Social-ecological Resilience assessment tools in support of development projects in the Global South

Resilience refers to a systems’ capacity to withstand -and even thrive under- changing circumstances. Resilience can be applied to ecosystems, to communities or to people, and the concept is becoming increasingly important now that the effects of global environmental change are becoming tangible. Within this study, we aim to identify social-ecological resilience assessment tools which can then be applied on development projects and sites in the Global South. The diversity of resilience assessment tools requires a systematic and informed selection, in order to ensure that prospective tool users select the most adequate tool, aligned to their needs and context. For example, communities interact with ecosystems at different spatial and temporal scales, requiring the tool to be able to capture these processes without becoming too complex to apply in a development context. Furthermore, real-life application of such tools will allow us to generate context-specific resilience knowledge, and will allow us to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of such tools. This study will combine a desk review of resilience assessment tools with the field-based application of a selected tool in a project run by one of the organizations of the SECORES (Resilient Ecosystems) consortium, managed by CEBIOS (at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences) and the NGO 'Join for Water'.

Supervision: Jean Hugé (Open Universiteit & Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Anne-Julie Rochette (CEBIOS-RBINS), Kim Vercruysse (Join for Water).

Contact: Dr. ir. Jean Hugé