Delivering resilience for people and nature in Anthropocene landscapes

The concept of resilience is widespread in strategies for enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services, but, in practice, resilience means different things in different socio-ecological and policy contexts and to different people. In this perspective, we argue that the current use of the resilience concept fails to recognise this lack of consensus, hiding underlying assumptions and values and missing opportunities to identify strategies with multiple co-benefits. We argue that a new approach is required which directly acknowledges the political and human aspects and allows us to openly address trade-offs and synergies. We suggest ways forward for developing solutions to these issues. We argue that resilience as a concept is most useful when defined explicitly and targeted towards socio-ecological processes, functions and services, rather than specific outcomes based on the identity and composition of species and ecosystems. This shift facilitates inclusive engagement and co-production of conservation aims as well as enabling appropriate monitoring and adaptive management. Clarity of targets and aims is also needed so as to maximise positive synergies and minimise negative trade-offs between different ecological outcomes and between socio-ecological and policy aims. This clarity is required to identify pathways that will deliver the greatest co-benefits for nature and people. We discuss with examples the different dimensions in which trade-offs and synergies can emerge. Efforts to improve resilience in Anthropocene landscapes must also recognise that the future will not resemble the present or the past, requiring new measures and evaluation of success, rather than comparisons to past ecological states which may not be appropriate in a rapidly changing world. Identifying pathways to improved resilience requires a transparent, science-informed and participatory process, which specifies why a particular version of resilience is being pursued, clearly defines the intended outcomes and monitors progress towards these goals. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.