The preservation of the
essential services provided by Australia’s hugely diverse ecosystems has been a
major focus of the Australia21 Board since 2002. Over recent years the
Australia21 ecosystems team has put its efforts into promoting the development
of a National Ecosystem Service Strategy (NESS) and a National Ecosystem
Services Network (NESN). This work is led by Australia21 Director, Geoff
Gorrie. The team includes Australia21 Fellows Professor Mike Archer and Dr
Steven Cork, Australia21 Scholars Peter Ampt, Phillipa Rowland and Simone
Maynard, Dr Jeremy Thompson, Dr Allan Dale and another of our Directors,
Professor Bob Douglas.
Evidence of the diminishing
health of Australian ecosystems is unfortunately not hard to find, with decline
in soil fertility, fisheries stocks, water quality and quantity and loss of
carbon sinks that help local/regional climate regulation. There is both
national and global urgency about the need for a coherent strategy to preserve
ecosystems and the services they provide to humans.
Great potential can be
generated by fostering enthusiasm and passion from innovators and bringing them
together in a flexible network that brings together the interests, skills and
capacities of Federal and State Governments, the private sector, research
communities, local regional bodies and civil society. An approach that
encourages collaboration and builds on existing activity, while creating
opportunities for a broad consistent approach to the national valuation of the
essential suite of services could, Australia 21 believes, contribute
substantially to the solution of many natural resource issues including
biodiversity conservation, bio-sequestration of carbon and indigenous
employment.
In its preliminary proposal
for a NESN, the Australia21 Ecosystems team is suggesting that NESN members
would have the responsibility for overseeing the data needs, the research
activity, and the development of a framework for a coordinated regional
approach to the assessment and management of ecosystem services across the
nation. Australia 21 is currently seeking support from funding agents, to
undertake discussions and a roundtable with the many stakeholders who would be
needed to make the national strategy operational.
This post written by Richard Eckersley, posted by Paul Barratt
Putting expired patents to work in novel ways – Australia to lead on new innovation models
Ross Garnaut, head of the Garnaut Climate Change Review, recently noted that successful Australian innovation effort will encourage the effective and early use of technologies developed in other countries, as well as the discovery and application in Australia of globally new technologies.
But beyond new technologies, a wider “innovation literacy” view, including use of existing or expired patents, provides for a more comprehensive picture of the drivers of the rate and direction of innovation, and of the impediments that can prevent successful innovation.
Such an approach has been developed by David E. Martin, an intellectual property activist based in the US, who works with many developing countries. David argues that a great many green technologies are already in the public domain and are ready to be developed. They just need to be identified and put to use.
Dr Martin is founder of the Global Innovation Commons (GIC) - a massive interactive archive of energy-saving technologies whose patents have expired, been abandoned, or simply have no protection.
The GIC encourages entrepreneurs and national governments to query the database on a country-by-country basis to identify helpful technologies that are in the public domain. Once identified, these technologies for energy, water, and agriculture are prime candidates for being developed at lower costs than patented technologies.
The World Bank is a partner on this project, along with the International Finance Corporation's infoDev unit. The World Bank has estimated that the technologies in the GIC database could save more than $2 trillion in potential license fees.
The Global Innovation Commons essentially seeks to bring the advantages of the open-source software development model — open participation, faster innovation, greater reliability, cheaper costs — to technologies that are claimed to be patented.
In the Global Innovation Commons, hundreds of thousands of innovations have been assembled, which are either expired, no longer maintained (meaning that the fees to keep the patents in force have lapsed), disallowed, or unprotected in most, if not all, relevant markets.
This means that, as of right now, steps can be taken into a world full of possibilities, not road blocks. Whether it’s clean water for China or Sudan, or carbon-free energy — it’s likely to be in the GIC.
Martin argues that patents often serve to impede innovative technologies and make them unaffordable — at precisely the time when all countries of the world, rich and poor, need to adopt cutting-edge energy technologies to cut carbon emissions.
In touting "open innovation," Martin takes the tradition of free software and digital commons to exciting new frontiers. The Global Innovation Commons promises to spur a strong new wave of technological innovation through the sharing of new ideas rather than through exclusive, private control of them. As Martin puts it, "What we do is trawl documents for their true meaning. But what we care about are basic human issues. In this case, it's to show what belongs to the big guys and what belongs to society."
Which brings us to the real challenge and opportunity offered by climate change – that of the chance for Australia to evolve as a global leader in resource and energy innovation that benefits the whole society and not just a few large corporations. New energy technologies will play a substantial role in both the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change.
The urgency of the adjustment task shouldn’t be underestimated, and the change in incentives derived from carbon pricing can justify a large transitional increase in public support for innovation related to low-emissions technologies.
Fresh thinking, new business models, wiser leadership and continuous strategic innovation, are needed if Australia isto design and enact a low-carbon, steady state economy. The end point is not to undo industry but, on the contrary, to reinvent it as a viable force for sustainable living that comprises efficient practices and zero waste.
Clean-tech industries are a target for development under China’s next five year plan, and provide a major opportunity for Australia to leverage its expertise in green technology. China’s green energy market is estimated by investment funds such as Peony Capital, to be around $1 trillion.
Creating and developing global alliances in low-tech will not only assist Australia in improving its innovation performance; it will position Australia to reduce emissions for the larger polluters, such as China and India.
The implications for Australia of this new approach to innovation are clear:
- In every key environmental technology sector more patents are abandoned andexpire into the public domain than from all currently enforced commercial platforms. The solutions foreverything from distributedpower, to fuel cells, to intelligentbatteries, to wind, solar, waterenergy and purification, hydrogenfuel, and much more are availablein the Open Source commons
- Most of what we call invention and innovation is nothing of the kind. Most of it is incremental and serves only our current addiction to unsustainable growth
- The majority of innovations today arise not from individual genius, but from networks. It is the fusion of contributors to these networks, linked to markets, which is the core of enterprise creation
- Networked, open-source, innovation provides broad social and cultural benefits rather than just short-term unsustainable growth at any cost
- Australia is well-placed to review government policies in order to liberate and recycle innovation. In doing so it could lead the world in developing a new innovation literacy - applying it directly to reconstruction following natural disasters.
David Martin, a partner in The Constellation, is speaking at an Australia21 national conference Innovation – DrivingResilient Energy and Economic Futures on Thursday 14 April 2011 at The Australian National University.
Hear an introductory video of Dr David Martin speaking about the Global Innovation Commons here.
Find further details and register for the Australia21 Conference Innovation – Driving Resilient Energy and Economic Futures, Australian National University, Thursday 14 April 2011, here.
Dr David Martin, Founder, Global Innovation Commons, USA will be presenting in person, along with John Hewson, Richard Hames, David Miles, Andrew Lawson, Will Steffen, Anna Skarbek, John White, Anthony Bergin, Tony Coleman, and others who will focus on the prosperity opportunities that climate change can bring to Australia.
Innovation – Driving Resilient Energy and EconomicFutures a one-day conference will take place Thursday 14 April 2011 at ANU.Further details here.
Following is the text of a media release issued by Australia 21 on Saturday 12 March.
Billions of dollars at risk by not having a resilience framework
The recent Queensland floods and the terrible Japanese earthquake illustrate how major environmental disturbances can throw lives, infrastructure, and governments into chaos. How they recover is a sign of their resilience.
‘One thing we know’, says Prof Richard Hames, the newly appointed President of Australia21, ‘is that the future will surprise us. We don’t know how, or where or when.’
Pressure is mounting from the impacts of environmental and community upheaval from environmental turbulence. ‘We don’t have to wait doing nothing until the next disaster strikes that would be foolish’.
‘A resilience framework will allow for a more considered approach to dealing with these issues,’ Prof Hames stressed.
There is an urgent need at federal, state, and local levels for a resilience policy framework to target investment for both human capital and infrastructure so as to optimise the recovery of communities and local economies.
There is a serious danger of undermining resilience by going back to the way we were and not proactively addressing resilience issues.
Prof Hames said we must ask the question how the Senate can pass the flood levy without a resilience framework.
Consideration of resilience and complex systems dynamics will increase our opportunities of finding durable solutions to natural disasters.
Building a more resilient nation will require developing resilience tools, such as strength and speed of feedback mechanisms, diversity of ideas and resources, and a strong capacity for self-organising.
Australia21 is hosting a national conference examining energy and economic futures through a resilience and innovation lens. The conference discussion will help shape the way we as a nation prepare for a climate change future.
Following on from its highly successful National Conference on Resilience in February last year, Australia21 will be convening another national conference at the Australian National University on 14 April, on the theme Innovation: Driving Resilient Energy and Economic Futures.
We have an outstanding speakers list – full details below. We hope we will see you there.
To register, visit our website here and click the registration button. There is a student concession, and an early bird discount for registrations received by 28 February.
INNOVATION – DRIVING RESILIENT ENERGY AND ECONOMIC FUTURES
14 APRIL 2011, ANU
‘At the centre of this Government’s approach to climate change is economic reform’
‘Innovation is critical to our economic competitiveness’
The Hon Greg Combet, MP Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Nov 2010
Session One - 9.00-10.30am
Welcome Paul Barratt AO, Director, Australia21
Chair – Molly Harriss Olson NBLF
Dr David Martin, CEO, Founder and Chairman, M·CAM, Inc. (via Skype)
Topic - Intergenerational equity and Global Innovation Commons
Speaker – Anna Skarbek, Executive Director, Climateworks Australia
Topic – Curbing Climate Change and Sustaining Economic Growth
Speaker - Prof Richard Hames, Chair, Australia21
Topic – Innovation– a networked phenomenon
Session Two 11.00-12.30
Chair – Dr John Hewson,Chairman, Global DC
Panel Session – Policy and Market Incentives & Impediments to innovation and commercialisation in energy businesses
Brendan Dow - Ceramic Fuel Cells (tbc)
Andrew Lawson- mbdEnergy (Biofuels)
Paul Verschuer – Carbon Markets, Westpac
Dr James Bradfield Moodie – CSIRO (invited)
Session Three – 1.30-3.00pm
Prof Mandy Thomas – PVC (Research) ANU
Topic - Innovation in carbon capture
Speaker: Dr John White
Topic – Community Engagement on Climate Change
Speaker- Prof Graeme Pearman
Topic – Investing in innovation for low-carbon technologies
Speaker - David Miles, CEO, Innovation Australia
Session Four – 4.00pm- 5-00pm
Chair – Prof Bob Douglas, Director, Australia21
Topic - Implementing sustainable and inclusive solutions to climate change
Speaker - Prof Will Steffen, ANU
Topic – Communicating the policy impacts of climate change – recent insights
Australia 21 mourns the loss of one of its foundation directors, Michael Ward, who died in a hospice in Sydney in the early hours of New Year’s Day after a six year battle with cancer.
Our feelings are best expressed in a message our Chairman, Bob Douglas sent yesterday to Directors past and present, to our research leaders and all the Australia 21 family:
Dear Australia 21 "Family"
I am saddened to pass on the enclosed report of the death of Michael Ward at 3:20 AM this morning. Michael was one of the six founding directors of Australia 21 in 2001. He has fought an amazingly determined fight against tonsil cancer for the past six years.
Michael's contribution to Australia 21's development was immense. Always a provocative and at the same time, a constructive thinker, he brought to the discussions on the board a freshness and amazingly diverse experience from a career in public health, the Republican movement, IT administration and CEO of an Eco-consulting firm.
Michael's determined battle with cancer was the subject of a series of newsletters which he shared with his many friends, first entitled "the tumour times" and subsequently, "sacred times".
In recognition of his stunning personal resilience, Australia 21 joined forces with The Menzies Institute at The University of Sydney during 2009 to hold the Michael Ward symposium on Health and Resilience.
We express our deep sympathy to Michael's two children, Irene and Max and to his close family who have provided heartwarming support during his nightmare illness.
We have lost a dear friend and colleague.
Bob Douglas
Board Chair
In spite of his great ordeal, Michael made the most of the hand that fate had dealt him. He received visits from family and friends right up to the end, saw out the fireworks on New Year’s Eve, wished the staff who were looking after him so well a happy new year, and a few hours later passed away peacefully in his room.
We shall continue to miss him, his ever cheerful countenance, and his wise counsel.
Resilience & Transformation: Preparing Australia for Uncertain Futures is a new Australia21 book published by CSIRO, which provides key trends and actions related to resilience in areas such as Organisations and Economics; Governance and Security; Energy and Settlements; Health and Education; Environment and Society; and Disaster Preparedness and Recovery.
Australia21 is holding a forum on Thursday 28 October 2010 to examine the important implementation aspects of resilience theory. It will be held in the Weston Theatre, Crawford School of Economics, ANU between 2.30pm-5.00pm. Registration cost of $80.00 includes a free copy of the 205 page book. A reception and book launch will take place immediately after the forum. The book will be launched by The Hon Mark Dreyfus QC, Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Registration and forum program at: http://www.australia21.org.au/resilience_forum.htm
Later this month CSIRO Publishing will release Resilience and Transformation: Preparing Australia for Uncertain Futures, edited for Australia21 by Australia21 Fellow Dr Stephen Cork.
Resilience and Transformation explores what factors contribute to Australia’s resilience, what trends are apparent, and what actions are required to better prepare us for the immediate and longer term future.
Resilience is a word used more and more across societies worldwide as decision makers realise that predicting and controlling the future does not work and that preparing for uncertainty and surprise is vital. Many viewpoints have emerged on how to assess and achieve resilience of individuals, organisations, communities and ecosystems, but rarely has the resilience of a nation been considered. As Australia moves into a millennium that promises major economic, social, technological and environmental change, Australia21 has assembled some of Australia’s leading thinkers to give their perspectives on the extent and direction of resilience across our nation’s social, economic, ecological and disaster management systems.
Full information about this publication may be found, and orders placed, on the CSIRO Publishing website here. It is a 216 page paperback, priced at $39.95.
One of the highlights of Australia 21’s National Conference on Resilience was an entertaining and thought provoking address by our after-dinner speaker Robyn Archer AO, who in 2009 was appointed the Creative Director for the Centenary of Canberra in 2013.
She spoke about the application of resilience thinking in her field of expertise, the arts – what resilience means in the life of an individual artist, how to ensure the resilience of the arts, and what the arts and the creativity of society contribute to the resilience of the society itself.
On 12 August 2009 the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Australia 21 held a symposium at the University of Sydney to honour Michael Ward, a Founding Director of Australia 21 and a Board Member and Associate of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy. Michael’s personal resilience in the face of enormous health adversity has been an inspiration to his many friends and colleagues. Speakers:
- Dr Brian Walker, Chair of the (International) Resilience Alliance, and Director, Australia 21
- Teresa Burgess, Manager, Australia 21 Project on Resilience in Early Childcare Systems
- Emeritus Professor Bob Douglas AO, Board Chair, Australia 21 and Leader of A21 Project on Resilience of Health and Education Systems
- Professor Stephen Leeder AO, Director, Menzies Centre for Health Policy
In National Conference on Resilience I reported that Australia 21 had convened its first national conference, on the subject of resilience and its applicability to complex systems beyond the world of social-ecological systems.
“Resilience” is a term that is on many policy makers’ lips these days, but if it is to have policy relevance it is important that it be defined rigorously, and its consequences, usefulness and limitations derived with equal rigour, so that what we learn in one knowledge domain can be transferred with due care to others.
Australia 21 is fortunate that one of its directors, Dr Brian Walker, is a world authority on resilience. Dr Walker is a Research Scientist with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. He is the Board Chair of the Global Resilience Alliance. In 2003 he was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal for service to Australian Society in Ecology. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. He was formerly Chief of CSIRO Wildlife Ecology.
Dr Walker staked out the ground for our conference with a paper entitled Resilience in Perspective, the text of which is reproduced below. The paper may be downloaded as a PDF file from here, and the PowerPoint slides which accompanied the presentation may be downloaded from here.
Resilience in Perspective – Dr Brian Walker
“Resilience” is gaining increasing attention, not just in science but in policy development and amongst practitioners, in all sectors. This rise in interest is not really surprising. It’s a response to an increasing uneasiness about potential looming shocks that would sorely test the coping capacities of nations and of the world. Economic uncertainty, climate change, new pandemics, fanatical terrorism, food shortages and food riots, water ‘wars’ and other serious worries are converging in a way that evokes the feeling Winston Churchill described in the build up to the Second World War as “the gathering storm”. The spectre of being hit by a serious ‘whammy’, and perhaps double or triple whammies, has raised the notion of resilience high on the agendas of many governments, corporations and organisations.
All of these concerns involve the behaviour of dynamic systems; systems that are always changing, sometimes in surprising and unpredictable ways. Ecosystems, organisations, farming regions, countries, people – all of them are complex adaptive systems, which means they are self-organising systems. Change some part of any one of these systems and they respond by initiating changes in other parts, and for most of the time this self-organising, self-regulating behaviour allows the system to keep functioning in the same kind of way. But there are limits to this; limits to how much the system can be changed and cope through self-organising processes. A change beyond those limits causes a change in one or more of the feedback processes that control the system’s dynamics, and the changed feedbacks result in a change in the way the system functions. It then changes towards a
different structure.
The application of resilience ideas in science and society has four main origins – engineering, ecological/biological, psychosocial and defence/security – with organisational resilience appearing more recently. The literature is large and overlaps with that on robustness (see for example Jen 2005). I will not go into it here except to say that some of the differences are important in regard to how useful the concept is - in particular, the difference between the engineering use and the others. Engineering use focuses on a designed amount of resilience, while in ecological, psychosocial, organisational and defence use what is important is how resilience can change, how it can be gained or lost.
This is what resilience is essentially about – the amount of change, or disturbance, a system can undergo without changing to a different way of functioning, a different structure. A definition developed for social-ecological systems, but used more widely for other kinds of systems, is “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and to reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks” (Walker et al 2004). As resilience declines it takes a progressively smaller size of shock to push the system across a threshold. This is the emphasis I am adopting because it’s the one we need to focus on in applying resilience to policy and management, and it constitutes the first of the characteristic features of resilience that need to be understood and included in program that adopts a resilience approach.
Five characteristic features of complex systems that need to be considered in developing a resilience approach to policy and management
1. Maintaining resilience requires continual change. Keeping things constant reduces resilience. A common objective of policies aimed at optimizing some particular product or outcome is to identify an ‘optimal’ state of the system, and then to somehow try and keep it in that particular state. In fact, keeping a system in one particular state leads to self-organised changes that make the system less and less resilient. As an example, preventing fire in a forest in an attempt to keep it in its present state eventually leads to the loss of those species that are able to withstand fire. They are out-competed by species that do not have to channel resources into attributes like thick bark, resistant cell structures and dormant stem buds that enable them to resist or recover from fire. The longer fire is prevented, the more vulnerable the forest becomes to fire. To keep a forest resilient to fire it is necessary to periodically burn it. Immune systems of children protected from contact with dirt do not develop the capacity to cope with it, resulting in later allergies. Maintaining resilience requires probing its boundaries.
1a. A corollary of the above is that resilient systems evolve through time. The self-organised evolutionary change in response to changes in the environment (natural and social) is part of being resilient. The point to make is that resilience does not mean no change. All systems have to change in order to adapt to changing environments.
2. Resilience is maintained by having a high response diversity.
This means having different ways of performing the same function, each with different capabilities of responding to shocks and disturbances. Pursuing efficiency, narrowly defined, removes apparent redundancies that later can turn out to have been response diversity.
3. Cross-scale and cross-domain interactions.
You cannot understand or manage the resilience of a system by focusing at only the scale of interest. You need to consider, at least, one scale above and the embedded scale below. This is the basis of the concept of ‘panarchy’ (Gunderson and Holling 2002). Increasing resilience at one scale can reduce resilience at other scales. A common example of this is pushing problems up-scale (through seeking short term solutions). The Australian ‘wool mountain’ and the European ‘butter mountain’ and ‘milk lakes’ were a consequence of efforts to make individual farmers resilient to fluctuating market prices, leading to loss of resilience in the industries concerned.
The ecological, social and economic domains in linked social-ecological systems tend to have multiple, interacting thresholds. If one is crossed it can cause either an increase or decrease in the likelihood of others being crossed, leading to a cascading effect.
4. General and specified resilience.
There is a danger in focusing too much on known or suspected thresholds. If all the attention and resources of management are channelled into managing for the identified (specified) resilience and associated thresholds, it may inadvertently reduce resilience in other ways. There is therefore a need to consider both general and specified resilience. General resilience involves such things as diversity (natural and social), tightness of feedbacks and modularity. While it is reasonably straightforward to estimate the costs of maintaining general resilience (some form of foregone extra yield or profit that it entails), it is much harder to estimate the costs of not maintaining it (since it is unspecified).
5. Resilience vs. (and) transformation
Resilience, per se, is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Undesirable states of systems can be very resilient (woody weeds, dictatorships, poverty traps, saline landscapes). Also, a system state that once was considered to be a ‘desired’ state can become ‘undesirable’ through changes in external conditions. Where the current state of a system is considered ‘desirable’, and it is possible to avoid crossing a threshold into an alternate, undesirable state, building resilience is the appropriate action. But where crossing such a threshold is unavoidable, or has already happened, then efforts to build the resilience of that state only amount to digging the hole deeper. The need in such circumstances is reduce the resilience of the existing state of the system in order to allow transformation into a different kind of system, defined by a different set of variables and a different way of functioning – a different way of making a living.
Both resilience and transformability are necessary, and given the looming pressures and changes facing the world and individual nations, the question policy makers and planners will increasingly have to face is: “which parts of our (locality, region, country) need enhanced resilience in order to ensure that their present states can continue, and which parts need to be transformed?”
Changes in resilience through time – adaptive cycles.
Societies, ecosystems, organizations - most complex systems - tend to exhibit relatively long periods of fairly predictable change from a phase of rapid growth with high resilience through maturation into a highly inter-connected conservation phase with much increased complexity and little resilience. They become accidents waiting to happen. These long periods are interspersed with short, chaotic periods of release and re-organisation (Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ episodes in economic systems). They are quickly followed by a new growth phase of another adaptive cycle.
Planners and managers largely base their actions on the predominant cumulative phases, yet it is the short, chaotic periods when big change is possible that allow for changes in system directions. Embracing uncertainty and surprise, using crises as opportunities, and even generating a ‘planned’ crisis, are crucial aspects of a resilience approach to planning and management. The phase a system is in determines what kind of policy or management intervention is most appropriate.
A concluding comment and a question
1. Adopting a resilience approach sometimes comes into conflict with current policy doctrines. “Efficiency” is one. But it isn’t efficiency per se; the problem is narrowly defined economic efficiency, calling for removal of so-called redundancies that are in fact sources of resilience. Another conflict that I am encountering is the requirement for precisely defined targets. The need for better accounting of how money is spent on government (and other) programs, coupled with the general increased emphasis on compliance and increased risk aversion, has given rise to what is now virtually a mantra about defined targets and audited progress towards them (“on track, on target, on budget”). Yet, I would submit that instead of asking for evidence that the defined targets are on track in a cost-effective way, a more resilience kind of question might perhaps be: “Have you changed your targets in the past year; and if not, why not?”
Resilience is about adaptive management and, even more importantly, adaptive governance. This puts an emphasis on reviewing and adapting the understanding of the system, and therefore the appropriateness of goals and targets and the rules for use and management. It embraces uncertainty and rather than trying to pick precise targets in an uncertain, changing, and not-very-well-understood world, it is more about deciding where not to go, and allowing the system to self-organise within a range of acceptable trajectories. The challenge to the world of planners and auditors is how to match two, equally legitimate needs: the need for accountability, and the need for the adaptability required to navigate the inherent messiness that keeps the world resilient.
2. The question I posed earlier will, I believe, increasingly confront people in planning and policy development, at all scales: “Where do we need to build resilience, and where do we need transformational change?”
REFERENCES
Gunderson, L. H., and C. S. Holling (eds). 2002. Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, D.C., USA.
Jen, E (ed.). 2005. Robust design: A repertoire of biological, ecological, and engineering case studies. Oxford University Press, N.Y., 295pp.
Walker, B.H., Holling, C.S., Carpenter, S.R. and Kinzig, A. 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society: 9(2): 3. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9.iss2/art5
On 18-19 February 2010 Australia 21 convened its first national conference, at the Australian National University in Canberra.
The title of the conference was Shaping Australia’s Resilience: Policy development for uncertain futures. It was, as its title suggests, an exercise in exploring the applicability of a disciplined concept of “resilience”, a concept which emerges from the study of natural ecosystems, to other policy domains that deal with complex systems.
The core concept of resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same structure, function, identity and feedbacks. In other words, how much of a shock can the system absorb and continue to perform its characteristic functions.
We were fortunate to attract the participation of an impressive list of high level speakers. The presentations may be accessed by visiting the Australia 21 website here.
Our thanks are due to the Australian National University, mecu credit union and the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department for their support in convening this conference.
