Dr Brian Walker with co-author David Salt

Long term prosperity needs ‘resilience’ not just efficiency

Reference: 06/183

Current approaches to sustainable natural resource management are failing us, according to Resilience Thinking – a new book by CSIRO scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt to be launched tomorrow (Tuesday 19 September).

• 18 September 2006

Dr Walker, an international leader in the field of resilience research and one of Australia’s most highly published ecologists, calls for land managers and planners to drastically change their approach to the way our landscapes and natural resources are managed.

The key to sustainability lies in enhancing the resilience of communities, not in optimising isolated parts of the system.

The book argues that local communities are better able to withstand various cycles of change if they know more about the ecological drivers of their region, embrace rather than control the processes of natural change, and are empowered to make their own decisions about appropriate local developments.

Dr Walker says land managers and planners need to look beyond control, intensification and greater efficiency for sustainability solutions.

“Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet’s wellbeing,” Dr Walker says.

“Resilience explains why greater efficiency by itself can not solve resource problems, and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options.”

Resilience Thinking, co-written by science writer David Salt, is an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience – the ability of a system to absorb change and still retain its basic function and structure.

Dr Walker says that while the world’s human population doubled between 1960 and 2000, an alarming toll is being taken on the global resource base required to feed, clothe and house a growing population.

“To meet this demand, food production increased by two and a half times, water use doubled, wood harvests tripled,” Dr Walker says. “Global grain production will need to increase by 40 per cent to meet demand in 2020.”

“We live in a time of growing population coupled with declining resource bases and uncertainty about a range of environmental issues, including climate change. How can we make the systems that we depend upon resilient?”

Resilience Thinking looks at five case studies of changing structures or ecosystems – The Everglades in Florida, the Goulburn-Broken Catchment, the coral reefs of the Caribbean, the Northern Highland Lakes District of Wisconsin and Sweden’s Kristiandstad Water Vattenrike.

Dr Walker is available for interview on Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th Sept.

Media are invited to attend the launch of Resilience Thinking: 5pm Tuesday 19th September, Hotel Kurrajong, National Circuit, Barton, Canberra.

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