Buzz Holling, the father of resilience science and the founder of the Resilience Alliance (and contributor to this blog) has won the 2008 Volvo Environment Prize. Congratulations Buzz!
On the Prize website they write the justification for the award:
“The Volvo Environment Foundation takes great pleasure in awarding its 2008 environment prize to Crawford “Buzz” Holling, one of ecology’s great integrative thinkers for his pioneering lifetime work on ecosystem dynamics, transformation and resilience, and adaptive management.
Crawford “Buzz” Holling is one of the most creative and influential ecologists of our times. His integrative thinking has shed new light on the growth, collapse, and regeneration of coupled human-ecological systems. Current discussions and debates over non-linear systems, adaptation and change, thresholds, tipping points, and resilience are all part of his rich legacy of writing. His analyses have ranged boldly across scales of time and space. His 1973 paper on the “resilience of non-linear ecological systems” reshaped profoundly thinking on the dynamics and transformation of ecological systems. His 1978 volume on Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management remains the classic work on this important subject 30 years later. Not content with new theoretical insights into the stability and change of human-ecological systems, Holling has profoundly critiqued what he describes as “the pathology of natural resource management,” detailing how things go right and wrong in well-intentioned efforts at resource management. His recent work with Lance Gunderson, Panarchy: Understanding Transformation in Human and Natural Systems, is no less than a far-ranging exploration of fundamental principles of resilience thinking. The newly created Stockholm Resilience Center is itself a highly promising venture built on Holling’s legacy.”
From Louise Hård af Segerstad of Alabeco in Sustainable Development Update (2/2008), Three questions and three answers from Buzz Holling:
How would you explain resilience to a ten-year-old?
If I was a ten year old I would understand resilience more than if I was a 50 year old.
Continue reading ‘3 questions for Buzz Holling’
The Stockholm Resilience Centre has released two press releases on the conclusion of Resilience 2008.
The first Novelty thinking key to sustainable development reports on the concluding panel of the conference in which Elinor Ostrom, Sverker Sörlin, Carole Crumley, Line Gordon and Buzz Holling reflected on the conference, lessons from the past and the answers for the future.
Buzz Holling, considered the father of resilience thinking, called for freedom and flexibility in order to generate multilevel change and novelty thinking. This is needed in a time when several crises are emerging, he said.
- This year a cluster of predicted crises have become aware to the public, such as the rise of food prices due to energy market changes and the collapse of the financial market. We see that small instabilities and risks spread to practically all developed countries in the world. However, globalisation also adds a great positive value because the individual or small groups can have an increasingly global effect, Holling said.
Resilience as an continuance of sustainability thinking
Sverker Sörlin and Carole Crumley both argued that we have moved beyond traditional discussions around sustainability and that resilience thinking is increasingly being embraced as an integrated part of sustainable development thinking.
- Resilience thinking will not replace the sustainability discourse, but we can use resilience to develop sustainability further, Sörlin said. He was followed up by Line Gordon who noted that the key approach with resilience thinking is that although we might have solutions for sustainable development, we will face challenges and we must be prepared for surprises.
Continue reading ‘Novelty Needed for Sustainable Development - Resilience 2008′
The Stockholm Resilience Centre has an online picture gallery from Resilience 2008.
Buzz Holling, considered the father of resilience thinking, took the audience on a journey through his 50 year long environmental research. Photo: J. Lokrantz/Azote.
Buzz Holling, recently gave a talk at the Stockholm Resilience Centre where he reflected on his career and how he has developing ideas in science and policy.
He discussed his early work on predation, his original 1973 resilience paper, adaptive management, the adaptive cycle, and Panarchy, as well as the insights, barriers, and opportunities that were part of his research process.
The Centre has put the talk online as a video seminar (Windows Media Player Time: 01:05:10).