Stockholm Resilience Centre
Encyclopedia
| Established: | 1 January 2007 |
|---|---|
| Address: | Stockholm Resilience Centre Stockholm University Stockholm University Stockholm University is a state university in Stockholm, Sweden. It has over 28,000 students at four faculties, making it one of the largest universities in Scandinavia. The institution is also frequently regarded as one of the top 100 universities in the world... SE-106 91 Stockholm Stockholm Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area... |
| Website: | http://www.stockholmresilience.org/ |
| Executive director: | Johan Rockström Johan Rockström Johan Rockström is executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and teaches natural resource management at Stockholm University... |
| Scientific director: | Carl Folke |
The Stockholm Resilience Centre is an international research centre at Stockholm University
Stockholm University
Stockholm University is a state university in Stockholm, Sweden. It has over 28,000 students at four faculties, making it one of the largest universities in Scandinavia. The institution is also frequently regarded as one of the top 100 universities in the world...
that focuses on the resilience
Resilience
Resilience is the property of a material to absorb energy when it is deformed elastically and then, upon unloading to have this energy recovered. In other words, it is the maximum energy per unit volume that can be elastically stored...
of social-ecological systems.
The centre is a transdisciplinary initiative between Stockholm University, the Stockholm Environment Institute
Stockholm Environment Institute
The Stockholm Environment Institute, or SEI, is a non-profit, independent research and policy institute specialising in sustainable development and environmental issues.-Mission:...
and the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
. It also offers two Masters programmes and has its own Resilience school which is a collaboration between the centre and several departments at Stockholm University. The Baltic Nest Institute (BNI) and the environmental communications NGO, Albaeco, is also located at the centre.
Stockholm Resilience Centre organizes its work around 10 research themes:
- Adaptive governance studies how the different aspects of multilevel governance provide resilience against global challenges.
- Governance of marine systems aims to secure the oceans' ability to continue to provide ecosystem servicesEcosystem servicesHumankind benefits from a multitude of resources and processes that are supplied by natural ecosystems. Collectively, these benefits are known as ecosystem services and include products like clean drinking water and processes such as the decomposition of wastes...
. - Governing freshwater works on ways to better manage green water and blue waterBlue WaterBlue Water was the Rainbow Code name for a British battlefield nuclear missile of the early 1960s. Despite its good performance and receiving wide praise, it is best known for having been cancelled for financial reasons.- Origins :...
flows. - Knowledge and social networks studies how various social-ecological structures affect the sustainable management of ecosystem services.
- Multilevel institutions studies how improved governance can help reduce loss of ecosystem services.
- Regime shifts focuses on sudden often dramatic changes in social-ecological systems and the reorganization afterwards.
- The new economics develops ways to better capture the value interdependent social-ecological systems into current macroeconomic indicators.
- Understanding ecosystem processes studies the dynamics of terrestrial and marine ecosystems in order to improve the management of them.
- Urban social-ecological systems studies the challenges posed by urbanization and the transformation of rural, peri-urban and urban landscapes.
- Global environmental change analyzes the behaviour of global-scale, coupled natural-social systems.
Social-ecological resilience
Social-ecological resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to cope with perturbations such as climate change or economic shocks and to rebuild and continue to develop itself. Loss of ecosystemEcosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
resilience can lead to the consequent loss of valuable ecosystem services, which in turn may lead to rapid and dramatic transitions or shifts in for instance people, ecosystems, knowledge systems, or whole cultures.
The resilience approach is closely linked to the aspect of change, be it gradual or sudden. When change is gradual, things move forward in a more continuous and predictable way. When change is sudden, it is simultaneously disorganizing and turbulent, something which is reflected in for instance climate impacts. There is evidence (what evidence?) that periods of abrupt change are likely to increase in frequency and magnitude which in turn challenges the adaptive capacity of societies.