Natural and social resilience

Scientists consider a system that is operating within the safe zone of opera-tion to be fl exibly adaptive. The phenomenon of resilience (‘elastic defl ecopera-tion’) is well known in mechanics, but is also applicable to the biosphere and so-cial phenomena. Related research commenced in English-speaking countries when C. S. Holling established in the 1970s that resilience includes a system‘s load-bearing capacity, performance, and adaptivity–that is, its effi cient opera-tion, as well as its permanence, conservation capacity, and persistence.

Resilience, generally speaking, means fl exible capacity for resistance; i.e., a system‘s creative ability (the system being either an individual, an organisation, an ecosystem or a type of material) to successfully adapt to powerful, renew-ing, or even shock-like external effects.

Resilience in psychological terms means the quality, or rather ability, to re-gain one‘s original healthy state after physical or mental suffering or after hav-ing lived through critical life situations.

3-5. Figure Elastic / reversible deformation (https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&c cid=WT3IVHd9&id=9BB9A88C0672C6D0C8A99DEC81FABB84E8491066&thid=OIP.WT3IVHd9VPL qnKqi7Ca86wEgDY&q=elastic+deformation&simid=608009552505078228&selectedindex=3&mode

=overlay&fi rst=1 - accessed on 16/04/2018)

Figure 3-6. Tensile strength diagram, resilience of metals

(http://pediaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Difference-Between-Stress-and-Strain-Stress_vs_

Strain_Curve_for_a_ductile_material.jpg - accessed on 16/04/2018)

Resilience: External force causes defl ection in bodies. If, once the effect has ceased, the body fully regains its original form, the defl ection is called elastic.

The difference between elastic and permanent defl ection appears in reversibi-lity: in the stage of elastic defl ection a body will regain its initial size and form once the strain has ended, while in the permanent defl ection stage it will not;

this means plastic deformation is typically irreversible.

A nice example of resilience is described in the following way by the out-standing Hungarian ecologist Juhász-Nagy Pál: ‘Well, let us take Lake Balaton as a sort of ‘reactive person’ who says things like: ‘So you‘ve taken away the Little Balaton and the forest groves? No problem, I‘ll build myself my ‘New Litt-le Balaton’ in Keszthely harbour. You‘ve stoLitt-len my natural lakesides? TroubLitt-le‘s trouble, but I‘ll build myself a more or less unbroken stripe of reeds to take care of my cleaning needs–better than nothing… You make me swallow all kinds of poison, faeces, and slurry? Rather unpleasant; what is more, disgusting. But I‘ll try to compensate for all this by re-organising the coenological relations, the trophic network, I mean for as long as I can’ (Juhász-Nagy, 1984).

Resilience suggests a decentralised or regionalised ‘planned economy’ as op-posed to the type of centrally planned economy that we experienced in this region before the political changes, and one which we may rediscover thanks to an EU bureaucracy plagued by management diffi culties. But what does resilience mean for the social sciences and ecology? Obviously something different than for a me-chanical engineer. Walker, Holling, Carpenter and Kinzig (Walker, 2004) discuss the three concepts of ‘Resilience, adaptability and transformability’ together, the interactions between which they think determine the resistance capability and stability of systems against external shock. ‘While the technological fl exibility ap-proach focuses on the steady state and defi nes the amount of disturbances need-ed to move the system from one stability domain to another, ‘ecological fl exibility’

is characterised by the amount of changing circumstances, which the system is able to absorb before its structure transforms due to the modifi cation of variables, processes and the nature of management’ (Walker, 2005).

The sustainable relationship between nature and man requires that attention is directed to ecological fl exibility because its central concern is the space between stabilisation and destabilisation: present-day development, global environmental change, the decrease in biodiversity, the degradation of ecosystems, and sustain-able development. The term technological fl exibility, however, gives the dangerous impression that natural systems may be effi ciently managed, that consequences are predictable, and that sustainability goals are achievable (Walker, 2005).

A fl exible, adaptable and thus sustainable social-ecological system is charac-terised by the following characteristics:

• maintenance of diversity and support for its preservation (biological, landscape, economic and social),

• limitation of ,human control‘ of ecological diversity,

• respect for modularity (combined systems withstand shock better),

• recognition and emphasis of the importance of education, social net-works and locally developed rules.

For sustaining the operability of a fl exible and adaptable social-ecological sys-tem it is necessary to:

• ensure prompt feedback (e.g. in the case of a drought, immediate irriga-tion is needed, with no time to wait for EU support policy to change).

If there is no demand for selectively collected waste paper, its energy content must be exploited by burning it before it is otherwise destroyed.

There may be no time for month- or year-long discussions;

• direct the attention of politics to slow variables and accumulations, despite the fact that politicians are disinterested in them: they are not newsworthy.

In the case of a fl ood or a fi re, funds are always made available for making good the damage, while nobody really cares about the slow demolition of dams. A slow increase in nitrogen or the accumulation of heavy metals in the soil is a graver problem than the occasional foaming of the River Rába.

The latter, luckily, attracts attention, while the former does not;

• appropriately divide private and public property, and overlapping rights of access. The state appears to be a bad proprietor, which is why pro-ponents of a liberal economy want to privatise everything. The state may be a bad proprietor in an economic sense, but it is good in the ecological sense, such as in the case of public assets (e.g. drinking water). Moreover, it may also be good with non-public assets (energy supplies) where private owners may be able to cut prices but are unable to ensure safe supply;

• strictly punish and increase social disdain for fraud. The health of the environment and society will only be ensured through an appropriate system of moral values;

• create an overlapping institutional system (that functions at different lev-els of decision-making). The principle of subsidiarity not only means that decisions should be taken at levels where the information is available, but also that higher (hierarchical) levels should support lower levels with prob-lem handling. Expertise, material resources and perhaps coercive meas-ures are required if, for example, a local government driven by economic interests destroys the living conditions of local inhabitants. Some settle-ments in the metropolitan agglomeration have engaged in such conduct;

• incorporate non-priced ecosystem services into development proposals. The construction of a motorway, a wind farm, a landfi ll or a sewage system involves environmental destruction, the rate of which may be decreased only if impact assessments are prepared and alternative proposals are also examined;

• maintain openness to change: an atmosphere supportive of innovation and experiments presupposes trust in the institutional system. It is worth trying everything at a small scale before scaling it up. Smaller shocks are best met through the fl exible reactions of ecosystems and society;

• strongly commit to avoiding major shocks and quick responses

• feedbacks to large volume effects.