Resilience, Adaptive Capacity, and the “Lock-in Trap” of the Western Australian Agricultural Region

By H. Allison, Richard J. Hobbs. 2004

423 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using the Western Australian (WA) agricultural region as an example of a large-scale social-ecological system (SES), this paper applies a framework based on resilience theory to examine the region's resilience and capacity for change and renewal. Despite numerous policies directed at controlling natural resource degradation in this SES, sustainable natural resource management (NRM) has not been achieved. Disparities between the scale and complexity of the problem, the design of management policies, and region's history have all contributed to policy resistance. Historically, when considered as an integrated system, changes may be described by two iterations of the adaptive cycle. These cycles are also synchronous with the third and fourth Kondratiev long-wave economic cycles. The WA agricultural region has experienced sequential periods of growth and accumulation followed by reorganization and renewal, and currently is in the backloop (reorganization to exploitation phases) of the adaptive cycle. A region's adaptive capacity is achieved by substituting direct reliance on regional factors with institutional intervention and sophisticated technology, often generated at the global scale. This substitution alters the thresholds of the commodity system and gives the perception of an adaptive system. In contrast, however, if resource depletion, environmental pollution, and population decline, also effects of the commodity system, are included within the model then the region may be considered to be in a Lock-in pathological trap. We propose that the dynamics of land-use change between 1900-2003 were driven by macroeconomics at the global scale, mediated by institutions at the national and state scale. Also, the SES, which is composed of relatively fast-moving variables, is largely decoupled from the slow-moving ecological variables.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/37fbff74b69054fdf9f538467e0bb800cfdd4c13

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Citations in the corpus

Resilience in ecology: Abstraction, distraction, or where the action is? (2014, background): “described for social-ecological systems (Allison and Hobbs, 2004; Carpenter and Brock, 2008; Cinner, 2011; Enfors and Gordon, 2008), however, less emphasis has been placed on”
Approaches and terminology for causal analysis in land systems science (2016, neutral): “…eventually can be considered as transformative (Gordon Walker, 1937; Wallerstein, 1974).6 Various self-reinforcing sequences occur in SES, including agglomeration economies (Garrett, Lambin, & Naylor, 2013), lock-ins (Allison & Hobbs, 2004), sunk costs effects (Janssen & Scheffer, 2004) and others.”
Community resilience to long-term tourism decline and rejuvenation: a literature review and conceptual model (2016, background): “Furthermore, the model proposed by Allison and Hobbs (2004) presents adaptive capacity as embedded within resilience (Figure 5).”
OCBIL theory: towards an integrated understanding of the evolution, ecology and conservation of biodiversity on old, climatically buffered, infertile landscapes (2009, background): “This occupation seems temporary, however, based on recent episodes of farmers struggling to make ends meet and abandonment of badly degraded and salinised land in favour of urban jobs (Allison and Hobbs 2004).”
Linking local vulnerability to system sustainability in a resilience framework: two cases from Latin America (2009, background): “At both the scale of the individual farmer and at the landscape scale, diversity is recognized as an important element in managing for income risk (Ellis 2000; Chapin et al. 2004; Allison and Hobbs 2005 ; D ercon 1998 ;E akin2006).”
Transformational adaptation: agriculture and climate change (2012, background): “Similarly Handmer and Dovers (1996) stress that ‘change at the margins’ can create a false sense of security and delay needed transformational change and (Davies 2009) argues that perpetuating a state of mere ‘coping’ is no substitute for genuine adaptation.”
Coupled Human and Natural Systems (2007, background): “Changes in natural systems also have increased human vulnerability in many places and constrained options for human livelihoods (87, 88).”
Exploring agency beyond humans: the compatibility of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and resilience thinking (2014, background): “A handful of studies (e.g., Allison and Hobbs 2004, Olsson et al. 2004, Walker et al. 2004) have attempted to resolve the dichotomy between nature and society by proposing the concept of social-ecological systems (SESs).”
Resilience and why it matters for farm management (2014, background): “Such lock-ins can be of various kinds: functional or cognitive, financial or due to the entrenched vested interests (Allison and Hobbs, 2004; Scheffer and Westley, 2007; Schoon et al., 2011).”
Traps and Sustainable Development in Rural Areas: A Review (2018, background): “Trap dynamics are for instance frequently analyzed in sustainability research (Gunderson & Holling, 2002; Allison & Hobbs, 2004; Barrett & Constas, 2014; Carpenter & Brock, 2008; Cumming, 2017; Laborde et al., 2016; Maru et al., 2012), where they are considered an emergent outcome of complex…”
Insight, part of a Special Feature on Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems Shooting the Rapids: Navigating Transitions to Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems (2006, background): “Its hydrology continues to track toward a new equilibrium in which salinity and waterlogging will ultimately have a more severe effect on the community and the regional economy than the initial crisis did (Anderies 2004).”
A review of methods, data, and models to assess changes in the value of ecosystem services from land degradation and restoration (2016, background): “It is evident in many places that agriculture is increasingly becoming locked-in to conventional, high input, intensive management systems through changes to genetics of plants and animals (Allison and Hobbs, 2004; Vanloqueren and Baret, 2009).”