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2 October 2013

SIANI Policy Brief: What Does Resilience Mean to Food Security and Poverty Alleviation?

Resilience is at the center of the current development agenda and many states have resilience policies. However, such initiatives are often criticized for being too vague and lacking the understanding of what resilience is and how to perform resilience actions in crisis situations. This SIANI Policy brief, published together with an independent environmental management consultant and advisor to the Swedish Biodiversity Society, Mike Jones, provides some key concepts of socio-ecological resilience and illustrates them on three examples from Africa.

Download the brief here

The Policy brief provides the definition of resilience and outlines three resilience models: the adaptive cycle of change within a given system; “panarchy” which describes interactions between systems at different levels of scale; and the “ball & basin” model of thresholds between different stable states. Further, three different cases from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya are analyzed through the prism of these conceptual models.

It is concluded that a resilience based approach to food security and poverty alleviation requires a paradigm shift in the way that people think about how they interrelate with the land, especially at the policy level.  In conclusion, key messages for policy makers and practitioners on how to build resilient systems are provided.

Download the brief here

 

Resilience is at the center of the current development agenda and many states have resilience policies. However, such initiatives are often criticized for being too vague and lacking the understanding of what resilience is and how to perform resilience actions in crisis situations. This SIANI Policy brief, published together with an independent environmental management consultant and advisor to the Swedish Biodiversity Society, Mike Jones, provides some key concepts of socio-ecological resilience and illustrates them on three examples from Africa.

The Policy brief provides the definition of resilience and outlines three resilience models: the adaptive cycle of change within a given system; “panarchy” which describes interactions between systems at different levels of scale; and the “ball & basin” model of thresholds between different stable states. Further, three different cases from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya are analyzed through the prism of these conceptual models.

It is concluded that a resilience based approach to food security and poverty alleviation requires a paradigm shift in the way that people think about how they interrelate with the land, especially at the policy level.  In conclusion , key messages for policy makers and practitioners on how to build resilient systems are provided.

Resilience is at the center of the current development agenda and many states have resilience policies. However, such initiatives are often criticized for being too vague and lacking the understanding of what resilience is and how to perform resilience actions in crisis situations. This SIANI Policy brief, published together with an independent environmental management consultant and advisor to the Swedish Biodiversity Society, Mike Jones, provides some key concepts of socio-ecological resilience and illustrates them on three examples from Africa.

The Policy brief provides the definition of resilience and outlines three resilience models: the adaptive cycle of change within a given system; “panarchy” which describes interactions between systems at different levels of scale; and the “ball & basin” model of thresholds between different stable states. Further, three different cases from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya are analyzed through the prism of these conceptual models.

It is concluded that a resilience based approach to food security and poverty alleviation requires a paradigm shift in the way that people think about how they interrelate with the land, especially at the policy level.  In conclusion , key messages for policy makers and practitioners on how to build resilient systems are provided.

 

Resilience is at the center of the current development agenda and many states have resilience policies. However, such initiatives are often criticized for being too vague and lacking the understanding of what resilience is and how to perform resilience actions in crisis situations. This SIANI Policy brief, published together with an independent environmental management consultant and advisor to the Swedish Biodiversity Society, Mike Jones, provides some key concepts of socio-ecological resilience and illustrates them on three examples from Africa.

The Policy brief provides the definition of resilience and outlines three resilience models: the adaptive cycle of change within a given system; “panarchy” which describes interactions between systems at different levels of scale; and the “ball & basin” model of thresholds between different stable states. Further, three different cases from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya are analyzed through the prism of these conceptual models.

It is concluded that a resilience based approach to food security and poverty alleviation requires a paradigm shift in the way that people think about how they interrelate with the land, especially at the policy level.  In conclusion , key messages for policy makers and practitioners on how to build resilient systems are provided.

SIANI Policy Brief: What Does Resilience Mean to Food Security and Poverty Alleviation?

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