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the argument is not only that forests are potentially conserved by such markets, but
that mitigation of net emissions of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere can
be undertaken more cost-effectively this way than by reducing fossil fuel use. But
emerging critiques of these markets question whether payments for ecosystem ser-
vices go to those actually providing the services. If they do not, then ultimately the
sustainability of these markets is in question. Corbera et al. (2007), for example,
examined the impact on two forest communities involved in a project for carbon
sequestration services of forests in the state of Chiapas in Mexico and found that
most of the benefi ts follow political affi liation, while the poorest farmers and women
have been excluded from project design and implementation. They argue that these
pitfalls reinforce existing uneven power structures, inequities and vulnerabilities:
such markets are in fact highly limited in delivering more legitimate forms of
decision making or a fair distribution of benefi ts.
In summary, the state of knowledge on how social-ecological systems interact is
focused primarily on how ecosystem services are produced and maintained. But a
further important normative set of knowledge relates to how to provide a stable
environment for human use of these services. Economic growth involving unsustain-
able resource use or chronic stress on ecosystems creates vulnerabilities and makes
society more sensitive to shocks. Discontinuous changes in ecosystem functions are
associated with a loss of productivity and of ecosystem services. In addition, losing
resilience reduces what economists have termed positive option values of the envi-
ronment. Arrow and colleagues (1995) argue that the loss of ecosystem resilience
and shifts to more unfamiliar states increase the uncertainties associated with envi-
ronmental interactions. In other words, dealing with unfamiliar and undesirable
states involves added (and often unacknowledged) costs. The nature of resilience
and vulnerability is manifest in specifi c places and resource systems. Hence, these
principles and issues can be examined using various techniques of environmental
geographers. Resilience and vulnerability are also manifest across a range of spatial
and political scales, as discussed below.
What Is a Resilient Community?
The causes of vulnerability are linked across space and time. We have highlighted
how the resilience of social-ecological systems involves multiple facets and changing
parameters. How can we recognise and identify the interlinked stimuli that infl uence
resilience and vulnerability in a given location? This is a complex issue given the
context- and place-specifi c dynamics of resilience and vulnerability within diverse
societies. There are also issues about how the concepts of resilience and vulnerability
are applied and understood within different disciplinary traditions. Many of the
problems of their application are revealed if we examine how resilience has been
approached and studied, and how it is manifest at a community level in different
contexts. This section therefore presents two examples which relate and amplify
different components and understandings of resilience, as applied to communities
and how they respond to change.
The fi rst example examines how rural households and communities were able to
respond to the external shock of an 'economic crisis' and the associated impacts on
livelihoods and resource use in the humid forests of southern Cameroon. In southern
Cameroon, a range of events and changes had profoundly affected rural livelihoods
within the past generation. During the mid-1980s and 1990s, Cameroon faced an
