Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity
Introduction
The terms vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity, are relevant in the biophysical realm as well as in the social realm. In addition to being terms in colloquial language, they are widely used by the life sciences and social sciences, not only with different foci but often with different meanings. The reviews presented in this issue (Adger, 2006; Folke, 2006; Smit and Wandel, 2006) and other sources, document the diversity of interpretations and reformulations of these concepts across disciplines and problem areas as varied as evolutionary biology, ecology, cultural studies, and computer science, to cite just a few. Sometimes, the concepts are used interchangeably or as polar opposites.
This plurality of definitions is possibly functional to the needs of the different disciplinary fields, as well as being a reflection of the different intellectual traditions (Adger, 2006; Janssen et al., 2006), but sometimes it may also become a hindrance to understanding and communication across disciplines. This also may be the case in international research on global change, where understanding the dynamics necessarily involves the consideration of both the social and biophysical components and their mutual interactions.
This article represents an attempt to highlight the fundamental attributes of the three concepts, and to identify the conceptual linkages between them, through the use of a generic systems approach that can be specified for different concrete system types (social, ecological, but particularly socio-ecological). Without attempting a review, an effort has been made to incorporate the contributions from the principal scientific communities that have been investigating these concepts, particularly those that have more direct bearing on the analysis of their mutual conceptual relations. As the concepts have been used in many fields, it will be helpful to define the focus of the present analysis—the socio-ecological system (SES)—and offer a justification of why this is important for global change research.
The concept of vulnerability of the SES and its basic components are discussed in their general sense in the following section. The section on resilience introduces the concept of domains of attraction, essential in the notion of resilience, and discusses different levels of stability relevant for the study of SESs. These have implications for the applicability of the concept of resilience in the social sciences. The links between resilience and vulnerability are highlighted. A section on adaptive capacity in its broader and more specific forms as interpreted by different scientific traditions follows, with a discussion of the relations between adaptive capacity and the notions of capacity of response and resilience.
The final part of the article includes the outcome of the overall comparison and identification of linkages among the three concepts, with an indication of the major uncertainties involved. Without affecting the current use of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity within disciplinary areas, reaching some kind of agreement between social and natural scientists working together on global change on the way the concepts are used would represent an important step forward. To this end, a number of diagnostic questions are proposed to help guide the choices to be made. The results of the analysis presented in this article naturally lead to a suggestion for the research agenda on global change.
Section snippets
The socio-ecological system
Gallopín et al. (2001) have argued that the natural analytical unit for sustainable development research is the socio-ecological system or SES. An SES is defined as a system that includes societal (human) and ecological (biophysical) subsystems in mutual interaction (Gallopín, 1991).1 The SES can be specified for any scale from the local community and its surrounding
Vulnerability
Vulnerability is a concept that has been used in different research traditions (Adger, 2006; Smit and Wandel, 2006) but there is no consensus on its meaning. Depending on the research area, it has been applied exclusively to the societal subsystem, to the ecological, natural, or biophysical subsystem, or to the coupled SES, variously referred also as target system, unit exposed, or system of reference.
Adger (2006) examines the evolution of approaches to vulnerability originated in the social
Resilience
Resilience, a concept originated within ecology, is also applicable in the realm of social systems and SESs. For instance, Adger (2000) defines social resilience as the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political, and environmental change.
The concept of resilience has a rich history (see Folke, 2006), sometimes with a considerable stretch from its original meaning. There is also a body of thought around resilience and the
Adaptive capacity
The concept of adaptive capacity has been reviewed by Smit and Wandel (2006). Here, only the fundamental traits of the concept will be explored. Adaptability (or adaptive capacity)6 was originally defined in biology to mean an ability to become adapted (i.e., to be able to live and to reproduce) to a certain range of environmental contingencies. Adaptness is the status of being
Conclusions
The analysis of the concepts of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity from a systemic perspective in the context of research on the dynamics of the global SES shows that these concepts are related in non-trivial ways. If care is not used, the field of human dimensions research can become epistemologically very messy.
For instance, it seems natural to view vulnerability and resilience as related properties of an SES. But the specific nature of the relation is not obvious. The views
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the comments received from three anonymous reviewers, and to Bill Turner for providing specific information. I also thank Elinor Ostrom and Marco Janssen, and the scientific committee of the IHDP, for their invitation to write this article, and the participants of the various IHDP workshops for useful comments. The writing of this article was greatly facilitated by the generous access to the in-depth reviews prepared for this issue of the Journal by Adger, Folke, and Smit and
References (43)
Vulnerability
Global Environmental Change
(2006)Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses
Global Environmental Change
(2006)The surface of vulnerability: an analytical framework for examining environmental change
Global Environmental Change
(2005)- et al.
Adaptation, adaptive capacity and vulnerability
Global Environmental Change
(2006) - et al.
Human adaptation to climatic variability and change
Global Environmental Change
(1997) - et al.
The Globalization of Socio-Ecological Systems: An Agenda for Scientific Research
Global Environmental Change
(2006) Social and ecological resilience: are they related?
Progress in Human Geography
(2000)- et al.
A framework to analyze the robustness of social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective
Ecology and Society
(2004) An Introduction to Cybernetics
(1956)
Elements of the Theory of Nonlinear Oscillations
Ecological and social dynamics in simple models of ecosystem management
Conservation Ecology
From metaphor to measurement: resilience of what to what?
Ecosystems
Adaptness and fitness
Resilience and sustainable development: building adaptive capacity in a world of transformations. Report for the Swedish Environmental Advisory Council 2002:1
Human dimensions of global change: linking the global and the local processes
International Social Science Journal
Box 1. A systemic synthesis of the relations between vulnerability, hazard, exposure and impact, aimed at policy identification
Global impoverishment, sustainable development and the environment. A conceptual approach
International Social Science Journal
Science for the 21st century: from social contract to the scientific core
International Social Science Journal
Resilience in theory and practice
Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics
Cited by (1838)
Vulnerability optimization for determining water restoration strategies in industrial park water networks
2024, Resources, Conservation and RecyclingSpatiotemporal evolution and driving factors of tourism ecological adaptation in the Dongting Lake Area, China
2024, Ecological InformaticsResilient by design: Simulating street network disruptions across every urban area in the world
2024, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and PracticeRice farmers and floods in Ecuador: the strategic role of social capital in disaster risk reduction and livelihood resilience
2024, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction