Skip to content
University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

News & Events: Events, Conferences and Workshops: African Environment Programme ESRC/NERC Transdisciplinary Seminars and Workshops

Resilience, realities and research in African Environments

18 June 2007, Jesus College, University of Oxford

Please Note: This event has finished. For information on our current seminar series please see our Events, Conferences and Workshops listing.

The day will include a short plenary and two focused sessions reflecting on critical questions, linkages and methodologies in current research on resource management in Africa. By building on the existing wealth of interdisciplinary experience within Oxford, as well as bring together different stakeholders and researchers from Africa and beyond, we hope to make a contribution to the emergent debate on theory, process and application of resilience in development.

Session 1: Is resilience theory useful to interdisciplinary researchers? There is a growing mainstream focus on ideas of 'resilience' but different disciplines and stakeholders have adopted the concepts in diverse ways. What are the key underlying concepts that do help interdisciplinary researchers to understand complex adaptive systems, and what do we mean by 'resilience' in socio-ecological systems in Africa?

Session 2: Resilience depends on scale: what has meaning in measurement? This session draws on case study evidence to highlight questions on the cross-scale dimension of resilience, especially the implications and usefulness of scale measurement on targets. Key discussion will focus on how to move from indicators to surrogates, especially when complex systems are constantly transforming, and the value of different methodologies. For example, structured scenario models and adaptive management frameworks based on case studies/historical profiling both reach different conclusions. We aim to move beyond the global change debate in resilience systems to consider cross-scale aspects, particularly the national-local level.

Session 3: Using 'resilience' to promote sustainability in development practice. Is resilience key to successful environmental management or an important concept that is difficult to apply in practice? Is the concept analytically useful or is it inherently difficult to assess complex socio-cultural, historically embedded settings (e.g. finding convening indicators for resilience in human systems, which allows comparison of communities across different time horizons, can be difficult as institutions may promote and limit adaptive capacity to different groups or at different scales). What is its best application for managing uncertainty in socio-ecological systems; as a theoretical framework, a tool for measurement, how to influence policy? This is a challenge; what could be more effectively communicated to policy makers? (to use the session as a chance for policy makers to interface with scientists - how to manage uncertainty in complex systems, the gap between scientific resources and delivery, multi-level governance). The session will raise questions about the trade-offs for long-term goals and whether justice, resilience and sustainability are linked.

Wrap-up Session Discussion around key issues generated from the sessions and output planning (a paper will be developed by the organisers with others who are interested in contributing) plus a summary report for stakeholders and workshop report made available on AEP website.

Session Presentations

Please note: Some presentations represent work in process and should not be reproduced without prior permission from the authors.

Session 1: Is resilience theory useful to interdisciplinary researchers?
Session 2: Resilience depends on scale: what has meaning in measurement?
Session 3: Using 'resilience' to promote sustainability in development practice

Workshop Conveners

  • Dr Henny Osbahr (Tyndall Centre and School of Geography, Oxford)
  • Dr Emily Boyd (Environmental Change Institute, Oxford)
  • Dr Polly Ericksen (Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS))

Downloads