THE CONCEPT OF RESILIENCE FROM A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE

Transcription

1 THE CONCEPT OF RESILIENCE FROM A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE ANDREEA CONSTANTINESCU SENIOR RESEARCHER III/PHD, INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL ECONOMY, BUCHAREST, ROMANIA andreea_constantinescu07@yahoo.com SIMONA FRONE SENIOR RESEARCHER II/PHD, INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL ECONOMY, BUCHAREST, ROMANIA frone.simona@gmail.com ABSTRACT The resilience concept raises several conceptual problems, due to its multiple features. Once clarified the meaning of resilience concerning the science context, its paradigm reveals interdisciplinary nuances, which allow analysis of multiple phenomena in the human social area. Sustainable development comprises the benefits of research and practice in the economic, social and environmental fields and also those of individual investigation. Therefore, this paper intends to sketch a sustainable development framework around resilience, by integrating a personal plan with others more comprehensive once. By replacing the separate study of the vulnerability and resilience characteristics with the resilient vulnerability, we consider that the sustainable development gains an added value to overcome the transversal nature of the studies dedicated to it in favor of the longitudinal ones, more suited to the holistic perspective that we follow in this paper. A new multidisciplinary bridge appears between responsible governance and adaptive cycle theories. This is why we go beyond the vision where environment is just a component of social systems, and the society just a component of ecological systems, sustainable development becoming an access platform to understand the consequences of interactions between individual and social, economic and environmental area, within a system capable of integrating alternative perspectives. Keywords: sustainable development; resilience, adaptive cycle JEL Classification: Q20, Q56, Q57 1. Introduction Even if we don`t have a universally accepted definition of resilience, this concept has all the attributes of a paradigm. Associated with various scientific facts and appearing in multiple contexts - from psychological, biological, social, economic and political, to the information resilience - the concept of resilience refers also to a phenomenon feature as well as to a systemic property. In this context, we are interested in the relationship between individual and global reference to socioecological systems, thus we must highlight the characteristics of resilience in a particular situation [7]. Depending on the subject under discussion, resilience is defined either as the capability of materials to withstand shock without permanent deformation or rupture, either as a trend of entities to easily adjust or recover after a major harmful change. Theat is why we frequently meet a clear distinction between engineering resilience and ecological resilience. While the first one defines resilience based on elasticity - as capacity of a system to resist disturbances and / or the rate of reversion to pre-existing equilibrium state, the second one highlights the fact that, for example, a region has a higher ability to return to equilibrium after a shock, and could also accommodate multiple equilibria [4]. Also, it is a measure to estimate the degree of danger on to the ecosystem, considering that the degree of ecological resilience of an ecosystem is inversely proportional to the degree of danger which is threatening him [5]. 169

2 2. Background and Historical Aspects Generic resilience refers to the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize as the situation changes, so that to further keep the same essence, function, structure, identity and feedback. The most common metaphor which renders resilience is the stability of a landscape [10]. While psychology believes that individual resilience aims maximum trauma that an individual can record before reconstruction, economic science believes that economic resilience refers to preserving the complete system before a shock without excluding renewal system through qualitative changes structure. If in the first case we talk about a proactive resilience - of the individual who has the personal capacity to anticipate, learn, adapt and recover from an event, in the second case we have a reactive resilience - of the system, that occurs right in the time of the event, to cope with change [9]. In socio-ecological systems, adaptive capacity is linked to their genetic and biological diversity, and also to existence of institutions and networks able to keep their knowledge and experiences, in order to preserve balance. Therefore, in these systems we find a linear relationship between resilience and adaptive capacity. From a comparative study of ecosystem dynamics resulted another interesting instrument drawing attention to processes of destruction and reorganization - adaptive cycle. It provides a more complete picture of system dynamics that links together system organization, dynamics, resilience and vulnerability. It consists of a sequence composed of four phases of change in complex systems: exploitation, conservation, creative destruction and renewal and is classified alone or in various development policies aiming to increase adaptive capacity and resilience [1]. Alongside, the concept of panarchy also involves examining similarities and differences between human systems and related natural environment in ways that can generate theories and models, like the adaptive cycle. As understood in the light of recent research, panarchy takes into account whole cycle of resilience, as it is found at personal, social, economic and environmental level. Panarchy theory was developed as an integrative theory, to understand the source and role of systems change, focusing on the interactions between change and persistence. Thus, panarchy becomes a conceptual framework that takes into account this duality represented by resilience and vulnerability in complex systems, its purpose being to develop the necessary conceptual describing the change dynamics of torque formed by change and stability at all levels of scale [1]. 3. Challenges and Outlooks of Resilience Although the rapid expansion of using resilience concept can raise a series of questions awaiting scientific answers, its success should not be searched in the etymology (from the Latin verb salio-ire, jump, leap, accompanied by the prefix re counter, back), but in its metaphoric ability to describe any system that has the ability, subject to imbalance by confronting different disruptive factors, to resist pressures and return to original state [1]. By extension, resilience meaning gradually widened and penetrated in all fields of study, keeping the connotation of stability indicator. In addition, ecological resilience is even a measure of persistence by absorbing change, which is contrasted with stability that shows ability of ecosystems to return to previous state. Thus, based on its property to absorb over time changes introduced in system, resilience becomes indispensable for analysis of human-environment interactions, in particular to describe how humans affect ecosystems [7]. From here to the practical application, it is necessary a mechanical model validation of resilience that would capitalize high-accuracy data collected from a changing system [2]. Therefore, naturally, resilience has expanded its application in social context because of its ability to explain possibility of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental changes [6]. However, given that resilience key in 170

3 socio-ecological systems is diversity, moving it from the sphere of ecology in the social field should describe the behavioral response of individuals, communities, social institutions or economies facing various imbalances [8]. In the case of systemic level operationalization, resilience owes part of its success to multidisciplinary research group Resilience Alliance, an organization that studies socio-ecological systems dynamics based on adaptive cycle, assuming that ecological and socio-economic systems are related. However, the adaptive cycle disputes the traditional view of ecosystem succession as a linear process of transition from operation to reorganization, emphasizing the importance of growing and maturing stages, succession evolving from linear evolution to become phase of a cycle [7]. Part of resilience success is due to adaptation of panarchy concept, starting from the need for system renewal and reorganization. If the adaptive cycle highlights the ability of a system to go through phases that correspond to its resilience, with good application to urban systems, panarchy as multistage analysis of resilience in dynamic systems can highlight the resilience capacity of a meta-system based on memory [7]. Therefore, panarchy represents the best example of connection between two levels of complex adaptive systems that are resilient [9]. Resilience success as operational instrument is also manifested by a significant increase in risk science publications. In this area, resilience is accompanied by theoretical research aimed at understanding it in usual context, its methodological and practical contributions, scientific boundaries as well as ethical once, thus becoming an additional component of risk analysis that complements existing approaches [1]. 4. Integration of Resilience within Sustainable Development From a sustainable development perspective, resilience is not only a differentiating factor at regional and sectorial level, but also one able to serve its purpose - to create and maintain social, economic and ecological prosperity of all systems affected by human activity [1]. The concept of resilience also gains a growing interest among policy makers and scientific community researching sustainable development because it offers the opportunity to present some practical use, especially in the context of climate change policies. Being a descriptive concept which assumes that a system does not turn into another due to exogenous disturbances, resilience is in contrast to sustainable development which is a normative concept based on ideas of justice and accountability inter-and within generations. Resilience can also provide as means and goal of sustainable development, providing conceptual framework for economic analysis of risk management which illustrates the capacity for action. It is in progress the study of opportunity to make resilience the core purpose of sustainable development, but this raises issues regarding complexity analysis of individual capacities for action and articulation of these capabilities to collective dynamics. Individual resilience is a prerequest for achieving sustainable development because it guides policies towards sustainability. The first argument is that socio-ecological systems analysis based on resilience is presented by researchers as a major contribution to sustainable development issues. Although the idea of resilience capacity of socio-ecological systems becomes slightly ambiguous when we take into account their sustainable development, defining and assessing resilience at individual level is an attempt to overcome these limitations [1]. This approach is based on personal adaptive capacity and tends to articulate through intersection of several areas of research interested in transforming individual potentialities into opportunities during the entire existence. As finality of sustainable development, individual resilience is a strategic sequence consisting of interactions between sustainability and resilience. If resilience through flexibility provides means for sustainable development, then we should accept that individual resilience 171

4 constitutes by itself, an indicator for sustainable development that can turn from means into purpose to ensure sustainable development. A first step in achieving the conjunction of resilience and sustainable social development was done by deploying sustainable urban development. By maintaining urban functions at an acceptable functional level, capabilities of urban systems resilience contributes to achieving economic, social and environmental targets of sustainable cities. Specifically, improved resilience may be the way to restore balance between the three pillars of sustainable development when disruptions question social, economic and environmental operation of urban system called to adjust. Also, by adding the personal pillar, is completed the sphere of sustainable development, which will thus be able to overcome both self centered approach and on the anthropocentric one. Without integration of individual resilience in sustainable development, it is difficult to overcome the dichotomy of economy, ecology, especially when there are social issues [1]. By including personal plan into sustainable development, must be kept in mind that not all people are resilient or vulnerable in the same way, so we must be informed, in order to protect both their weak and strong points [2]. Also, for individual resilience to actually become operational and directly implemented in sustainable development studies, it takes time for confirmation of indicators sets quality which determines resilience value. 5. Conclusions on Integrating Resilience and Sustainable Development Even if resilience can be seen as a singular concept at the moment because of different points of view in various disciplines, its positive connotations have imposed formation of the couple resiliency vulnerability as a possible model-maker of sustainable development system. This raises a new research perspective where vulnerability and resilience are seen as a continuum, by the concept of resilient vulnerability. From resilient vulnerability perspective, a disturbance can be considered both creator of system rupture as well as promoter of resilience. Because disruption of socio-ecological systems include diseases, drought, fire or hurricanes, and, as well, recessions, innovations, technological changes and revolutions in an ecological system, human intervention itself can be considered a form of disruption. As population and consumption levels increase, disturbance caused by humans is increasing, with consequences for overall system resilience [7]. Fig. 1: Sustainable development integrated system (personal contribution) Therefore, sustainable development integrated system (see Fig. 1) which makes resilient vulnerability its the central element methodologically neutral - and that also integrates resilience 172

5 individual level, will allow disturbance analysis both by adaptive cycle sequential method as well as by hierarchical linking panarchy model, which they integrates. This approach could be useful on multiple levels analysis of how resilience is modeled in order to ensure a development with its basic attributes: ability to absorb disturbance and reorganize, so that to preserve substantially its function, structure, identity and feedback. Also, functionality of integrated system consists of prominence of all elements to be taken into account when assessing sustainable development, by associating individual resilience with the one on social, economic and environmental levels in a whole, represented by resilient vulnerability manifested in each of these levels and in resulting interactions of their intersection. This integrated system framework of sustainable development may be considered a step towards functional approach to all components of resilience, by interconnection of vulnerability components, highlighted particularly on personal level. Also, linking individual resilience and sustainable development we can analyze how resilience requirements are fulfilled for each system area. In addition, for a specific ecosystem, integrated system opens up new perspectives about connection of services and components of natural capital as well as reglementation of socioecologic services confronted with economic pressures [1]. Attention paid to resilience may be a response to widespread modern point of view on uncertainty, insecurity and seeking a formula for adaptation and survival. In this regard, use of this trendy concept comes from both a heightened sense of risk (political, economic and environmental) as well as from perception that processes associated with globalization have made regions and cities more permeable to effects of what was once considered as external influences [1]. Furthermore, because the intersection of an economic and an environmental crisis has heightened sense of vulnerability at all levels, consequently, stimulating the search for new ways of affirming resilience, integrated approach of sustainable development centered on the concept of resilient vulnerability may enhance our understanding of the forces that influence that influence both the scope of the measures and policies as well as their conceptual frameworks. Because resilience already imposed in both academic research as well as managerial strategies, its components will feed further debate on the use and its heuristics and operational relevance. Therefore, the purpose of any article that approaches issues of resilience hypostasis is not to decide in these debates, but to show, based on a multidisciplinary approach, that there are multiple tackling possibilities [1]. From here to implementation of conclusions of this article is a road paved with hypotheses and demonstrations that could significantly expand research horizons. Bibliography [1] Constantinescu A., Hypostases of resilience for sustainable development, The Second World Congress on Resilience, from Person to Society, E-book, Timisoara, 2014; [2] Constantinescu A., Frone S., Ecosystem approach outcomes of a regional metabolism, PEEC 2015 Quality Access to Success, nr.16, 2015; [3] Constantinescu A., Frone S, Basics of sustainable development ethics, Proceedings Of The International Scientific Symposium Information Society And Sustainable Development -IIId Edition ISBN Academica Brâncuşi House, [4] Dawley S., Pike A., Tomaney J., Towards the Resilient Region? Local Economy : 650, [5] Fridolin B., Critical natural capital revisited: Ecological resilience and sustainable development, Institute for Landscape Ecology, ; [6] Frone S., Constantinescu A., Impact of technological innovation on the pillars of sustainable development, Calitatea Acces la Succes, București, 2014; 173

6 [7] Gunderson L., Ecological Resilience - In Theory and Application, Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics 31: 425, ; [8] Platon V., Constantinescu A., Sustainable Development Paradigm Synopsis, International Conference on European Integration - New Callenges (EINCO), University of Oradea, Faculty of Economic Sciences, 10th edition, may 2014, Full Volume 1st issue/july 2014 The Annals of the University of Oradea. Economic Sciences, Tom XXIII 2014, ISSN X, 2014; [9] Provitolo D., Vulnérabilité et résilience: géométrie variable des deux concepts, ; [10] Walker B., Holling C. S., Carpenter S. R., Kinzig A., Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social-ecological systems,