[ECO]systems of Resilience Practices: Contributions for Sustainability and Climate Change Adaptation

By Angela Colucci

Ecosystems of Resilience Practices: Contributions for Sustainability and Climate Change Adaptation focuses on resilience in action by exploring and providing approaches, perspectives, toolboxes, and theoretical discourses for the improvement and enhancement of territorial and community resilience practices towards sustainability and climate change mitigation/adaptation. The book develops a set of tools and design criteria to support the dissemination of resilience practices. This new toolset will support the expansion and reinforcement of resilience practices and the building of solutions related to climate change.

The book is divided into three sections: Section one investigates the contribution this kind of resilience approach could have on sustainable development goals as related to climate change. It also includes other environmental challenges such as ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change. Chapters dedicated to exploring the issues for a renovated governance of territorial transformation processes are included. Section two focuses on the eco-systems of resilience practices characterization, including discourses on international networking of transitions initiatives. Section three presents operative guidelines, instruments, and proposals for the resilience practices "stabilization," "blooming," and "up scaling," aiming at a more effective and consistent contribution of resilience practices in reaching sustainability, adaptation goals, and scenarios at local and global scales.

• Focuses on resilience practices, including effective transformation processes providing an overview of practices goals, sectors, and solutions to problems raised
• Includes toolboxes and solutions showing the reader a systematic and stable approach, moving from a conceptual framework to actual practice
• Presents a multilevel and multidisciplinary approach, allowing the reader to understand how to integrate and reconnect discourses on risk management, climate change, and social, economic, and creative innovation

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9780128191996

Book preview

Introduction: Resilience, climate change, and sustainability in practice from approaches to action

Angela Colucci and Giulia PesaroREsilienceLAB/Co.O.Pe.Ra.Te. Ldt, Italy

1 Resilience in action

In the last decade, the concept and the term of resilience have had an enormous diffusion. Environmental, social, and economic urgencies have prompted the spread of a powerful concept such as resilience, which allows a positive vision in recovery, adaptation, and evolution dealing with global and local stress and shocks (Berkes et al., 2000; Folke & Gunderson, 2010). The diffusive use of the concept as a metaphor to activate territorial and urban strategies has undoubtedly led to an advancement of the debate on the theoretical framework and tools for action (Galderisi & Colucci, 2018).

The resilience concept applied to ecological systems behavior appeared in the literature debate in 1973 when Holling published an article on the persistence of ecosystems in absorbing disturbance maintaining recognizability and functionality factors (Holling, 1973). Resilience assumes different meanings and conceptualizations in relation to the disciplinary fields frames (Colucci, 2012) among which it is possible to recognize shared capacities of the systems to cope with stress and shocks. Social science developed the psychological definition of resilience, focusing on the capacities of communities to cope with disturbances and adaptation to changes at local–global levels.

In literature, several authors enlighten the overuse of the resilience concept that often implies an overlay and confusion in proposes producing an ambiguity and decreasing the value and complexity of resilience concept itself (Brand & Jax, 2007).

The book aims to embrace different resilience conceptualizations deriving from different disciplinary approaches focusing on the resilience capacities enchantment, promoted through processes and actions launched and managed by multistakeholders’ partnerships.

Moreover, the focus is on resilience practices by communities and territories at the local level. The analysis processes aim therefore to better understand how and in which ways resilience become an operational concept, a concept interpreted, developed, customized, and adapted in relation to the local specificities, according to the peculiar demand for action and the construction of skills and capabilities to face present and future crises.

This is why, according to the specific focuses addressed by the authors, the contributions recall the definition of the concept of resilience which is better suited to the specificities of the case treated. A variety and diversity will be solved in the closing chapters, where a reframing of the concept will be proposed with alignments and new perspectives for action as operational inputs in the literature debate on resilience applied to the territorial contexts (Burayidi et al., 2020; Davoudi et al., 2013).

The focus of this book is on the resilience practices intended as processes driven (and acted) by multiple actors (communities and civil society actors) and in which activities aim to improve (innovate) services, approaches, routines, practices, or infrastructures existing in local and territorial contexts. This broad definition of resilience practices includes the transition initiatives, grassroots and an extensive range of local community-led initiatives that could be clustered in differentiated and flexible geographies concerning the governance of processes, the main focus (issue or lever for mobilization activation), and the action tools (Colucci, 2018; Frantzeskaki et al., 2016). Practices are in general acting on commons: interventions activated are oriented to the improvement of public spaces, natural and built public environments, common goods, and services through community-led actions generating positive benefits on environmental pressure phenomena (related to climate change) and on community strengthening. The central orientation to common values, public interests, and (global) sustainable goals can be identified as a file-rouge and core criteria in selecting the practices. The Ostrom (Ostrom, 2009) approach and contributions on the self-organized system, having frequently solved many commons dilemmas through action and creativity, support the crosscutting reframe concepts navigating the book chapters and boosting the emergence of synergic forces and dynamics which revealed to be important conditions for the success of the initiatives put in place all over the world.

Along the chapters and cases presented, three main nodes of tensions emerge connecting the resilience practices exploration to the literature debate: time dimensions in resilience re-action; intentional design of resilience; and mainstreaming, diffusion, and complexity reduction.

Time dimensions in resilience re-action. Recovery, adaptive, and evolutionary resilience imply different time perspectives and different assumptions of resilience concept definition and often also conflictual strategies and solutions. As several authors suggested (Davoudi et al., 2012; Davoudi et al., 2013) the three dimensions of resilience unavoidably coexist in the territorial/urban transformation processes (project/planning, and interventions), providing richness and complexity with the condition these have and have to be consciously managed and directed. Resilience practices do not always demonstrate awareness of potential dyscrasia points along the resilience temporalities and the reference approaches but often reveled to be able to implicitly manage the adaptive and evolutionary resilience.

Intentional design of resilience. Another tension that is widely discussed in the literature but often not considered in practices processes (and in media debate) is if it is possible to plan resilience or design resilience or if it is more coherent with the resilience concept (capacities of a complex system) to design/plan strategies and solution for the enhancement of resilience capacities of a complex system. In resilience practices action, the tension due to imaginative and design thinking is often implicit, as well as the rational assumption of other core nodes often animating the literature debate about the resilience dilemma (such as resilience of who/what and for who/to whom) (Davoudi et al., 2013).

Mainstreaming, diffusion, and complexity reduction. The diffusion of resilience implied an enormous production and diffusion of receipts and solution toolkits often reducing the complexity and making the resilience easier and simpler. In the disciplinary debate in the territorial planning and design fields the tension along the needs to provide toolkits for implementation of sustainable transition and the risk of missing crucial values and principles in reducing the intrinsic complexity of the approach is not new. The mainstreaming and diffusion of collective and individual practices, actions, and behaviors able to cope with climate, resilience, and sustainability challenges have to be balanced with the necessity to maintain a long-term visioning rooted in complex thinking and approach. The challenge is therefore how to foster the complex and powerful resilience concept in feasible and implementable practices and interventions without the risk of a substantial simplification and impoverishing of action potentialities.

1.1 Resilience in action: [eco]systems of practices

The book and all contributions refer to resilience specifically addressing resilience in action and act, which allows to highlight the potentialities and responsibilities of people in their territories and to better, explore and discuss the role and contribution of the grassroots or community-led process. The increased attention of literature on climate change, social innovation, social cohesion, the launch of diversified worldwide networking platforms, and the media’s attention demonstrate a worldwide process recognizing the contribution of grassroots initiatives and the improved role of local communities and citizens’ commitment. The launch of web platforms collecting seed and good practices has become very common, together with the increase in relevance and quality of transition initiatives networking (e.g., the Transition movement), providing visibility but also mutual tools and support for local communities and citizens group. These dynamics imply the need for a profound reflection on the role of the practices and their contribution in the achievement of long-term sustainable goals and in the enhancement of territorial systems resilience capacities, with specific reference to the legitimacy (ethical and democracy) of these interventions.

This is why, in the book, the different contributions that communities and citizens can provide in improving local and global resilience are specifically addressed and deeply explored. As mentioned above, the authors assume different definitions and approaches to resilience with the aim to highlight both specificities and commonalities of resilience practices focusing on the transformative processes activated by multistakeholders partnerships engaging local communities in the decision-making, implementation, and management of initiatives providing benefits on multiple components of complex systems.

Climate, ecological, social, economic stress phenomena are drivers in the activation of resilience practices that, in facing the specific urgencies, integrate multiple benefits at the local level and contribute in improving the overall quality of living places and conditions.

The acted practices are explored without the strict necessity of organizing them into categories and the main attention is paid to the whole understanding of the barriers which can appear and affect the upscaling and stabilization of practices. Without standardization and homogenization purposes, the aim is to recognize the perspectives and conditions for a shift from a fragmented and heterogenous panorama to a more organic ecosystem of practices able to activate synergies and relationships among the different resources, components, energies, and richness which are part of it and enable it to adapt and develop overtime on the basis of its own endogenous strengths.

Approaching the arena of resilience practices, an immense treasure of activities, local knowledge, and operational capabilities emerges which needs to be better understood, stabilized, and strengthened to enhance territorial and community resilience as a renewed intrinsic characteristic of the ecosystem.

Therefore it is crucial to work on the quality of the project design, the availability of specific tools and solutions tailored to local communities’ needs, the capacity building related to good governance, and the development of the decision-making and implementation processes. The issues raised are strategic and central to stabilizing and fertilizing return practices, a work path through which it will be possible to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the communities’ action toward territorial resilience at both the local and system levels. This in the light of the choice for conceiving the contribution to sustainability and climate change mitigation and adaptation is essential for a territorial and community resilience development strategy. In the light of the variety of territorial components, sectors, and actors involved, it is finally urgent to strengthen the contribution of tools and methods based on a multidisciplinary and multisectorial approach and a more stable involvement of all actors.

2 [Eco]system of resilience