I’m a little late to the party this week.  Living in the Philippines forces me to handle some “resilience” issues of my own at times.  This past week has forced me out of the office (arrival of project materials!) quite a bit.  Additionally, community “brownouts” are common occurrences that virtually shut down the work place and make the already stifling heat (it’s dry season here) even worse.   Without duplicating the aforementioned posts, both Laura and Nicole touched on some important challenges the workbook (and resiliency all together) faces.   Overall, the workbook allowed me to think through and gather preliminary data on my focal system, the Bombon River in Tabaco City, which I hope to expand upon as a resiliency program for my Peace Corps and Master’s work.  There are two river systems in Tabaco, stemming from natural springs at the foot of Mount Mayon.  The Bombon River is the product of one of these and flows through the urban center of Tabaco, eventually emptying into local mangrove forests and Tabaco Gulf.  It serves as a primary water supplier for Tabaco, a nutrient supplier for the local coastal habitats, and, unfortunately, a trashcan for nearby residents.  It interacts with croplands, mangroves, and marine life, while playing a role in subsistence, local, and regional economies.  Its governance primarily lies at the local level, with the LGU of Tabaco and the Barangay Councils having the largest management roles, while local universities actively contribute in research and community activism.  However, the system is greatly impacted at the individual level, particularly through farming, solid waste, and urination, and the global level, by typhoons/tsunamis/flooding and volcanic eruptions.

The biggest issue I struggled with was the belief that those utilizing the workbook have a firm understanding of their focal system and scale and knowledge of dynamics of socio-ecological systems.  My agriculture office that I work for is made up of 20 year olds to 70 year olds, all with different educational backgrounds.  For example, my counterpart has a B.S. in Fisheries Management, while others have a high school degree or less.  The unequal distribution of knowledge coupled with various political and individual agendas creates an undesirable way to manage systems on an individual or organizational basis. It also leads to disconnect between people and their surroundings.  In the case of my focal system, many fail to see the importance of the rivers both up and downstream.  How does cropland runoff affect marine habitats and fish catch? What impact does the buildup of basura (trash) have on river flow and erosion control?  And how do these practices, coupled with seasonal storms and flooding, contribute to crop yields and the city water supply?  A viable alternative = technical working groups or workshops, briefly mentioned in the intro of the workbook, which allow for organization and individual collaboration and system knowledge sharing  (both past and present).

Today marks six months for me at my permanent site, and I’ve seen many decisions made at the last minute or rushed into in order to look good on paper, without taking into account system or design sustainability.  Earlier, efficiency was mentioned as a means to achieve short-term success without looking at future challenges.  But besides efficiency, what about political agendas and will as detriments to system resiliency?  It seems they too can pose significant obstacles towards effective management.

While reading though the Resilience Workbook, I appreciated the authors’ note that the workbook is an “organic” document; they acknowledge that there is room to improve the workbook in future versions.  Moreover, I found the flexibility of the assessment tool to be useful.  It makes sense that such a resource should be adaptable to the unique environments of each assessor.  With that said, I repeatedly had to remind myself of these points, because I found the practitioner workbook to fall short, especially while considering my own work that I have done in the Lowcountry, SC.  I applied this lens to the “work” sections.  Initially, I had problems identifying the focal system of the assessment – perhaps this was because I was not actually working within an organization.  I ultimately supposed that because I have worked on a grant-funded project that focused on the Lowcountry, this would become my focal system.  However, I pondered if this would be the right scale to work at.  I am skeptical about the effectiveness of the tool when the focal system is at too large of a scale – but then what defines the boundary of too large and not?

Next I ran through the second group of “Resilience Assessments.” As best as I could, I identified the natural resources of the Lowcountry: seafood, water, waterways, sweetgrass, shoreline, forests, etc. I did the same for the people: residents (long-term white, long-term Gullah, newcomers), local government, state and federal agencies, non-profits, corporations, etc.  Finally, I thought about the governance of my focal system – it seems that there is mixed governance, the system is greatly impacted by local decisions (e.g. zoning and development) and federal laws (e.g. protected wetlands).  Now, there are two major critiques that I have.  First, the flexibility of the workbook allows it to be a tool for anyone. I challenge the value of this sort of flexibility.  As Laura said, I feel that this workbook is best as a group effort, however I think only with multiple stakeholders.   I fear that if one stakeholder takes on the task of completing this assessment they’re going to push the issues from their agenda.  Second, what is missing thus far is that the workbook has you identify who the stakeholders are, but not much more about them. How does health, education, or other aspects of social welfare fit into this assessment? To me they clearly have a role, especially when considering the Lowcountry. Especially when considering that there are many different sorts of constituents in the Lowcountry and their histories and futures are relevant when talking about natural resources.

Overall, this workbook to me seems like a Band-Aid approach.  I fail to see how this approach will improve the status of social-ecological systems (SESs).  Can you address issues of one sector of a SES but not another, as the workbook is designed to do? The creators mention improving these multiple-dimensioned systems, but I fail to see how this can be accomplished when only one sub-sector is the analyzed.  This assessment seeks to look at natural resource management, but not the cultural, political, social, economic, ecological, or technological components that they themselves mention.  To me, this seems to be a revamped version of typical impact assessments. I think that from this perspective the workbook is great.  However, I think that there can still be a protocol out there that can focus on one sector of SESs, while incorporating all others.

During my first year of grad school, discussions on how to “bridge the gap” between science and management were brought up in every single course. Many times scientists are the ones with the “expert knowledge” but that formal knowledge may not always be adequately shared with the people managing our resources. Besides more effective forms of communication, guidebooks and workbooks like the Resilience Alliance Practitioner’s Workbook are another way to not only disperse information but also guide managers with how to use this information. Overall this workbook appears to be a simple, effective way to introduce resilience thinking into natural resource project management.

When reading through the workbook, it appeared to me that the authors assume that practitioners have a pretty solid understanding of their social-ecological systems. While this probably true in most cases, in my experience working in a developing country- this is not always the case. As a result of how jobs are attained, practitioners may not always have a related educational background or even experience working in the natural resource management field. This is not to say that people don’t have valuable local knowledge regarding systems here; just an observation that not all practitioners necessarily have a firm understanding of how social-ecological systems work, evolve, and adapt. This may become a problem with some of the specific questions in the workbook, like in Section 2.3 when the practitioner is asked to describe possible alternative stable states and trajectories of a system (page 47). Yet, if someone doesn’t have knowledge or understanding of how social-ecological systems work, then how can they realistically map out scenarios of future events? I think the problems of this assumption can be addressed in how the assessment is carried out.

The authors mentioned that the resilience assessment can be completed by one person or a group of people, possibly in a workshop format (workbook 1, page 5-6). To me, completing the assessment as a group seems to be the most effective, logical choice and it will address issues of potential bias or lack of information. A group of individuals involved in the management of a particular system can bring their own expertise and perspectives (whether economic, ecological or social) to the discussions. The collective knowledge then makes the group unit an “expert” on the social-ecological system and better equips the managers/practitioners to complete the resilience assessment, in comparison to having it completed by one individual. The authors state that “when management fails it is frequently because managers have considered too much detail of a narrow aspect of the system and too little detail of the rest” (workbook 2). Since resilience theory is bound in the idea that social and ecological systems are inherently linked, management activities should incorporate several perspectives and be carried out by a diverse group of individuals in order to avoid such failures.

Reid at al pose the question, “how can knowledge concerning environment and development be best mobilized in support of decision making (2006)?”  This has implications for both scientists and policy makers, who are constantly altering managerial strategies (based on resilience or optimization?) as systems move through their adaptive cycles.  Scales are utilized to connect knowledge systems through time and place.  Choosing the right scale can often dictate how effective a particular assessment or management process is.  As I briefly mentioned last week, elaborated upon by Wilbanks (2006), proper communication is achieved when the audience is directly connected.  Sharing global climate change data with a small neighborhood/barangay might seem beneficial to a scientist, but community members are more likely to feel empowered if they can correlate that information to their own environment.  Thus, knowing your audience and when to scale things up or down is crucial.  But its also important to remember not to re-scale assessments with impunity (Lebel 2006).

As was mentioned by Laura and this weeks’ readings, politics often dictate what particular scale is chosen for an assessment (Lebel 2006), or if an one is conducted at all.  Here in the Philippines, dynasties are commonly found within political institutions.  This influences decision making over a long period of time (opportunity for historical analysis?).  Similar to changing the axis or type of graph or plot, scales can be altered to display the information important to those in control.  In addition, scales are often chosen based on immediate benefit for the contributing parties instead of focusing on the resilience at the regional/local scale.  This brings me to my last thought this week and one of the concluding remarks mentioned by Wilbanks (2006): how can we show that indigenous/local knowledge is just as important to various scalar/cross-scale assessments and systems? Our current assessment process (outside of the MA, etc.) appears to inhibit the integration of these valuable pieces of information into our analyses.