Resilience: The Concept
Contents |
Interesting Times
This Annual Report covers the period from April 1st, 2008 to March 31st, 2009, an unprecedented time for Ontario and for the world as a whole. A meltdown of financial markets has led to a global economic downturn that has sharply curtailed consumer spending. Manufacturing sectors have been devastated, and North American car companies, a traditional economic powerhouse for Ontario, have been particularly hard hit. Governments are responding with massive economic stimulus plans, deficit spending and coordinated responses across multiple jurisdictions, recognizing how tightly interconnected many of our systems are.
In past economic crises, political agendas have typically swept environmental concerns aside as “nice to have” but unaffordable frills. This time, though, we see a deeper and wider appreciation of connections between the economy and the environment. A global consensus has formed on the urgency of the climate change peril. While consensus is outstanding on the need to rapidly “decarbonize” the world economy, there is much broader understanding of the scale of changes needed. With the inauguration of a new President in Washington D.C., some key barriers on the climate change file – formerly insurmountable – seem to have melted away. Suddenly there are plans for international carbon cap and trade systems with rigorous rules, and Canada is learning that its status quo approaches to limiting greenhouse gases will not pass muster. Governments – in the U.S., Europe and Ontario – are strongly encouraging green industry and green energy approaches as core elements of their economic stimulus packages.
What hasn’t changed?
Our economic and social systems have received multiple shocks this past year, and our ongoing environmental crises have come into sharp new focus. The turmoil of the past year has forced decision- makers of every stripe to re-examine core values and principles. Fiscally conservative governments have found themselves bailing out or even nationalizing financial services and manufacturers; jurisdictions with long laissez-faire traditions are awakening to the need for stronger regulation and reform of finance markets; labour leaders too, are making historic concessions and reopening contracts, in the face of bankruptcy fears for key employers.
Times such as these also offer a strong invitation to oversight agencies such as this office to reflect on our own established principles. Here at the ECO, we are beginning that process of refection, because we recognize that our advice to the Ontario government needs to hold up in all kinds of weather.
Since the inception of this office, the ECO has been guided by values explicitly listed in the opening sections of our defining statute, the Environmental Bill of Rights, 1993 (EBR). From the outset, we have emphasized concepts such as environmental sustainability, acting for the benefit of future as well as present generations, protecting biodiversity and pollution prevention. Other values of the EBR are implied in its design; values such as transparency, government accountability, integration of environmental responsibility across a range of ministries, and the public’s right to meaningful participation whenever environmental decisions are made.
These themes have given rise to some of our more specific reoccurring arguments. For example, government transparency and accountability are predicated on a strong capacity by government to monitor and report on progress. Similarly, acknowledging responsibility for future generations and the full diversity of life on earth seems to guide one’s thinking towards a precautionary approach and attention to cumulative impacts. It also should trigger a profound questioning of key elements of the classic economic model: the assumption of continual, unconfined, compounded growth, the pre- occupation with the short-term, and the neglect of externalities.
Have the defining values of the EBR lost any of their currency in these tumultuous times? What additional frameworks or lenses might we apply to strengthen decision-making on the environment? Over the coming months, the ECO looks forward to exploring alternative approaches. There is one concept, however, the ECO considers particularly relevant in this period of rapid transformation, and so has applied to analyses throughout this report: resilience.
Resilience Thinking
Resilience thinking is an interpretive tool with wide applications, for natural and social sciences, for policy makers and for business. Resilience has been described succinctly as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance; to undergo change and still retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks…the capacity to undergo some change without crossing a threshold to a different system regime – a system with a different identity.”
Many of the elements of resilience thinking seem fairly intuitive:
- systems, whether natural, social or economic, are linked in innumerable ways
- systems are always changing, and change is not always linear or predictable
- systems naturally experience cycles marked by growth and conservation, followed by releases (often described as crashes) and renewal
- crashes occur when systems are pushed beyond certain thresholds
- systems that have been pushed into a new regime may not recover
We also share fairly intuitive, common sense understandings of resilience and lack thereof. These are captured in familiar idioms and proverbs such as: “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket”; “have a back-up plan”; and “you can’t unscramble an egg.”
What may be less intuitive is the idea that the more efficient a system is, the less resilient it becomes. This observation can apply equally to ecological, economic or social systems. Because a highly efficient system has shed most of its spare capacity and redundancy, it will function very well as long as outside influences remain stable. But such a system is also brittle; if subjected to a major shock, it will be much less able to adjust to the new situation. Modern manufacturing methods, for example, are able to sustain prodigious outputs, supported by complex networks of suppliers and just-in-time delivery systems. But industries relying on these approaches (and lacking just-in-case stockpiles) also become remarkably vulnerable to any disruptions in supply chains, such as traffic congestion, labour strife, or severe weather.
Using resilience as a conceptual framework, the challenge of sustainability might be defined as keeping a given system from crossing a threshold into an undesirable new regime. Alternatively, we may see the need to nudge a system that is stuck in an undesirable regime into a different, more sustainable one; we may want to conceptualize this as “bouncing forward,” rather than “bouncing back.”
Future shocks
Are the ecological, social and economic systems we rely on sufficiently resilient to absorb a series of major shocks and surprises? Over the coming years, we will have ring-side seats to observe the outcome, because big changes are buffeting all our systems, and more surprises are in store. Climate change is justifiably at the forefront of most policy discussions on environment and sustainability, but other, often connected challenges also loom in the background. For example, an understanding that global oil demand will soon outstrip supply (the Peak Oil challenge) underscores the need to find more sustainable energy sources. Short term prices of fossil fuels may vacillate, but the long term trend will be up – way up. What kinds of transformations of our agricultural, manufacturing, and transportation sectors are possible as a result?
Global biodiversity is also in crisis, with experts speaking of an ongoing “mass extinction” of species, of a magnitude previously observed only a handful of times in the planet’s fossil record. Ecosystems that have evolved over eons may not swiftly or fully recover from the loss of keystone species. We may instead see fundamental shifts to new regimes, with different dynamics and different species predominating. What will those regime shifts mean for us, given our own absolute reliance on natural resources and ecosystem services?
Water scarcity, until now predominantly a concern for arid zones like the Middle East and the southwest U.S., will also become much more wide-spread under the twin pressures of climate change and population growth. Industries with high water demands such as agriculture, high tech and beverage sectors are being put on alert to prepare for growing water shortages. Well-resourced industries are strategizing on how to engage with such a future, but others – vulnerable ecosystems and the world’s poor – will lack back-up plans.
Applying Resilience Thinking
The report that follows provides ample opportunity to reflect on how Government of Ontario policy decisions affect the resilience of our most important systems.
- We take a critical look at the agricultural concept of “tolerable soil loss”; are we wise to rely on future improvements in agro-technology to maintain crop yields, and can we safely ignore soil erosion rates that can be as high as one tonne of soil per tonne of grain corn produced? Might we come up against some unpleasant surprises? (see Soil: Our Eroding Asset)
- We probe the impacts of intensified forest harvests for biofuels. (see Forest Biofibre: To Burn or Not To Burn?). If we leave much less forest biomass behind on forest floors to decompose, what will this mean for soil nutrient levels, for diversity of soil micro-organisms and for the health of future forests?
- We question the existing provincial policy that gives priority to sand and gravel extraction even when natural heritage and source waters are at risk (see Reforming Land Use Planning and The Swiss Cheese Syndrome: Pits and Quarries Come in Clusters). With the aggregate industry focused on its own internal efficiencies, in the absence of constraints to protect other values, locations rich in aggregate will gradually transform into clusters of flooded holes and altered aquifers. Can we really expect these ecosystems to “recover” to a former state, or has their resilience been compromised beyond a recovery threshold?
- We consider the ongoing world-wide decline of amphibian species, and the trouble signs we see for a number of Ontario frogs, toads and salamanders (see Amphibian Declines: Canaries in Our Global Coal Mine?). Are we observing slow linear declines that can be safely managed by a bit of adjustment of selected threats such as harvesting rates? Or are these species experiencing a whole host of pressures that are sweeping them, at a variety of speeds, past some thresholds of recovery? These thresholds may be observable only in retrospect, and we may also have difficulty observing the pressures, if they operate in slow motion or in unpredictable ways.
- We observe strong population growth in areas of Ontario dependent on long distance pipeline water and sewer connections to Great Lakes. While it may certainly seem efficient to hook large populations to a big pipe solution, such a solution can reduce redundancy, and thus resilience, creating a huge dependency and vulnerability. (See Section 5.3.2 of Supplement; York Region Sewer Application)
Transformations underway
The Ontario government has clearly recognized that we are moving into a very different future, and is responding to the underlying seismic shifts with a number of far-sighted initiatives. The Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009', passed in May 2009, promises that thousands of small-scale independent generators will be able to contribute “clean” kilowatts to the central power grid. It will also promote energy conservation measures through reforms of the Building Code and by enhancing the role of local distribution companies in energy demand management. Major new investments in public transit are also underway, especially for the Greater Toronto Area, and should provide alternative forms of mobility with less traffic congestion and air pollution. For northern Ontario, the Premier has committed to permanently protect an interconnected network of conservation lands covering at least 225,000 square kilometres. A major reform of the antiquated Mining Act has also been initiated, along with the intent to develop community-based land use plans in the far north.
These are promising, but also challenging directions. There will be huge pressures to revert to “tried and true” approaches, and temptations to assume that our future will look a lot like our recent past. There is a rush, for example, to identify “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects to provide a short-term economic stimulus. We need to stop and ask, however, whether the growth assumptions and energy consumption patterns that applied while these projects were on the drawing boards are now outdated and unsuited to the new reality. Will these projects enable transformations to sustainability, or do we risk spending our children’s legacy on the same old infrastructure that will trap us into the same old unsustainable approaches?
There are also great temptations at times like this, to sweep aside consultation and regulation, in the interests of speed. During times of crisis, decision-making naturally becomes imbued with a special urgency – and too often, with a corrosive haste. Now more than ever, decision-makers at all levels need to insist on time for contemplation, dialogue and healthy debates about our challenges and choices. Over the coming months, the ECO hopes to be included in good discussions with many thoughtful people, listening carefully – looking perhaps not so much for the right answers as the right questions.
| This is an article from the 2008/09 Annual Report to the Legislature from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. |
Citing This Article:
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2009. "Resilience: The Concept." Building Resilience, ECO Annual Report, 2008-09. Toronto, ON : Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 11-15.
