Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. In this paper, originally published in Ecology and Society, authors Emma Tompkins argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. The authors review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. They demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago.

US Northeast Megacity population map displayed by census block data.

New York Times interactive Map of Hurricane Irene's path (Click on image)

NOTE: as of Saturday afternoon, state and utility reports from North Carolina and Virgina report 1 million power customers were without electricity.

Europe and Eurasia: The 25th Anniversary of Chornobyl
Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:47:37 -0500 

http://www.propublica.org/article/us-health-care-system-unprepared-for-major-nuclear-emergency