Resilience as a Unifying Concept

Figures & data

Table 1 Thirteen definitions of resilience according to Brand and Jax (2007)

	Definition	GR	Specification
1	Measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables	S	System
		D	Unspecified
		I	Structure
2	The magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behaviour	S	System
		D	Unspecified
		I	Structure
3	The capacity of a system to experience shocks while retaining essentially the same function, structure, feedbacks, and therefore identity	S	System
		D	Unspecified
		I	Structure, function, feedbacks
4	Quantitative property that changes throughout ecosystem dynamics and occurs on each level of an ecosystem's hierarchy	S	?
		D	?
		I	?
5	Resilience of what to what?	S	?
		D	?
		I	?
6	The ability of the system to maintain its identity in the face of internal change and external shocks and disturbances	S	System
		D	Unspecified
		I	Identity
7	The ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political, and environmental change	S	Groups, communities
		D	Social, political, environmental change
		I	Unspecified
8	Transition probability between states as a function of the consumption and production activities of decision makers	S	?
		D	?
		I	?
9	The ability of the system to withstand either market or environmental shocks without loosing the capacity to allocate resources efficiently	S	Unspecified
		D	Market and environmental shock
		I	Capacity to allocate resources efficiently
10	The underlying capacity of an ecosystem to maintain desired ecosystem services in the face of a fluctuating environment and human use	S	Ecosystems
		D	Environmental and human use
		I	Ecosystem services
11	The capacity of a social-ecological systems to absorb recurrent disturbances ( … ) so as to retain essential structures, processes and feedbacks	S	Social-ecological systems
		D	Unspecified
		I	Essential structures, process, and feedbacks
12	Flexibility over the long term	S	?
		D	?
		I	Flexibility
13	Maintenance of natural capital in the long run	S	?
		D	?
		I	Natural capital

Notes: GR denotes global resilience; S, D, and I signify specifications of the system, the type of disturbance, and the property maintained, respectively. A question mark means that the place-holder is not only unspecified but not even present in the definition.

Figure 1 Four different values of R given a fixed value of Q. Different relationships between R and Q generate systems with different numbers of, and values for, those equilibria.

Brand, F. S., and K. Jax. 2007. “Focusing the Meaning(s) of Resilience: Resilience as a Descriptive Concept and a Boundary Object.” Ecology and Society 12: 23.

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