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Baird, J., J. L. Blythe, C. Murgu, and R. Plummer. 2024. A scoping review of how the seven principles for building social-ecological resilience have been operationalized. Ecology and Society 29(2):20.ABSTRACT
Just over ten years ago, resilience scholars proposed seven principles for enhancing the resilience of social-ecological systems. The authors argued that there was a pressing need for a better understanding of how the principles can be operationalized. Through a scoping review we evaluate how these principles have been operationalized, which we define as a process of moving a concept from the theoretical to the measurable using, in this case, resilience principles divided into component dimensions and identifying measurable indicator(s) for each dimension. Here we show that the seven resilience principles have been vastly underutilized as a tool for operationalizing social-ecological resilience. Of more than 750 articles citing the principles, just 23 operationalized them and only seven of these articles operationalized all seven principles. Several of those 23 articles were unclear in the ways in which operationalization occurred. In terms of geography, the focus of the majority of articles was in the Global North. Articles that operationalized the principles used a wide variety of dimensions and indicators. To advance the scholarship and practice of building social-ecological resilience, we recommend the use of a consistent set of dimensions, or “parts that make up the whole” for each resilience principle combined with contextualized indicators or measures. Following these recommendations will create the capacity for global analyses and insights while honoring the local context that creates unique conditions in each place. Further, using contextualized indicators allows for plural approaches to operationalizing social-ecological resilience.
INTRODUCTION
Global ecosystems and the human well-being that they support are under threat from interacting environmental, climatic, and social changes (Steffen et al. 2015). Addressing these converging social-ecological crises requires holistic frameworks that can engage with complex and interconnected social-ecological systems (Armitage et al. 2009, Baird et al. 2016, McGlynn et al. 2023). In this context, resilience has found traction with both academics and practitioners as a concept that can support integrated collaboration and analytic generalization across disciplines and help generate new understandings of complex social-ecological systems (Folke 2006, Berkes et al. 2008). While resilience has been conceptualized and applied in a variety of ways (e.g., engineering resilience, ecological resilience, Quinlan et al. 2016), social-ecological resilience has been particularly influential in the fields of sustainability science, natural resource management, and environmental governance (Carpenter et al. 2001, Walker et al. 2004, Folke et al. 2010).
Social-ecological resilience is defined by resilience thinkers as the amount of disturbance a system can absorb while maintaining essential identity, and the degree to which the system is capable of self-organization (Carpenter et al. 2001). In other words, social-ecological resilience refers to the capacity of a system to maintain its structure, function, and feedbacks in the face of disturbances, shocks, or stresses (Folke 2016). Social-ecological resilience also emphasises the importance of fostering social learning, adaptation, and transformation (Gunderson et al. 2006). In this context, adaptation refers to adjusting to external and internal drivers of change, and transformation refers to the capacity to shift into new development pathways (Folke et al. 2002). Social-ecological resilience is also about making use of windows of opportunity, combining multiple types of knowledge, navigating, and governing transformations (Biggs et al. 2015).
The concept of panarchy is critical to discussions of resilience, which recognizes that social-ecological systems are complex, adaptive, and dynamic, at some points more rigid and at others open to reorganization and transformation. Panarchy also highlights that resilience operates at multiple scales and levels and that there are cross-scale and cross-level interactions (Allen et al. 2014).
Building on this rich body of work, several social-ecological resilience frameworks have been developed and used to describe and analyze social-ecological resilience in qualitative and quantitative approaches and at different scales (for a brief overview refer to Angeler and Allen 2016, and relevant examples within the special issue, and a summary of approaches in Quinlan et al. 2016). One group of resilience thinkers proposed seven principles for building resilience of ecosystem services (Biggs et al. 2012, 2015) and, over the last ten years, the “resilience principles” (as we refer to them hereafter) have become one of the most prominent frameworks in the field. Biggs et al.’s (2012) article has been cited more than 1300 times as of February 5, 2024, and formed the foundation for assessments of social-ecological systems (e.g., the resilience of agricultural landscapes [Bennett et al. 2021] and urban resilience [Samuelsson et al. 2019]). The seven key principles are: 1) maintain diversity and redundancy; 2) manage connectivity; 3) manage slow feedbacks and variables; 4) foster complex adaptive systems thinking; 5) encourage learning; 6) broaden participation; and 7) promote polycentric governance (Biggs et al. 2012). At the time of publication of the principles, the authors suggested “that there is sufficient knowledge about a preliminary set of principles to provide practical guidance for enhancing the resilience of [ecosystem services]” (Biggs et al. 2012: p439). However, they also recognized the need for comparative case studies to build our understanding of the principles across diverse contexts. Ultimately, the authors argued that “there is a pressing need for a better understanding of how the principles can be operationalized and applied in different contexts” (Biggs et al. 2012: 440). Further, Quinlan et al. (2016) stated that ongoing efforts to assess and measure resilience should incorporate the key principles.
In the ten years since the publication of the principles for building resilience (Biggs et al. 2012, 2015), a substantial body of literature citing the resilience principles has amassed. In this context, it is timely to review the relevant literature to evaluate how the resilience principles are being operationalized. We define operationalized as a process of moving a concept from the theoretical to the measurable.[1] In other words, we review how the principles have been measured through dimensions and indicators and also implemented.
While efforts have been made in specific studies to use the resilience principles to assess multiple cases (e.g., Rocha et al. 2022), a systematic approach to understanding how they have been operationalized has not been undertaken. Here, we conducted a scoping review that explores: 1) whether the resilience principles are being operationalized; 2) which resilience principles are being operationalized, within which focal systems (i,e., the system under consideration in the effort to operationalize the resilience principle(s) as described by the study authors), and through what dimensions and indicators and; 3) whether and to what extent the resilience principles are being used to assess efforts to build resilience. Due to the wide use and citation of the resilience principles, we anticipated that not all works would be focused on resilience-building though that was the original focus of Biggs et al. (2012). In answering these questions, we aim to provide insights that can inform future research directions in operationalizing social-ecological resilience (using Biggs et al.’s [2012] resilience principles or other conceptualizations).
MATERIALS AND METHODS
This scoping review was prepared following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The ScR extension builds on the PRISMA framework established by the Joanna Briggs Institute. Our methods involved the following six steps: identify the research question(s); develop a search strategy; identify relevant studies; study selection based on inclusion and exclusion criteria; extract and chart data; and collate and report results. The protocol used in this review is available here: https://osf.io/8wurg/. We established the guiding question for the scoping review, articulated as: “How have empirical studies operationalized the resilience principles put forward by Biggs et al. (2012)?” In that article, the authors codified seven resilience principles key to enhancing ecosystem sustainability (Table 1).
While Biggs et al.’s (2012) principles of resilience have had a clear impact on the discourse surrounding resilience broadly construed, the purpose of this study is to map the extent to which subsequent work has begun to operationalize the resilience principles (i.e., identify dimensions and indicators, and use them empirically), considering both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Operationalization results in dimensions of the each principle, or “parts of the whole” that create the capacity for “actionable, observable, and measurable elements” (Magis 2010: p.409) that we term “indicators.” This approach closely aligns with that of Nikinmaa et al. (2023) in their framework to operationalize social-ecological resilience for forests. To demonstrate this approach using an example, in Table 1 below, the principle “maintaining diversity and redundancy” could be separated into several dimensions: variety, disparity, balance, and redundancy. Altogether, these dimensions represent the principle as a whole. Each of these dimensions may have one or more indicators to measure it. For example, the dimension of variety may be measured using counts of how many different species of flora are in a particular system - in this case the indicator would be “the number of different species.” There may be a second indicator of ‘abundance’ that measures how much of each of those species of flora are observed in the system. Together, the number of different species and abundance of each are the indicators that measure the dimension of “variety.”
The second step involved creating a search strategy. We identified four appropriate academic databases to search for sources: Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate), Environment Index (Ebsco), GreenFile (Ebsco), and Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection (ProQuest). Given that the resilience principles were first codified by Biggs et al. the 2012 study was chosen as a “mandatory reference” and was included as a necessary criterion of initial inclusion in step three. By mandatory reference, we mean that within the four chosen databases we only searched for studies that cited Biggs et al. (2012). The search was conducted in February 2022. This strategy yielded 742 results (503 results from the Web of Science alone). We found that while many studies cited Biggs et al. (2012) only incidentally, a significant number of them did not specifically engage with the resilience principles. To reduce the number of results in the Web of Science, we searched for the following keywords solely within the 503 citing articles: “resilience principle*” OR “social-ecological resilience” OR “principles for building resilience” OR “building resilience” OR “resilience building.” This resulted in a significant reduction of results: only 60 citing articles included these keywords in the text of the article. Subsequently, all results were extracted from respective databases and combined into one table. Following deduplication and removal of all Masters theses and PhD dissertations, the final number of references staged for review totaled 156. During step four, we used the software Covidence for title, abstract, full-text screening, and data extraction. Article screening took place in two phases: title and abstract screening, and full-text screening (Fig. 1).
Each item was screened by two reviewers; conflicts were resolved by a third reviewer. At the abstract screening stage, the most common reason for exclusion was indirect engagement with Biggs et al.’s (2012) resilience principles and/or a clear indication that the study was conceptual in nature (rather than an empirical application). As the PRISMA flow diagram above (Fig. 1) illustrates, the most common reason for exclusion at the full-text review stage was that the study did not operationalize a resilience principle, followed by a disregard for the principles and lack of empirical testing. Twenty-three studies were included in the penultimate data extraction phase. Data extraction was also carried out in Covidence, with two expert reviewers charting evidence using a standardized extraction form (Appendix 1: Supplementary material S1). Data extraction conflicts were resolved as a group (involving all four authors).
Data extracted included the year of publication; aims; geographic location of the empirical research (if empirical); focal system, or resource system(s) of interest in the study and geographic scope of that system; which principles were operationalized; dimensions of each principle used; indicators of each dimension / principle used; the nature of the indicators (quantitative, qualitative, or both); evidence of using the resilience principles to build resilience; and the author(s)’ reflections on their efforts to operationalize the principles, where this was available.
Year of publication and geographic locations of empirical work, focal systems, and principles operationalized were analyzed using frequencies. We used an inductive approach to code the remainder of the extracted data. Aims were reviewed and coded as either having an explicit focus on operationalizing the principles or not. Dimensions and indicators were coded in a two-phased approach in MS Excel. The first phase involved in vivo coding of relevant text that was selected during extraction within each article. Where clarification was needed, the coder returned to the original, full text article to review it. The second phase focused on reviewing the initial codes and identifying themes among them, grouping like codes, and creating codes that encompassed each grouping (Saldaña 2016). Finally, we coded the author(s)’ assessments of their own efforts to operationalize the resilience principles in a single phase, focused on drawing out lessons for future efforts.
RESULTS
Are the resilience principles being operationalized?
Twenty-three articles were identified as operationalizing the principles after three rounds of review, from an initial sample of 742 works that cited Biggs et al. (2012).
The 23 articles identified through the scoping review were summarized by year published, and the majority of articles that operationalize the resilience principles were published recently, between 2019–2021 (n = 16) (Fig. 2).
The aims of the articles were reviewed to identify to what extent there was an explicit focus on operationalizing the resilience principles. Six articles were explicit in their aim statements about operationalization, e.g., “We advance this field by translating seven theoretical resilience principles (Biggs et al. 2012) into empirical, context-specific metrics...” (Salomon et al. 2019). Another nine articles made an implicit reference to operationalization, e.g., “We focus especially on the response of FR [functional redundancy] (but also considering FD [functional diversity] components such as functional richness, evenness and divergence)...” (Bruno et al. 2016: 847). The remaining eight articles made no reference in their aims to operationalizing the resilience principles and instead operationalization was a by-product of the aim, e.g., “The overarching aim for this study is to investigate how an urban MLG [multi-level governance] context influences the transformative capacity of a city from the perspective of local sustainability initiatives (LSIs) that can lead by private, public or civic actors” (Wardekker et al. 2020: 464).
Which principles are being operationalized, within what focal systems, and how?
Which principles are being operationalized?
Five of the 23 articles (26%) operationalized all seven resilience principles with the remainder operationalizing a subset of them. The median number of principles operationalized per article was 1, and the mean number of principles operationalized per article was 3.
Principles were unevenly used; Principle 1 (maintain diversity and redundancy) was used most often in 17 of the 23 articles, Principle 2 (manage connectivity) used next most often, and Principles 4 (understanding the system as a complex adaptive system) and 6 (broaden participation) being used the least (Fig. 3).
Between 33–65% of articles identified clear dimensions of principles, with Principles 1 (maintain diversity and redundancy) and 2 (manage connectivity) being the most common for dimension identification, and Principles 5 (encourage learning and experimentation) and 6 (broaden participation) least common (Fig. 3).
With the exception of Principles 2 and 3 (manage slow variables and feedbacks), most articles identified indicators more often than they identified dimensions of the principle mentioned, and the proportion ranged from 44-82%, with Principles 1 and 4 being most common for indicator identification, and Principles 2 and 3 least common (Fig. 3).
Focal systems for operationalizing principles
Further, the focal systems of the articles were explored to understand the breadth of systems of interest for operationalizing the resilience principles. Focal systems were diverse, ranging from seed companies to fisheries to municipalities and planning processes (Table 2). Examples of studies that operationalized all seven resilience principles were available for the watershed/river basin, fisheries, freshwater systems, and seed company contexts but not elsewhere.
Principles operationalized were also assessed in relation to where the empirical work was conducted. The majority of studies (17 of 23) were focused entirely in the Global North, including Canada, the US, Italy, France, Spain, and Sweden (Fig. 4). Three studies situated their empirical work in both the North and South (global level study, comparative work between Mexico and United Kingdom and Mexico and the Netherlands), and three were situated in the Global South (Guatemala, Iran, Kenya-Tanzania border). An interactive illustration of the geographic distribution of studies is available in Appendix 1: Supplementary material S1.
How principles were operationalized
The principles were operationalized using a wide variety of dimensions. The total number of dimensions identified for all seven principles was 79. The number of dimensions identified across all articles that use each principle are shown in the Supplementary material, Appendix 2: Table S2.1, along with examples of dimensions used (where possible, these were selected based on those dimensions that were identified the most often).
P1, while being the most popular in terms of being operationalized, also had substantially more dimensions associated with it, with little specific overlap among dimensions identified by different authors. These dimensions for P1, and indeed for all principles, tended to be specific to the topic and/or context of study, and thus resulted in dimensions that may not be immediately transferable for others. For example, in P1, dimension such as “diversity of production of commodities” and “overlapping functions in the face of perturbation” were identified by authors as dimensions of interest. Dimensions were aggregated by coding where they shared an underlying focus. For example, while there were 37 individual dimensions for P1 (Supplementary material, Table S2.1), these could be further coded into 11 dimensions (Table 3).
Indicators (i.e., the identification of specific, measurable variables to assess dimensions of resilience principles) were coded for each principle. Indicators ranged from very specific with a clear method for measurement, to broader statements of relevant considerations in relation to the principle in question. In general, P1 (diversity and redundancy) exhibited the most technical and specific indicators of all principles (e.g., physical counts and specific traits of species using e.g., electrofishing; using Simpson’s index of diversity or Rao’s quadratic entropy) (Appendix 2: Supplementary material Table S2.2). These principles were further coded to aggregate them according to methodology, and Table 4 presents the aggregated indicators.
In exploring the nature of the indicators further across all articles, the resilience principles were operationalized quantitatively in a slight majority of articles (57%), and another 22% used mixed methods that included a quantitative element but were not exclusively quantitative in nature. Six articles (26%) used only qualitative data and analysis.
We investigated the relationship between dimensions for each principle and how they were operationalized, using the secondary coding data (aggregated codes). A series of matrices were constructed (dimensions x indicators) that provide insight into specific approaches chosen to operationalize the dimensions of each indicator. These can be found in Appendix 3: Supplementary material S3.
Finally, we analyzed the author reflections on their efforts to operationalize the resilience principles, where available in their respective articles. Themes that emerged from this analysis were the following:
- Challenges associated with translating the resilience principles and developing appropriate indicators for a specific context (2 articles);
- Sources of uncertainty and bias in data sources (2), or lack of data for some dimensions (3);
- Indirect measures (i.e., the specific indicator was not directly measured, rather a proxy or latent variable was used) (1);
- Assessment requiring simplification of the principles, such that it did not necessarily fully capture their multi-dimensionality (3);
- Coarse assessments (i.e., not specific enough for the authors’ needs) (3);
- Narrow scoping of the research, which negated the authors’ ability to assess social-ecological resilience (1);
- Simple assumptions (e.g., more connectivity is better) that could mask important nuances in assessing resilience (1); and,
- Assessments that were unable to capture the dynamic nature of resilience (1).
To what extent are the principles being used to assess resilience-building efforts?
Few articles reported using interventions to build resilience (three of 23, or 13%) as part of their study design. And, of those that did implement an intervention, two reported some evidence of increased resilience as a result. Those studies focused on case studies in Mexico and the Netherlands (P5 only) and two watersheds in Canada (P5 only). Only the latter article clearly articulated dimensions and indicators. The third article that used an intervention to build resilience focused on municipalities in Sweden (P1 and P2 only), and we were unable to assess whether resilience was built, as the intervention was focused on the future.
DISCUSSION
Our interest in operationalization was to gain insights about how the study of resilience is advancing. We used the resilience principles from Biggs et al. (2012) as the basis for our inquiry, drawing specifically on the statement that “there is a pressing need for a better understanding of how the principles can be operationalized and applied in different contexts” (p. 440). Results from our analysis of citing articles published during the decade since provides several insights and paths forward.
Our scoping review identified a wide range of dimensions and indicators used to operationalize the resilience principles, despite finding only 23 articles that did so. Seventy-nine dimensions were revealed from the initial analysis and grouped into 33 general dimensions. Only four of those general dimensions were addressed by five or more works - species diversity (9), connectivity among actors (8), monitoring / collecting information on change (6), and ecological / landscape diversity (5). The use of explicit and consistent dimensions as a way to operationalize the resilience principles provides an opportunity for analytical generalization (c.f. Yin 2002) and an opportunity to draw insights from multiple cases/studies. This approach has been used in other, related areas of research to create databases of cases, including collaborative governance (e.g., Douglas et al. 2020) and crisis management (e.g., Parker et al. 2020). As emphasized by Ostrom (2009), the value of comparability for social-ecological systems analysis holds immense value; hence, we propose the use of a consistent set of dimensions for assessing social-ecological resilience. While we realize this initial list of dimensions may require further refinement, we offer them as an opportunity to continue the dialogue - initiated by Biggs et al. in 2012 - on operationalization, and to advance the study and practice of building social-ecological resilience.
While we advocate for holding dimensions consistent across cases and contexts, we see potential for case- and discipline-specific intensive focus using indicators and methods. Aside from the indicator and measurement for Principle 2 (connectivity / network measures among system elements), the indicators and corresponding measurement approaches are sensitive to the focal system of study; hence, they varied considerably across the articles in our review. Accordingly, we suggest that a wide range of indicators be used. For example, one dimension of P4, “accepting and working with a complex systems perspective,” was measured using quantitative empirical data, qualitative assessment, and modelling approaches (Appendix 3: Supplementary material S3).
An objective of this work was to determine whether and to what extent the principles are used to assess efforts to build resilience. Whereas Biggs et al. (2012, 2015) sought to advance principles for building resilience of social-ecological systems, our analysis shows that works seeking to explicitly build resilience using an intervention are scant (3 articles of those that show evidence of operationalizing the resilience principles). Whereas “...sufficient knowledge about a preliminary set of principles to provide practice guidance for enhancing the resilience” (Biggs et al. 2012: 439) exists, few capture outcomes from their efforts. It appears that, more than a decade after their introduction, empirical evidence to catalyze resilience using these principles is rather thin. The findings regarding operationalization and to the extent to which the principles build resilience are not entirely unsurprising or unique. In a systematic review of the closely allied construct of adaptive co-management (ACM) within the same time frame, the field was found to be at a crossroads: insufficient terminological clarity as well as inconsistent and imprecise measurement of variables which made “robust evidentiary insights into how the variables or components of ACM interrelate as well as relate to goals and outcomes are, therefore, presently not possible” (Plummer et al. 2012).
There are also important limitations to acknowledge with our inquiry. Our scoping review was specifically focused on Biggs et al.’s (2012) resilience principles and only considered published scholarly works. Accordingly, we acknowledge there are many other efforts not specific to these resilience principles which aim to operationalize resilience for a range of purposes, from describing a system and benchmarking, to effecting change. For example, and related to the use of the resilience principles, we are aware that resilience thinking (c.f. Walker and Salt 2006) and resilience practice (c.f. Walker and Salt 2012) is underway worldwide, much of which is not published. Many of those working with social-ecological resilience have a strong orientation to application and desire to “make a difference on the ground.” An illustrative and inspiring example is Wayfinder: A Resilience Guide for Navigating Towards Sustainable Futures (https://wayfinder.earth). It was created by a collective of international experts on resilience as a “hands-on approach” to “...help development practitioners, project teams, policymakers and other changemakers navigate towards sustainable, safe and just futures” (Global Resilience Partnership 2022). Such uptake and application of the resilience principles as well as efforts to catalyze resilience are not captured in this study. Moreover, while our review exclusively focused on works written in English, there are scholarly and applied literature in other languages.
The findings from our study provide an understanding of efforts to operationalize resilience principles over the past decade. Albeit only one aspect of resilience efforts, we argue that operationalization is an important consideration. It reinforces how the complexity and uncertainty of social-ecological systems challenges those seeking to understand and address contemporary environmental challenges (Cox 2011). Ostrom (2009: 419) argues that “without a common framework to organize findings, isolated knowledge does not cumulate.” While this may indeed reflect where the literature we reviewed sits, the principles outlined in this study offers a heuristic framework for advancing and refining the operationalization of social-ecological resilience.
CONCLUSIONS
Since Biggs et al. (2012) published “Toward principles for enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services” just over a decade ago, social-ecological resilience research has proliferated. Interest and effort to further identify, measure, assess, and build resilience in a range of ways have continued (MathisonSlee et al. 2022, Salomon et al. 2019, Li et al. 2020, Folke 2017), and this scoping review provides insight into how far we as scholars have come using the resilience principles specifically.
As scholars, we have adopted the resilience principles outlined in Biggs et al (2012). While highly cited, they have been greatly underutilized. Of more than 750 articles citing the foundational work, only 23 could be confirmed as containing the elements of operationalization (i.e., dimensions and indicators). This likely reflects the complexity of the resilience principles (i.e., we identified nearly 80 dimensions from the 23 articles that operationalized at least one principle), and thus, that the resilience principles do not lend themselves easily to being operationalized (Schlüter et al. [2015] for a more detailed examination).
Several of the 23 articles included in the scoping review were unclear in the ways in which operationalization occurred and most did not use the full suite of seven principles. Further, the resilience principles appear to be drawn upon for questions that are not necessarily social-ecological in nature (or with more emphasis on the ecological than social). Several of the articles included in the scoping review were focused on ecological systems (Appendix 4: Supplemental Material S4, e.g., Bruno et al. 2016, Bouska et al. 2019), and not (or less so) on social systems. This was surprising as we anticipated those actively engaging with the resilience principles would be doing social-ecological research.
The lack of operationalization can signal an opportunity to use the principles to assess and build resilience going forward, and we identify two key recommendations to do so here:
- Use a consistent set of dimensions for each resilience principle. This will allow for comparability across cases and studies and greater potential to build and test frameworks and theorize around building resilience, which is still difficult at the principle level (Rocha et al. 2022). At present, there is little overlap among efforts to operationalize the principles which limits this potential. Our list of dimensions identified from the articles included in this scoping review can serve as a starting point for further elaboration of each principle. We especially note that principles that are considered to relate to the social-ecological system (P1-3) have most often been approached from an ecological lens only. In line with the growing calls from other researchers, we recommend an increase in social-science contributions to these principles, and social-ecological resilience more generally (Stone-Jovicich et al. 2018, Cinner and Barnes 2019). Including social science would increase the emphasis on agency, power, and justice in this research (Olsson et al. 2015, Cote 476 and Nightingale 2017, Fallon et al. 2022).
- Nurture diverse indicators for measuring the dimensions of resilience principles. While comparability and commensurability is important at one level, the ability to bring multiple, diverse lenses to each principle is critical at another. Social ecological resilience is a complex concept and cannot be understood through a single approach or disciplinary perspective. Those engaged in social-ecological resilience scholarship and practice bring diverse disciplinary and transdisciplinary expertise and this pluralism is a strength.
As a final point, it is worthwhile to consider the corollary, that the findings from this scoping review hold the potential to inform other efforts on how to operationalize social-ecological resilience using different frameworks. While beyond the scope of this work, identifying points of commonality and opportunity between the frameworks offers a useful future research direction
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[1] We acknowledge that there are a range of definitions of ‘operationalization’ that have been used, even within resilience scholarship, including how resilience has been moved into practice and resulted in enhanced adaptive capacity (Kalaidjian et al. 2022) and creating frameworks for moving resilience into specific contexts (e.g., Anthony et al. 2015).
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AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Author contributions (CRediT): Julia Baird: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Project administration; Validation; Visualization; Writing – original draft; Writing – Review and Editing Jessica Blythe: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Visualization; Writing – original draft; Writing – Review and Editing Cal Murgu: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Methodology; Software; Writing – original draft; Writing – Review and Editing Ryan Plummer: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Writing – original draft
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wish to acknowledge the support of the Canada Research Chairs program for Julia Baird’s participation in this research.
DATA AVAILABILITY
Data are available from the Open Science Framework repository: https://osf.io/d5pm2/
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Table 1
Table 1. Description of resilience principles (adapted from Biggs et al. 2012, 2015).
Principle | Description and examples | ||||||||
1: Maintain diversity and redundancy | Maintenance of diversity in terms of variety (how many elements and how much variation in their response to disturbance), balance (how many of each element), and disparity (how different are the elements from one another). Redundancy is the replication of particular elements or pathways in a system. Examples: biodiversity, spatial heterogeneity, livelihood strategies, institutional diversity |
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2: Manage connectivity | “Facilitates the exchange of material or information necessary for the functioning of ecological and social processes.” Links between components of the system and strength of these links, modularity (extent to which there are subsets of densely connected nodes loosely connected to others), nestedness (connections among levels in a network). Examples include species interactions and habitat corridors, lakes as an example of modularity, social networks and frequency of interaction. |
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3. Manage slow variables and feedbacks | Slow variables (variables that can change slowly) determine the underlying structure of systems. Feedbacks (changes that are reinforcing or dampening to subsequent changes of the same type) are important to identify and use for monitoring and management. Examples: slow variables include soil composition and phosphorus concentrations in lake sediments, governance structures; feedbacks include monitoring information fed back to actors so they can adjust use or management in a system. |
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4: Foster an understanding of SES as a complex adaptive system | Indirect influence on resilience by affecting management choices. Fostering understanding happens through acknowledging: possibility of emergent macroscale behavior that cannot be predicted from individual system components; constant system evolution and adaptation to feedbacks; and, the pervasiveness of uncertainty. Examples: emphasizing holistic approaches, management of multiple ecosystem services and trade-offs; focus is on understanding for management |
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5: Encourage learning and experimentation | Learning happens in part through experimentation, so these ideas are linked. Learning can happen at the individual level (new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preference) and at the social level (through interactions). Can also be described in terms of single-loop, double-loop, and triple-loop learning. Experimentation is the “active manipulation of particular SES processes and structures to observe and compare outcomes.” Examples: management experiments that support learning about SES, participatory approaches focused on learning and adapting |
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6: Broaden participation | The active engagement of relevant stakeholders in the management / governance process. Can range from information sharing to complete devolution of power. A facilitating mechanism for learning and collective action. Examples: participation in monitoring, decision making |
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7: Promote polycentric governance systems | Polycentric governance systems are desirable for dealing with three issues: scale mismatch, negotiating trade-offs, and making collective decisions. It is characterized by multiple governing authorities at different levels; links within levels (horizontal); links among levels (vertical / nested); modularity (strong linkages among groups of nodes with looser connections among groups); and functional redundancy (the replication of particular functions in a system). Examples / benefits: governing actors include governments, industry, civil society, the benefits of governance at various levels (e.g., more policy freedom at local level; higher level governance actors can step in when lower levels collapse/fail); governance actors work in ways that respects relative autonomy but also takes into account others. |
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Table 2
Table 2. Focal resource systems and principles operationalized.
Focal resource system (number of studies that used it) | Principles operationalized (per study [S]) | ||||||||
P1† | P2 | P3 | P4 | P5 | P6 | P7 | |||
Watershed / sub-basin / river basin (6) | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||
x | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||
x | x | x | |||||||
x | x | x | |||||||
x | x | x | |||||||
x | x | x | |||||||
Fisheries (4) | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | ||
x | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||
x | x | x | |||||||
x | x | x | |||||||
Municipalities (2) | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||
x | x | x | |||||||
Biosphere reserves (1) | x | ||||||||
Cities (1) | x | ||||||||
Community gardens (1) | x | ||||||||
Freshwater systems (1) | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||
Global trade system related to food (1) | x | x | |||||||
Food security (local) (1) | x | ||||||||
Livestock production system (1) | x | ||||||||
Commercially navigable river (1) | x | x | x | ||||||
Seed companies (1) | x | x | x | x | x | x | |||
Social-ecological systems (coastal and mountainous) (1) | x | x | x | ||||||
Wetland (1) | x | ||||||||
† P1: maintain diversity and redundancy; P2: manage connectivity; P3: manage slow variables and feedbacks; P4: foster an understanding of the system as a complex adaptive system; P5: encourage learning and experimentation; P6: broaden participation; P7: promote polycentric governance. |
Table 3
Table 3. Dimensions identified for each resilience principle. (Refer to Appendix 4: Supplementary Material S4 for more detailed information about the articles where these dimensions were identified.)
Principle | General dimensions (number of initial dimensions included) | ||||||||
P1: Maintain diversity and redundancy | Species diversity (9) Species redundancy (1) Habitat diversity (1) Habitat redundancy (1) Diversity of human and institutional actors and perspectives (3) Livelihood and activities diversity (2) Ecological / landscape diversity (5) Ecological / landscape redundancy (2) Diversity of relationships between ecosystems and humans (2) Redundancy of relationships between ecosystems and humans (1) |
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P2: Manage connectivity | Connectivity among actors (8) Connectivity among system components (2) Elements of circuit theory (3) |
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P3: Manage slow variables and feedbacks |
Monitoring / collecting information on change (6) Decision-making (2) Accounting for the past (1) Accounting for knowledge and authority (2) |
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P4: Foster an understanding of the system as a complex adaptive system | Accepting and working with a complex systems perspective (4) Stability (1) Transformation (1) |
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P5: Encourage learning and experimentation | Innovation and experimentation (1) Knowledge and resource sharing (3) Learning from the past and present (3) Normative learning (1) |
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P6: Broaden participation | Institutional framework with equitable rights, entitlements and decision-making processes (1) Stakeholders actively engaged (1) Diverse types and sources of knowledge brought together (1) Level of trust (1) Level of cooperation (1) Level of participation (1) |
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P7: Promote polycentric governance | Presence of multiple independent bodies (2) Linkages among independent bodies (3) Quality of the governance process (1) |
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Table 4
Table 4. Proportion of studies using specific measures to operationalize each principle.
Methods | Principles | ||||||||
P1† | P2 | P3 | P4 | P5 | P6 | P7 | |||
Ranking | 0.13 | 0.38 | 0.29 | 0.20 | 0.50 | 0.63 | |||
Indices | 0.20 | ||||||||
Frequencies / proportions | 0.40 | ||||||||
Change over time | 0.07 | 0.25 | 0.30 | ||||||
Qualitative assessments | 0.20 | 0.38 | 0.43 | 0.50 | 0.50 | 0.13 | |||
Connectivity measures | 0.89 | 0.25 | |||||||
Resistance to connectivity | 0.11 | ||||||||
Modelling | 0.29 | ||||||||
† P1: maintain diversity and redundancy; P2: manage connectivity; P3: manage slow variables and feedbacks; P4: foster an understanding of the system as a complex adaptive system; P5: encourage learning and experimentation; P6: broaden participation; P7: promote polycentric governance. |