Coral Reefs: A Reef Resilience Toolkit Module

Principles

Social resilience—including institutions for collective action, robust governance systems, and a diversity of livelihood choices—are important assets for buffering the effects of extreme natural hazards and promoting social reorganization. There are four critical factors that interact across temporal and spatial scales and that seem to be required for dealing with the dynamics of social systems during periods of change (Folke et al., 2003). These four factors are principles for building resilience and emphasize their interaction and interdependence. The principles are discussed in more detail on the following pages.

Koh Lanta, Thailand: A coastal community can look to four principles for building social resilience. Photo © Shara Kilarski

1. Adaptability — Ability to adjust to changes and new situations
2. Diversity — Nurturing diversity for reorganization and adjustment
3. Learning and Knowledge — Combining different types of knowledge for learning
4. Self-organization — Creating opportunity for self-organization

Much of the Toolkit focuses on MPAs and MPA networks as a valuable management strategy to incorporate resilience. The same is true for social resilience, and can likewise be applied to MPA network management. Under the growing threat of climate change, and because of the interdependencies between people and ecosystems, understanding and supporting resilience of coastal and reef-dependent communities is as important for effective reef management as are efforts to build resilience of the ecosystem. Managers can strive to maximize their contribution to the sustainability of reef-based industries and communities by designing conservation strategies that increase social resilience and by supporting adaptation initiatives. It is important that biophysical and socioeconomic assessments be integrated and complement each other, to provide a holistic understanding of vulnerability to climate change. The following pages describe how the principles of social resilience can be incorporated into MPAs and MPA networks.