Coral Reefs: A Reef Resilience Toolkit Module

Resilience-building Management Strategies

Strategies to build resilience in human communities that are highly dependent on coral reef resources can take many forms. There is no single approach that will guarantee the robustness of marine social systems. Building resilience into reef dependent communities requires a wide perspective on other factors and options than what the communities currently have. In situation where the coral reef resources are stressed, the communities need to have other alternative they can rely on, particularly for their livelihoods.

Sometimes the social system is already in a desirable state, and the challenge is to ensure that the state is not diminished (e.g., protecting pristine coral reefs from degradation). Other times, a social system may be in an undesirable state and the challenge is to reduce resilience temporarily and move towards a more desirable state (e.g., using MPAs or other forms of closures and restrictions to prevent and reverse the condition of already degraded coral reefs). The principles for building resilience interact and are interdependent. Management strategies will require a dynamic interplay of the four principles and their contextual variables to direct society towards resilience.

Building resilience of coastal communities requires a holistic view of all factors and characteristics which make the community unique. Photo © Shara Kilarski, Koh Lanta, Thailand

This section outlines the four main steps in building resilience in social systems:1

1. Assessing vulnerability
2. Identifying resilience-building strategies
3. Prioritizing resilience efforts
4. Implementing resilience-building strategies
   

Resources

Resilience Alliance: Assessing resilience in social-ecological system (download pdf, 1,959k)

IUCN's A Framework for Social Adaptation to Climate Change