Relating Social and Ecological Resilience: Dutch Citizen’s Initiatives for Biodiversity

Roel During, Kristof Van Assche and Rosalie Van Dam
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Roel During: Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen Research, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands
Kristof Van Assche: Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada
Rosalie Van Dam: Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen Research, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-20

Abstract: Social resilience and ecological resilience are related and distinguished, and the potential of social resilience to enhance resilience of encompassing social-ecological systems is discussed. The value of resilience thinking is recognized, yet social resilience needs to be better understood in its distinctive qualities, while resisting identification of social resilience with one particular form of governance or organization. Emerging self-organizing citizen’s initiatives in The Netherlands, initiatives involving re-relating to nature in the living environment, are analyzed, using a systems theoretical framework which resists reduction of nature to culture or vice versa. It is argued that space for self-organization needs to be cultivated, that local self-organization and mobilization around themes of nature in daily life and space have the potential to re-link social and ecological systems in a more resilient manner, yet that maintaining the diversity of forms of knowing and organizing in the overall governance system is essential to the maintenance of social resilience and of diverse capacities to know human-environment relations and to reorganize them in an adaptive manner. Conclusions are drawn in the light of the new Biodiversity Strategy.

Keywords: resilience; self-organization; citizen’s initiatives; social-ecological systems; biodiversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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