TY - JOUR

T1 - Towards a bridging concept for undesirable resilience in social-ecological systems

AU - Dornelles, André Z.

AU - Boyd, Emily

AU - Nunes, Richard J.

AU - Asquith, Mike

AU - Boonstra, Wiebren J.

AU - Delabre, Izabela

AU - Michael Denney, J.

AU - Grimm, Volker

AU - Jentsch, Anke

AU - Nicholas, Kimberly A.

AU - Schröter, Matthias

AU - Seppelt, Ralf

AU - Settele, Josef

AU - Shackelford, Nancy

AU - Standish, Rachel J.

AU - Yengoh, Genesis Tambang

AU - Oliver, Tom H.

N1 - sOcioLock-in’ and an outcome of a workshop kindly supported by sDiv, the Synthesis Centre of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig (DFG FZT 118). We thank all organizers, participants and administrative staff involved in the sDiv working group sOcioLock-in. We also thank the editor-in-chief and the two anonymous reviewers from Global Sustainability for the valuable and constructive comments that improved the quality of our work. Financial support. The ‘sOcioLock-in’ workshop was funded by sDiv, and this study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brazil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001. André Dornelles is funded by a Brazilian CAPES scholarship.

PY - 2020/1/1

Y1 - 2020/1/1

N2 - Non-technical summary Resilience is a cross-disciplinary concept that is relevant for understanding the sustainability of the social and environmental conditions in which we live. Most research normatively focuses on building or strengthening resilience, despite growing recognition of the importance of breaking the resilience of, and thus transforming, unsustainable social-ecological systems. Undesirable resilience (cf. lock-ins, social-ecological traps), however, is not only less explored in the academic literature, but its understanding is also more fragmented across different disciplines. This disparity can inhibit collaboration among researchers exploring interdependent challenges in sustainability sciences. In this article, we propose that the term lock-in may contribute to a common understanding of undesirable resilience across scientific fields. Technical summary Resilience is an extendable concept that bridges the social and life sciences. Studies increasingly interpret resilience normatively as a desirable property of social-ecological systems, despite growing awareness of resilient properties leading to social and ecological degradation, vulnerability or barriers that hinder sustainability transformations (i.e., ‘undesirable’ resilience). This is the first study to qualify, quantify and compare the conceptualization of ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ resilience across academic disciplines. Our literature analysis found that various synonyms are used to denote undesirable resilience (e.g., path dependency, social-ecological traps, institutional inertia). Compared to resilience as a desirable property, research on undesirable resilience is substantially less frequent and scattered across distinct scientific fields. Amongst synonyms for undesirable resilience, the term lock-in is more frequently and evenly used across academic disciplines. We propose that lock-in therefore has the potential to reconcile diverse interpretations of the mechanisms that constrain system transformation – explicitly and coherently addressing characteristics of reversibility and plausibility – and thus enabling integrative understanding of social-ecological system dynamics. Social media summary ‘Lock-in’ as a bridging concept for interdisciplinary understanding of barriers to desirable sustainability transitions.

AB - Non-technical summary Resilience is a cross-disciplinary concept that is relevant for understanding the sustainability of the social and environmental conditions in which we live. Most research normatively focuses on building or strengthening resilience, despite growing recognition of the importance of breaking the resilience of, and thus transforming, unsustainable social-ecological systems. Undesirable resilience (cf. lock-ins, social-ecological traps), however, is not only less explored in the academic literature, but its understanding is also more fragmented across different disciplines. This disparity can inhibit collaboration among researchers exploring interdependent challenges in sustainability sciences. In this article, we propose that the term lock-in may contribute to a common understanding of undesirable resilience across scientific fields. Technical summary Resilience is an extendable concept that bridges the social and life sciences. Studies increasingly interpret resilience normatively as a desirable property of social-ecological systems, despite growing awareness of resilient properties leading to social and ecological degradation, vulnerability or barriers that hinder sustainability transformations (i.e., ‘undesirable’ resilience). This is the first study to qualify, quantify and compare the conceptualization of ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ resilience across academic disciplines. Our literature analysis found that various synonyms are used to denote undesirable resilience (e.g., path dependency, social-ecological traps, institutional inertia). Compared to resilience as a desirable property, research on undesirable resilience is substantially less frequent and scattered across distinct scientific fields. Amongst synonyms for undesirable resilience, the term lock-in is more frequently and evenly used across academic disciplines. We propose that lock-in therefore has the potential to reconcile diverse interpretations of the mechanisms that constrain system transformation – explicitly and coherently addressing characteristics of reversibility and plausibility – and thus enabling integrative understanding of social-ecological system dynamics. Social media summary ‘Lock-in’ as a bridging concept for interdisciplinary understanding of barriers to desirable sustainability transitions.

KW - Lock-in

KW - Regime shifts

KW - Sustainable development

KW - Tipping points

KW - Transformations

KW - Ecosystems Research

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089083707&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/sus.2020.15

DO - 10.1017/sus.2020.15

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85089083707

VL - 3

JO - Global Sustainability

JF - Global Sustainability

SN - 2059-4798

M1 - e20

ER -