunderson
2002 reproduced from Holling 2004)
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• The utility of a model such as panarchy may be in
  interpreting management or policy intervention in
  terms of
• conserving the ability to adapt and respond in a
  flexible manner to uncertainty and surprises,
• buffering disturbance and creating novelty
  (Holling et al. 2002b).

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• Following the interpretation of responses from
  interviews in relation to issues and attractors
  at different scales, a next step was to try to
  interpret these in relation to the stages of the
  adaptive cycle.
• It was found that items mentioned may reflect
  trends between phases, for example
• a product focus on regional identity provides
  opportunity for reorganization ( a ) and
  exploitation of new market niches created ( r ),
  i.e. ( a ? r ).

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Issues and opportunities in relation to clusters
and phases
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• In this preliminary analysis there seemed to be a
  clear relationship between the phases of the
  adaptive cycle and the earlier mapping of issues
  in relation to the degree of externalization.
• Those opportunities that reflect resilience,
  memory and internalized values could be
  identified as lying in the backloop of the
  adaptive cycle, for example
• where water recycling generates a new resource (O
  ? a), or
• when a regional identity can generate new market
  opportunity ( a? r ).
• As investment, bureaucracy or market control
  developed, these tend to increase capitalization
  and control, e.g. ( K ? O ), while externalizing
  values and risks.
• In between these, many of the key methods for
  making the most of the market opportunities (e.g.
  entrepreneurialism / tourism and having good
  market contacts) capitalize on these structural
  associations( r?K).

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Implications for the Emergent Methodology

• The preliminary analysis presented above has a
  number of implications for the emergent
  methodology used. These include
• focusing feedback on the broad range of
  interconnected issues and not rushing to focus on
  singular aspects
• trying to work pragmatically with the emergent
  communities of practice to try to co-construct
  the inquiry and identification of points of
  leverage and
• continuing to focus on the relationships between
  issues and having a broad suite of established
  methods to mix and match as appropriate.

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• Since this initial interpretation, a further
  differentiation has emerged within the local
  focus orchardists. These include
• those producers who focus on farmgate sale of
  only their own produce
• those involved in broader networks of points of
  sale
• pick your own orchardists, flower growers, and
• permaculture practitioners.
• All these groups have sophisticated supply chain
  strategies.
• Keeping ahead of central market
• Alternative marketing arrangements

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• A broad range of potential methodologies are
  being considered for inclusion and other options
  are likely to emerge as this inquiry progresses
• This is based upon a view of pluralist practice
  that creatively mixes analytical, interpretive,
  and critical methods (e.g. Attwater 2000).

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• More detailed investigation with representative
  landholders is likely to focus on
• means to express the ecosystem services provided
  by these agri-industry strategies along with
• quantitative assessment of product life cycles,
  and
• qualitative investigation of underlying
  motivations.
• At a later stage these may lead to the use of
  scenario planning, which is becoming a common
  tool for investigating implications of
  alternative futures.

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Potential supporting methodologies
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Concluding Implications

• This integrative theory provides us with some
  supporting rational for interpreting dynamics
  underlying the processes of change we see around
  us.
• The extent that management is possible will
  depend on how and when opportunities for leverage
  and choice emerge.
• The theory cautions us that surprise is
  inevitable, and that agents capacity for
  adaptability is dependent upon many factors and
  processes.
• However, it also suggests that an awareness of
  these dynamics can perhaps provide opportunities
  for simple yet profound improvement.

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Implications for personal strategies

• While beginning to understand these concepts
  through this application, I have begun to notice
  some strong parallels with personal strategies.
• The renewal in our own praxis, the tasks we
  engage with, and our organizational contexts, may
  reflect similar dynamics.

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• In reflecting upon the development of this field,
  Holling (2004) recognized similar paradoxes in
  organizations he had been involved in, and his
  own experiences.
• Opportunities for integrative scholarship and
  collaboration became less responsive as time
  passed
• his own intellectual growth, frustration and
  renewal seemed to have a 7-10 year pattern.
• Perhaps triggering smaller renewal cycles in our
  own concepts and applications is crucial to avoid
  personal ossification and collapse.

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• From a personal perspective a key conclusion is
  the need for creative renewal in our engagement
  with new integrative concepts and applications.
• On the basis of the theory of panarchies, this
  will generate resilience in our praxis.

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Implications for epistemic communities

• This has other important implications for the
  organization of our epistemic communities and
  how we react to new ideas or arguments presented
  in an unorthodox manner.
• Given the tendency for institutionalization,
  there is however
• a clear choice to try to go against the flow (K
  ? r), and
• seeking to prevent our epistemic boundaries from
  ossifying and manifesting as rejection.
• Mentoring and embracing difference as it emerges
  is perhaps one strategy.

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Concluding comments

• This integrative framework has now established a
  growing field of critical application.
• It is the belief of a number of our colleagues
  that this theory may have very important
  implications for our engagement with the big
  problems we confront.
• This engagement with this theory in only a small
  step along the way, and reinforces the need for
  creative renewal in both our personal praxis and
  the landscapes we live in.