Mountain hazards and the resilience of social–ecological systems: lessons learned in India and Canada

James Gardner and Julie Dekens

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2007, vol. 41, issue 2, 317-336

Abstract: Mountain regions are subject to a variety of hazardous processes. Earthquakes, landslides, snow avalanches, floods, debris flows, epidemics and fires, among other processes, have caused injury, death, damage and destruction. They also face challenges from increased populations, and expansion and intensification of␣activities, land uses and infrastructure. The combination of a dynamic bio- geophysical environment and intensified human use has increased the vulnerability of mountain social–ecological systems to risk from hazards. The ability of social–ecological systems to build resilience in the context of hazards is an important factor in their long-term sustainability. The role of resilience building in understanding the impact of hazards in mountain areas is examined and illustrated, in part, through examples from Canada and India. Resilient social–ecological systems have the ability to learn and adjust, use all forms of knowledge, to self-organize and to develop positive institutional linkages with other social–ecological systems in the face of hazards. The analysis suggests that traditional social–ecological systems built resilience through avoidance, which was effective for localized hazards. The more recent development and implementation of cross-scale institutional linkages is shown to be a particularly effective means of resilience building in mountain social–ecological systems in the face of all hazards. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Keywords: Mountains; Hazards; Vulnerability; Resilience; Social–ecological systems; Institutional linkages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-006-9038-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:41:y:2007:i:2:p:317-336

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-006-9038-5

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().