Adaptive Capacity and Traps

By Stephen R. Carpenter, William A. Brock. 2008

424 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Adaptive capacity is the ability of a living system, such as a social-ecological system, to adjust responses to changing internal demands and external drivers. Although adaptive capacity is a frequent topic of study in the resilience literature, there are few formal models. This paper introduces such a model and uses it to explore adaptive capacity by contrast with the opposite condition, or traps. In a social- ecological rigidity trap, strong self-reinforcing controls prevent the flexibility needed for adaptation. In the model, too much control erodes adaptive capacity and thereby increases the risk of catastrophic breakdown. In a social-ecological poverty trap, loose connections prevent the mobilization of ideas and resources to solve problems. In the model, too little control impedes the focus needed for adaptation. Fluctuations of internal demand or external shocks generate pulses of adaptive capacity, which may gain traction and pull the system out of the poverty trap. The model suggests some general properties of traps in social-ecological systems. It is general and flexible, so it can be used as a building block in more specific and detailed models of adaptive capacity for a particular region.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/49f62fff7c53d3cce16e8b3f7c7021fc8aab4724

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In Environmental Engineering

In Global and Planetary Change

In Management Science and Operations Research

Citations in the corpus

Traps and Sustainable Development in Rural Areas: A Review (2018, background): “…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…”
Navigating the Back Loop: Fostering Social Innovation and Transformation in Ecosystem Management (2010, background): “A “rigidity trap” (stuck in the K-phase) results from resistance to the adoption of new innovations because of, for example, large, rigid bureaucracies or powerful groups with vested interests (Miller 1993, Holling et al. 2002, Carpenter and Brock 2008).”
Small islands, valuable insights: systems of customary resource use and resilience to climate change in the Pacific (2014, background): “Resilience is “the capacity to absorb shocks and maintain function, self-organize and learn and adapt” (Carpenter and Brock 2008), and resilience to disturbance requires institutional capacity to respond to environmental feedback, to learn and store information, and to be prepared to adapt to…”
Deliberate introduction of invisible invaders: A critical appraisal of the impact of microbial inoculants on soil microbial communities (2020, background): “Given the paucity of current information, further studies need to consider the long-term assessment of community resilience, next to the impact of recurrent application of microbial inoculants, specifically whether the soil microbiome (i) retains function and structure regardless the amount of inocu”
The importance of social drivers in the resilient provision of ecosystem services (2011, background): “However, deficits in democratic processes hinder local mobilization of institutional resources to monitor and respond to negative externalities that these efforts may produce (Carpenter and Brock, 2008).”
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”
On the notion of regional economic resilience: conceptualization and explanation (2015, background): “…are released and the system may then either reorganize itself and develop afresh on a new cycle of development, or become maladapted in some sense (Carpenter and Brock, 2008; for an elaboration of this model for spatial business clusters, see Martin and Sunley, 2011). growth as driven by the life…”