I wish that I had more insightful thoughts about utilizing resilience in practice than the ones that follow. Yes, I can think about how powerful of a tool it can be — a game-changer really. But unfortunately all I can focus on are the realities that Laura and Walker and Salt describe. In-the-now attitudes or doctrines of controlling nature are quite real, and are *very* powerful.  Achieving the goals of the resilience approach will be difficult and changing the deeply-rooted paradigm requires burrowing through the ideologies of anthropocentrism and individualism, and thus through the core belief of environmental domination.  It will take a great deal of time to undo what people have believed in for thousands of years and what they so powerfully instill in the modern era.  It requires that all parties involved accept nature and work with its cycles, as opposed to controlling it; or at the very least it requires that a group of influential parties begin the conversation. The task will be arduous, since such dogmas as growth and efficiency have become common-speak and pollute many sectors of public life, and thus become belief systems that have perpetually been retaught over and over again within society.   Regardless, there is a sense of urgency that undermines the demands of time in realizing change.  Our only hope can be to plant the seeds of resilience thinking in current and future generations through their [ecological] education, so they can repopulate corrupted social arenas with fruitful actions that respect the cyclical nature of life and ultimately protect the needs of humanity and the environment.

On my walk to work everyday, I cross one of the many bridges that extends across the Bombon River.  However, it wasn’t until last week that I noticed a sign marking a priority project of City Government of Tabaco City back in 2005: Rehab of the Bombon River.  Now…after glancing at this, I could only think about how visually ineffective that project was.  Eight years later and the river remains a cesspool.  Even the sign was falling apart and had been placed in a virtually unnoticeable spot (hence why I hadn’t seen it for 8 months!).  As I mentioned in an earlier post, many decisions are often rushed into to provide an unsustainable output for the community.  They are often made for present gain, without looking ahead at future challenges and consequences (as Laura stated, “living in the now”).  Was this project the same?  Was it designed to make a few people look good, for political interest, or without anticipating for change?  Power dynamics and political interests are two extremely impactful players here in the Philippines.  And I’ve noticed this even more since it is currently election season.  Employees are rarely fired, but primarily change due to political changes or retirement.  Many of my projects have been put on hold for the time being because of elections, and as a volunteer, you always have to be aware of your surroundings, inside and outside of your work environment (especially as a CRM volunteer since we work with the LGUs).  Pushing a particular project or attending a meeting or dinner could have its own set of consequences depending on election results.

I think one of the solutions to effective resiliency and also in dealing with power dynamics is establishing management councils throughout community levels.  Here in the Philippines, these are called Fisheries and Aquatic Resource Management Councils (FARMCs).  They can extend from the barangay level (smallest) to the provincial or integrated level (largest).  Chapter 5 and Case Study 5 from Walker and Salt describe similar solutions (2006).  Anyone has the ability to make resilient decisions for themselves or their community.  This could stem from the individual level to a community, municipal, or regional level, as was the case with the Vattenrike region in Sweden.  The issue with the FARMCs in the Philippines is their lack of consistent involvement.  Many municipalities have them implemented, but monthly meetings are rare and proper management is scarce, essentially making them nonexistent   However, they have the potential to be very successful resiliency bodies since they work together over a variety of scales and connect LGUs with NGOs, academia, etc.  So how can we address the issue of FARMC inconsistency in the Philippines?  Is it an educational problem?  Are the “right” people in charge?  All of these questions, again, relate back to our struggle with power dynamics.

Depending on your placement as a volunteer, capacity building often becomes your largest project during your service.  Previously mentioned, I see the Resiliency Workbook as a good starting point to get ideas flowing related to community resilience.  I particularly like the scenario approach, discussed by both Walker and Salt (2006) and the Workbook, because it generates a discussion of what could happen in the future and the need to prepare for these changes now.  But what are some ways we can capacity build to an ever-growing and ever-changing audience?  And to those who lack educational experience or resources?  Within my own community, continuous capacity building through various trainings and IEC campaigns could be one strategy.  But again, is this sustainable over a long period of time when there are employment changes?  A potential project of mine is a mini-CRM gallery, highlighting community issues, past and present projects, and ways to get involved in the community, primarily through murals.  It would be fixated in the heart of a few coastal barangays and would be an indirect way to attract support for CRM and natural resource management.  However, Laura hit the nail on the head when she mentioned proper leadership.  Resiliency is improbable if a system is forced to continuously adapt to new social or political changes.  As we have discussed, multiple stable states can exist, but too many put the system in a very vulnerable state.

This semester has allowed me to analyze resiliency on two levels: as a student and as a volunteer.  Both have been able to work hand-in-hand as I’ve been able to witness how our readings tie in with my everyday life.  It has challenged me to see past my daily highs and lows, instead, often viewing them with an “adaptive cycle” lens.  How can this success or obstacle help dictate my next move?  What happened previously that makes this method ineffective?  How can my time best be utilized to enhance the resiliency of my host family, my work, or my city?  Resilience thinking forces people to think beyond the present, past their personal wants, and instead focuses on working collaboratively, taking into account system vulnerability, and using past experiences to make better informed and sustainable decisions for the present and future of their communities.  My own resiliency has been continuously challenged as a Peace Corps volunteer.  I fully expect this to continue, but being able to mitigate and adapt to those challenges allows me to grow as a volunteer and as a person.

Reflection on last part of the Resilience Workbook & Resilience Thinking book

Some points in the last few chapters of Resilience Thinking resonated with my experience in the context of environmental management in a developing country. The authors pointed out that one doesn’t have to be well versed in all the detailed theory of resilience in order to apply resilience thinking to management interventions (chapter 5). The whole concept of the Resilience Workbook supports this point: although a more detailed supplemental books is attached for practitioners to familiarize themselves with concepts such as thresholds and adaptive cycles, people can work through the workbook without being experts. They just have to be aware of the state of their system and the interactions that occur between various components, including ecological-social interactions in order to answer most of the guided questions.

The question then becomes, are people really aware of processes and interactions of their social-ecological system? In answering this, I also want to address Annette’s previous post, and perhaps clarify what I’ve written previously. First, not all MPA mangers and management schemes are the same. As a result, sometimes they are in the hands of “experts” from academe or international projects and NGOs that have a breadth of knowledge and resources about how coastal social-ecological systems function. Some (like mine) are run by the local government and some are completely community-run after the initial set up. With that being said, it’s very possible that the day -to-day management of an MPA or sanctuary is being run by people who do not have formal knowledge of social-ecological system processes. Many MPAS are managed by the local government unit, institutions in which employees don’t necessarily have previous education or experience in their line of work. Yet, it’s my impression that most managers have local knowledge of their communities relationship with marine resources and how ecological systems are being altered in order to make sound decisions. There are also outside institutions such as universities and NGOs that reach out to coastal leaders to assist and ensure decisions are being made to help the overall well-being of the social-ecological system. I don’t want to give the impression that all of our marine sanctuaries are being run by ill-advised, uneducated people- that is certainly not the case. However, there are instances where the people in charge might be the best ones for the job. Yet, because of political work-dynamics, the qualifications or ability of a person or management body to manage a reserve may not be challenged.

The importance of leadership as a “crucial component” was discussed in both the workbook and Resilience Thinking, and in my experience this can make or break a management program. I agree with this statement and also think that it can be one of the greatest challenges to areas such as coastal resource management in developing countries. My city was fortunate enough to have someone dedicated to developing accepted and successful CRM activities in a leadership position for many years. Yet, we are in a risky situation because most of the leadership capacity (at least at the municipal level) lies within this one person. That’s to say that other people are not leaders of stakeholder groups, etc. but as of right now one person is unanimously seen as the leader of CRM activities for my city, which can be a risky situation if he is unwilling or unable to maintain this leadership position.

Reflection on Power Dynamics and Knowledge Production

As mentioned in the previous post, consideration of power dynamics was missing from our readings, yet they play a huge role in management which can then have effects on policies and decisions made towards creating a resilient social-ecological system. If possible, people from academe, NGOs, and other “neutral” organizations should be included in the deployment of the resilience workbook for situations in which government or other political parties are heavily involved in resource management. On the surface this seems like a logical solution to mitigating power bias since people from non-governmental institutions in theory should have less political influence or receive less backlash for not blindly following a political agenda. But power dynamics isn’t explicitly a political problem, politically unaffiliated people can rise into a leadership or power position and push their own personal agenda. To me, this also gives stronger support for why there should be a co-production of knowledge during planning phases of management- not only will it give a platform for multiple voices to be heard, but it can potentially minimized potentially negative effects of power dynamics.

Advantages and oversights of using a resilience-based approach // What I take away from this semester

I think one of the major oversights of using a resilience-based approach is the lack of clearly defined ways to measure resilience. Once people are introduced to the concept of resilience and start incorporating resilience thinking into management (such as using the workbook), two questions come to mind that I think people will ask:

Is our social-ecological system really a resilient one?
If so, how do we compare to other communities in similar socio-political-ecological environments?

The workbook is a great way to get people thinking about their adaptive capacity and provide some insight into what types of things might need to be improved, but without a way to someone measure resilience on the ground and compare it to other systems, managers may be left confused on the actual state of the system. Additionally, there wasn’t much discussion related to how resilience approaches might be difficult to incorporate with some cultures. Resilience thinking requires people to think in the past, future and the present. There must be a clearly defined vision of what people want their social-ecological system to be like and how it will be able to respond to disturbances. However, there are many cultures that live more “in the now”. I’ve found it sometimes difficult to get people in the Philippines to think critically about future disturbances because they very much live in the present and have a “Bahala na” attitude (Idea that whatever happens, happens. It’s God’s will.) This type of attitude also makes it difficult to instill a sense of urgency to act now. However, with all that being said, I sill believe a resilience-based approach to be advantageous for natural resource management. This approach pushes people to think critically about processes going on around them and if/how they might be vulnerable to changes in any aspect of the system.