Building Resilience towards Adaptive Capacity in the Sarstoon Temash Social-Ecological System, Belize

• Main Authors: KENRICK WINSTON WILLIAMS, 陳瑞克
• Other Authors: Hsing-Sheng Tai
• Format: Others
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/kub844

博士 === 國立東華大學 === 自然資源與環境學系 === 104 === Linked social and ecological systems are complex with linear and non-linear interactions and feedback. Such complexity necessitates governance approaches that avert “one size fits all” policy prescriptions dictated by centralized government. Rather, complex systems governance requires strategies that appreciate the importance of disturbance and build adaptive capacities to cope with and adapt to change and uncertainties. In this dissertation, I apply a modified version of Folke et al. (2003) resilience framework to analyze clusters of strategies in building resilience towards adaptive capacity. These clusters include: 1) learning to live with change and uncertainty, 2) nurturing diversity for reorganization and renewal, 3) combining different kinds of knowledge and 4) create opportunities for self-organization to build empirical understand of how and why SESs adapt to change and disturbances. In particular, I assess resilience building strategies implemented by actors in the Sarstoon Temash social-ecological system, Belize aimed at strengthening adaptive capacities between 1994 and 2014. I find that leaders and other actors in the Sarstoon Temash SES have built up a polycentric and collaborative governance system to build the adaptive capacities to respond to disturbances at appropriate levels. The Sarstoon Temash SES – the primary source of livelihoods for the Q’eqchi Mayan people – faced several threats thus providing the nucleating drive for collective action to implement resilience building strategies towards adaptive capacities. The inherent nature of social-ecological systems is that the dynamic and multilevel interactions continuously create emergence and feedback. I find that actors have built in the necessary mechanism for learning, experimentation, and innovation, as well as, the necessary redundancy and diversity into resilience building strategies. However, these strategies are not without flaws, some strategies adapted in the Sarstoon Temash SES may be maladaptive and lead the SES along undesired pathways over time. Furthermore, disturbances are continuous and can undermine current resilience, thus actors have to continuously monitor, revise and adapt new strategies. In the concluding chapter, I explore what I define as core factors present in this case essential in building adaptive capacity as well as advance some recommendations to improve policy and practice to foster the adaptive capacity to disturbances in the Sarstoon Temash SES.