Resilience for whom? Problem structuring in the analysis
of resilience for climate change adaptation
Hugo Herrera
University of Palermo Bergen University
Department DEMS Geography Department
Via Ugo Antonio Amico 3, System Dynamics Group
90100 Palermo, Italy Fosswinckelsgate 6, N-5007
Bergen, Norway
Extended Abstract
Resilience has recently become a buzzword among researchers and policymakers. This interest
is, at least partially, the result of the recent acknowledgement of the vulnerability of social, natural
and economic systems. Resilience thinking has usually combined descriptive with prescriptive
work, aiming to increase understanding of the systems that analyse and to propose better ways
to manage them in order to enhance their resilience. In this process, however, little attention has
been paid to the political relationships shaping the social and economic parts of those systems.
This paper reflects on the importance of the problem formulation in the analysis of resilience. If
not carefully used, resilience and climate change adaptation, in general, might be used by power
stakeholders as a way to legitimize their power or support their own interests in particular. In this
paper, | use system dynamics modelling methodology to compare causal loop diagrams of food
vulnerability dynamics on Huehuetenango, Guatemala generated by different stakeholders. The
diagrams show significant differences in the ways different groups structure the problem and
teflect different understandings and agendas about the problem. | conclude that resilience
research and policymaking.
The awareness of the imminent global environmental change has increased the interest in
understanding the relationships between the social and ecological system in an attempt to find
ways to adapt to it and mitigate its effects (Cote & Nightingale, 2012). Resilience thinking has
been one of the approaches used in many attempts to build climate change adaptation by
enhancing social and ecological systems capability to respond and adapt to these new
conditions. Resilience is defined as the state of a system that withstands external changes due to
its ability to absorb a certain amount of disturbances (Gallopin, 2006; Holling & Gunderson,
2002). Resilience emphasises the importance of the dynamic relationships between the social
and the ecological systems as well as the adaptive capacity of human relations. Resilience
thinking, however, has failed to successfully recognize the human dimension of such adaptability
(Cote & Nightingale, 2012).
So far the study of resilience has focused on the comparison of the performance of management
regimes shocked by disturbance and on the forms to best govern these systems to stabilize their
performance (Adger, 2000). This means that resilience is then not only used as a framework to
understand the interaction between social and ecological systems when facing disturbances
(Walker, Holling, Carpenter, & Kinzig, 2004) but also as policy tool for social-ecological system
management (Berkers, Colding, & Folke, 2002; Chapin Ill, Kofinas, & Folke, 2009; Cote &
Nightingale, 2012). Resilience then does not only act as a framework for analysis but also as a
framework for policymaking and governance and, therefore, is fundamental to understand the
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1
dynamics of the underline tension between stability and change in the social systems in the
analysis (Walker, Gunderson, Knizig, Folke, & Carpenter, 2006).
The emergence of resilience has not gone unnoticed capturing the interest of researchers and
practitioners while remaining a cumbersome concept in the policymaking domain. Many critical
voices have appeared in the contemporary environmental governance literature pointing out the
current complications of transfer resilience thinking into practices. A first point of critique concerns
the lack of quantification and measures for resilience. Current literature focuses on identifying
properties of the system that contribute to its resilience. However, they are still vague about how
to measure them. Second point of critique is the alienation of resilience theories from the
policymaking world. Resilience reach and comprehensive in their analysis, however, fails to
engage back to real world and to translate their findings and insights into processes, activities
and ultimately policies in the real world. The last, partially due to the problems to quantify it and
measure it in a world that relies on quantitative appraisals.
Third point of critique, and the focus of this paper, is the resilience simplified or rudimentary
understanding of the political processes and it exclusion of the analysis. Namely, little has been
discussed so far in the SES resilience literature about the fact that “resilience is inherently a
matter of social framing by actors with different preferences and resources” (Duit, Galaz,
Eckerberg, & Ebbesson, 2010, p. 365)Resilience analysis and its conclusions are conditioned by
the way the problem if framed in the first place, and the formulation of the problem. Analyse the
systems and the relationships of its components in isolation, only in terms of abstract structural
properties, masks the necessity to ask normative questions, including those about the power
relations and cultural values (Cote & Nightingale, 2012).
This paper uses causal loop diagramming based on system dynamics methodology to analyse
the problem structuring stage in the resilience analysis. Diagramming, encourage stakeholders to
make their assumptions about the causes of the lack of resilience explicit. The results show that
these assumptions, intentionally or accidently, reflect their interest and agendas regarding the
system in which the resilience could be enhanced. Hence, by ignoring this agendas and
resilience analysis might be a more a mean to legitimize power and favour interest of particular
groups rather than a mean for the reduction of the actual system vulnerabilities.
The case study presented in this paper show how the stakeholders participating in the
policymaking process try to use the definition of the resilience problem to influence the agenda
towards their preferred solutions. Stakeholders clearly used their discourses about the problem
causes to undermine the ideas of other groups and the critiques to their preferred solutions and to
support their own agendas. This might have practical consequences as intentionally stakeholders
try to leave important elements out of the analysis in order to support their claims and conflicts
between groups could sabotage the whole implementation process. Both, unacceptable
consequences in the policymaking process.
Therefore, if resilience is to play a significant role in climate change adaptation, policymakers
should be careful when structuring the problem and might seek for a broad analysis and
participation. This is not simply a case of “adding” cultural and historical factors in feedback
models but requires an integrative approach that takes the discussion about the resilience
problem to a broader and more contested forum. Such broadening is not a simple case of
bringing more perspectives but a “fundamental shift in how knowledge is understood to operate
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2
and consequences of this for the kinds of questions we formulate prior to our analyses” (Cote &
Nightingale, 2012) This is not a normatively uncontroversial route either, but at least, it
acknowledges that resilience-based policy solutions and institutions will - as most other forms of
public policy - have distributional and thereby moral consequences.
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