This document discusses establishing a Resilience Topic Working Group within the Challenge Program on Water and Food to advance understanding and application of resilience thinking. It provides examples of resilience research topics and outlines potential core themes the group could address, including linked social-ecological systems, regime shifts, disturbances and shocks, and operationalizing adaptive management. The document also proposes an initial workplan for the group to develop a position paper, establish the group, synthesize past work, participate in forums, and facilitate learning across projects.

1. Resilience Topic Working Group Line Gordon, Stockholm Resilience Centre Basin Leader Meeting Vientiane, Laos, 18. Jan. 2011

3. Landslides in Brazil, Flooding in Queensland

4. Foley et al. 2005

6. Regime shifts / Tipping points / Critical transitions Regime shifts are: Suprising, sudden shifts of stability domains/ development trajectories Once a threshold is crossed it is difficult to go back (assymetry and/or hysteresis) Management practices will need to adapt, or try to transform

7. Resilience deals with the tension between persistence and change

8. Resilience is the capacity of a system—be it an individual, a forest, a city, or an economy — to deal with change and continue to develop Rather than stability, change is seen as the underlying variable, uncertainty (disturbances/shocks) inherent to systems Sven-Göran “Svennis” Eriksson (Swedish successful soccer coach): “It is a wrong strategy not to change a winning team”

9. Resilience is about: a) withstanding shocks and disturbances (like climate change or financial crisis), and b) using such events to catalyze renewal, novelty, and innovation The challenge in a nutshell: How far can a system be perturbed before a regime shift happens? How much shock can a system absorb before it transforms into something fundamentally different? How can active transformations from an undesirable social-ecological state into a better one be orchestrated? (Folke 2010, Seeds magazine)

12. 1. Linked social-ecological systems and the role of ecosystem services trade-offs and synergies 2. Regime shifts and the tension of persistence and development (coping, adapting and transforming) 3. The role of disturbances and shocks for innovation and persistence 4. Operationalising adaptive management in development context Potential core themes of a TWG on Resilience

14. 2. Regime shifts and the tension of persistence and development (coping, adapting and transforming) From A. Vidal Resilient Non resilient Resilient Non resilient

15. Synthetic analysis and concetualisation of resilience along a blue to green continuum Example from Paa Boong Paa Thaam Vidal, van Koppen, Love & Blake, 2010 Multiple use systems IWRM in Southern Africa Green water Blue water IWRM in water scarce Southern Africa Resilience zone Green water Blue water Single uses unstable zone Multiple use/sources resilience Rainfed humid Rainfed dry Disruptive Change Green water Blue water Wetlands in the Mekong basin Wetland resilience zone Disruptive change Unstable zone

18. What does resilience mean for big river basins? Suggested basin closure as a potential threshold for regime shifts Cummings et al, in press Basin resilience risk being undermined by conventional development Conceptual model of basin interactions

19. 4. Operationalising adaptive management in a development context Integrated assessment map Identification of potential socially defined thresholds Bene et al. PN 72 project report Example from small-scale fisheries on participative ways of scoping the baseline for adaptive management