RESILIENCE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 46

Leading figures in the Anthropocene discourse agree on a small number of
indicators to show that human beings have already exceeded the planetary
boundaries that frame 'a safe living space' on Earth (Rockström et al ., 2009). Of
the nine planetary boundaries measured, the greatest concern was about extinctions.
The loss of species to date - compared with the natural attrition in an evolutionary
curve - corresponds to several planets' worth of evolutionary change. Thus the
causes of extinctions, particularly human-induced causes, are a major centre of
Anthropocene activity.
Oxford ecologist Charles Elton ran a popular series of radio broadcasts during
the 1950s decade of nuclear testing. They were all about explosions. He explained:
An ecological explosion means the enormous increase in numbers of some
kind of living organism - it may be an infectious virus like influenza, or a
bacterium like bubonic plague, or a fungus like that of the potato disease, a
green plant like the prickly pear, or an animal like the grey squirrel. I use the
word 'explosion' deliberately, because it means the bursting out from control
of forces that were previously held in restraint.
(Elton, 1958: 15)
His topic, The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants , positioned widely
distributed animals and plants as invaders . Elton also described these organisms as
part of the baggage of humans as they moved around the world. Ecologists,
grappling with the increasing prevalence of invasive species, one of the major
indicators of what is called the Great Acceleration in Anthropocene discourse,
seized on Elton's metaphor and described their work as invasion biology , celebrating
its jubilee in 2008, just as the drivers of Anthropocene change were reaching
criticality (Richardson, 2011; Steffen et al ., 2011).
Another response to the Anthropocene crisis was the Stockholm Resilience
Centre (SRC, http://www.stockholmresilience.org/), established in 2007, an
institution with a brief to research the governance of social-ecological systems, with
a special emphasis on resilience. The SRC uses the ecological concept of resilience
to include social systems and focus on the ability to deal with change and continue
to develop. Johan Rockström, lead author of the planetary boundaries paper men-
tioned above, and Carl Folke, an ecologist with strong credentials in economics,
are the directors of the SRC. Resilience is thus one of the prominent concepts in
the understanding of the Anthropocene.
Resilience is a powerful concept when extended from its origins in ecology to
discussions of natures, cultures and societies in the era of the Anthropocene. Claude
Lévi-Strauss commented that: 'Words are instruments that people are free to adapt
to any use, provided they make clear their intentions' (Braudel, 1995: 3). This
chapter reviews the emergence and redefinitions of the word and the concept of
resilience, providing some historical context for current debates. It is now both a
metaphor and a conceptual tool that transcends its origins in ecology.