Towards a bridging concept for undesirable resilience in social-ecological systems

• DOI: 10.1017/sus.2020.15
• Publication Date: 2020-07-21T05:05:40Z
• Authors: André Z. Dornelles; Emily Boyd; Richard J. Nunes; Mike Asquith; Wiebren J. Boonstra; Izabela Delabre; J. Michael Denney; Volker Grimm; Anke Jentsch; Kimberly A. Nicholas; Matthias Schröter; Ralf Seppelt; Josef Settele; Nancy Shackelford; Rachel J. Standish; Genesis Tambang Y...; Tom H. Oliver
• Keywords: Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified; regime shifts; sustainable development; Peace and Conflict Studies; Freds- och konfliktforskning; Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap; Miljövetenskap; transformations; 01 natural sciences; 12. Responsible consumption; Environmental sciences; tipping points; 11. Sustainability; GE1-350; Social Sciences Interdisciplinary; Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap; Environmental Sciences; lock-in; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Non-technical summary Resilience is a cross-disciplinary concept that is relevant for understanding the sustainability of the social and environmental conditions in which we live. Most research normatively focuses on building or strengthening resilience, despite growing recognition of the importance of breaking the resilience of, and thus transforming, unsustainable social-ecological systems. Undesirable resilience (cf. lock-ins, social-ecological traps), however, is not only less explored in the academic literature, but its understanding is also more fragmented across different disciplines. This disparity can inhibit collaboration among researchers exploring interdependent challenges in sustainability sciences. In this article, we propose that the term lock-in may contribute to a common understanding of undesirable resilience across scientific fields.