The document discusses the challenges of managing agricultural landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the importance of resilience in coping with disturbances and adapting to changes. It introduces the concept of adaptive management as a method to enhance resilience and transformability in social-ecological systems, particularly in agriculture. The text emphasizes the need to assess trade-offs among ecosystem services and resilience attributes for better governance and sustainability.

1. Lessons from places
at the threshold
Adaptive Management of Working
Agricultural Landscapes for Ecosystem
Services
Craig Allen, Christo Fabricius
and the Resilience Alliance Working Group on Agricultural Resilience

2. What is the problem?
Sub‐Saharan Africa
Global Harvest Initiative 2012

3. Pretty et al. 2011. Int J Agric Sust, 9:1, 5‐24

4. Two clashing trends
Maize yields
Mouths to feed

5. Livestock, crops, livelihoods ,
governance and culture are integrated
– ‘Agri‐Culture’

6. • The ability to absorb disturbances
• To be changed and then to re‐organise and still retain
the same basic structure and ways of functioning
• As resilience declines the magnitude of a shock from
which it cannot recover gets smaller and smaller.
resilience

7. resilience, per se, is neither ‘good’
nor ‘bad’
undesirable states of systems can
be very resilient (dictatorships,
saline landscapes)
a system state that once was
desirable can become ‘undesirable’
through changes in external
conditions (context)

8. “A regime shift involving alternate
stable states occurs when a
threshold level of a controlling
variable in a system is passed,
such that the nature and extent of
feedbacks change, resulting in a
change of direction (the
trajectory) of the system itself.”

9. Identified regime shifts related to agriculture and the hydrological cycle
EVAPORATION & LEAF AREA
Wet savanna ‐> dry savanna
Cloud forests ‐> Woodland
Forest ‐> savanna
Monsoons ‐> No monsoon
Gordon, et al. 2008
RUN‐OFF QUANT, QUAL
Eutrophication
Hypoxic zones
River channel change
INFILTRATION, MOISTURE
Salinisation
Vegetation patterns
Soil structure
Atmosphere
Aquatic
Soil

10. Cundill & Fabricius 2008.
The slippery slope of resilience loss

11. • most losses in
resilience are
unintended
consequences of
processes beyond
the scale of focus
• in particular,
failure to
recognize cross‐
scale and cross‐
domain feedbacks

12. Traps
• A trap is an undesirable state from which
‘escape’ is difficult
• a Trap is characterized by
• low potential for change
• rigidity and, because of the extremely degraded state,
• a high resistance to change.
• The system has become vulnerable
• Sources of novelty and innovation have been
eliminated
Allison, H. E. and R. J. Hobbs. 2004. Ecology and Society 9(1): 3.

13. Time
Resilience
Resilience: the amount of disturbance a system can absorb

14. CONSUMPTION ‐meat & fuel
(rich old millions)
FOOD PRODUCTION
(poor young billions)
High
High
Low
A safe operating space for the world’s food systems?

15. Rockström, J. et al. 2009. Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe operating space for humanity.
Ecology and Society 14(2): 32. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

16. Transformation
• Transformability: “The capacity to create a
fundamentally new system when ecological, economic,
or social (including political) conditions make the
existing system untenable”
www.resalliance.org
Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig. 2004. Resilience, adaptability
and transformability in social–ecological systems.
Ecology and Society 9(2): 5.

17. Transformability
•preparedness to change
• getting beyond the state of denial
•options for change
• new ‘trajectories’ ‐ emerge from support for experiments,
novelty, continual learning
•capacity to change
• levels of capitals (including ‘social capital’), higher‐scale
support ‐ governance
Capacity to make use of ‘windows of opportunity’
Folke et al. 2009 In: Principles of Ecosystem Stewardship: Springer

18. Social‐ecological systems framework
Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Plan, Australia
http://www.gbcma.vic.gov.au
With participation and empowerment at every level and in every sphere

19. Adaptive Management (and Adaptive Governance)
• A method to experimentally probe systems to determine key uncertainties, with
experiments where it is ok to fail.
• An approach that “…views policy as hypotheses: that is, most policies are really
questions masquerading as answers. Because policies are questions, then
management actions become treatments, in an experimental sense."

20. Ecological Diversity
Ecological
Variability
Ecological
Modularity
Social Diversity
Social Modularity
Acknowledging
slow variables
Tight Feedbacks
Social Capital
Innovation
Overlapping
Governance
Ecosystem Services
Assessing tradeoffs among axes of resilience
in working agricultural landscapes

21. Water quality
Water
Quantity
Biodiversity
Invasion Resistance
Soil development
Food productionCultural
Nutrient Control
Carbon
Sequestration
Predation
Pollination
Assessing tradeoffs among ecosystem services

22. Resilience resources:
‐www.resalliance.org
‐information and news
‐ workbooks (free, downloadable)
‐Ecology and Society
‐www.ecologyandsociety.org
‐Twitter:
@christofab
@resilienceSci