95
Resilience assessment stimulates active dialogue among actors with diverse attributes and backgrounds.
The background of the indicators dates back to the beginnings of the Satoyama
Initiative, a global initiative to realize its vision of “societies in harmony with
nature” through the revitalization and sustainable management of SEPLS. The
Satoyama Initiative was established based heavily on research results from the
“Japan Satoyama Satoumi Assessment” (JSSA), a multi-year assessment carried out
in Japan of satoyama and satoumi, which are Japanese landscapes and seascapes
dominated by human production activities, i.e., Japanese SEPLS. Among the JSSA’s
findings were that: (1) these landscapes and seascapes are composed of an interlinked mosaic of ecosystem types that are managed to provide for human wellbeing; (2) they have undergone significant changes in recent years that have caused
a drop in their resilience; (3) this trend has important consequences for human wellbeing and biodiversity; and (4) integrated approaches to address this trend have the
potential to reduce biodiversity loss and maintain sustainable flows of ecosystem
services (UNU-IAS 2010).
For these integrated approaches to be developed and implemented, a need was
identified to first assess resilience in order to be able to maintain and strengthen it.
Resilience in production landscapes and seascapes is a function of their dynamic
and evolving ecological, social, cultural and economic systems, not of any static set
of natural resource uses or species, making it impossible to measure precisely with
any simple yardstick. With this complexity in mind, an initial set of indicators was
developed jointly by Bioversity International and the United Nations University
Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). Much of the background and reasoning behind this process was compiled in the policy brief
“Indicators of Resilience in Socio-ecological Production Landscapes (SEPLs)” produced by UNU-IAS in 2013 (Bergamini et al. 2013). Findings of the report showed
that the indicators approach can help identify gaps in knowledge and areas of intervention to improve resilience in target communities. This report also identified several principles that informed the selection of the indicators, including that they
should be easy to understand by local land users; that they should reflect the views
of various stakeholders; and that people’s perceptions and needs change over time.
In addition to the findings of the JSSA and other research, the indicators were based
on case studies collected under the Satoyama Initiative that demonstrated communities’ abilities to build their resilience.
As cited above, the JSSA found that the interlinked nature of SEPLS—meaning interlinkages between people and nature, between different ecosystem processes, between ecosystem services and human well-being, and others—gives
resilience to their socio-ecological production systems. This is what makes resilience difficult to measure, and also what previous research found pointed to the
need for an indicators approach that considers the social and cultural dimensions
of ecosystem functioning including temporal changes (van Oudenhoven et al.
2011). Related research has found that community-level resilience encompasses a
diversity of ecological, socioeconomic, and other variables, suggesting that an
integrated model could be used for assessment of resilience based on a matrix of
6 Lessons Learned from Application of the “Indicators of Resilience…
Resilience assessment stimulates active dialogue among actors with diverse attributes and backgrounds.
The background of the indicators dates back to the beginnings of the Satoyama
Initiative, a global initiative to realize its vision of “societies in harmony with
nature” through the revitalization and sustainable management of SEPLS. The
Satoyama Initiative was established based heavily on research results from the
“Japan Satoyama Satoumi Assessment” (JSSA), a multi-year assessment carried out
in Japan of satoyama and satoumi, which are Japanese landscapes and seascapes
dominated by human production activities, i.e., Japanese SEPLS. Among the JSSA’s
findings were that: (1) these landscapes and seascapes are composed of an interlinked mosaic of ecosystem types that are managed to provide for human wellbeing; (2) they have undergone significant changes in recent years that have caused
a drop in their resilience; (3) this trend has important consequences for human wellbeing and biodiversity; and (4) integrated approaches to address this trend have the
potential to reduce biodiversity loss and maintain sustainable flows of ecosystem
services (UNU-IAS 2010).
For these integrated approaches to be developed and implemented, a need was
identified to first assess resilience in order to be able to maintain and strengthen it.
Resilience in production landscapes and seascapes is a function of their dynamic
and evolving ecological, social, cultural and economic systems, not of any static set
of natural resource uses or species, making it impossible to measure precisely with
any simple yardstick. With this complexity in mind, an initial set of indicators was
developed jointly by Bioversity International and the United Nations University
Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). Much of the background and reasoning behind this process was compiled in the policy brief
“Indicators of Resilience in Socio-ecological Production Landscapes (SEPLs)” produced by UNU-IAS in 2013 (Bergamini et al. 2013). Findings of the report showed
that the indicators approach can help identify gaps in knowledge and areas of intervention to improve resilience in target communities. This report also identified several principles that informed the selection of the indicators, including that they
should be easy to understand by local land users; that they should reflect the views
of various stakeholders; and that people’s perceptions and needs change over time.
In addition to the findings of the JSSA and other research, the indicators were based
on case studies collected under the Satoyama Initiative that demonstrated communities’ abilities to build their resilience.
As cited above, the JSSA found that the interlinked nature of SEPLS—meaning interlinkages between people and nature, between different ecosystem processes, between ecosystem services and human well-being, and others—gives
resilience to their socio-ecological production systems. This is what makes resilience difficult to measure, and also what previous research found pointed to the
need for an indicators approach that considers the social and cultural dimensions
of ecosystem functioning including temporal changes (van Oudenhoven et al.
2011). Related research has found that community-level resilience encompasses a
diversity of ecological, socioeconomic, and other variables, suggesting that an
integrated model could be used for assessment of resilience based on a matrix of
6 Lessons Learned from Application of the “Indicators of Resilience…