By Jack H Hatfield, Charles A Cunningham, Hanna Pettersson, Lauren Barnes, Chris Thomas, and Jane Hill

Image caption: An East Devon landscape. Photo credit Chris Thomas

This Plain Language Summary is published in advance of the paper discussed. Please check back soon for a link to the full paper.

Large scale human-driven changes to our environment, such as climate change, mean that the future will be different from the past and present. Strong evidence of rapid biodiversity, environmental and social change has brought about an increasing focus on the concept of resilience, which refers to the ability of interlinked systems of people and nature to either adjust to or persist in the face of shocks and disturbance.

In policy and practice, however, resilience is often implemented as a restoration approach, aiming to return to a past “ideal” or “natural” state. Some see recreating systems inspired by past baselines as the best way to confer ongoing stability. Yet this approach overlooks the dynamic and continuously evolving nature of life on Earth, and risks ignoring people’s present-day values and priorities. Past states may fail to deliver their desired functions under changed conditions, or may simply no longer be socially, economically, or ecologically viable.

We argue that resilience as a concept, and target, is best employed when people first explicitly define resilience and focus on ecological functions (like seed dispersal) and services (like flood prevention) rather than the identities or compositions of particular habitats and species. Resilience for one species or function does not automatically translate to resilience for others. For example, reintroduction of wild herbivores can enhance ecosystem resilience by providing grazing, browsing and prey for carnivores, but may decrease the resilience of farming systems through disease transmission and crop/pasture damage. Thus, setting targets and working towards resilience requires the consideration of, and full transparency around, trade-offs and synergies in the entire landscape. Recognition of who benefits from or is potentially harmed by particular trade-offs is also a vital aspect.

This approach can facilitate inclusive engagement and discussion, as well as consideration of which functions we, collectively, need and want to be resilient. Only by adopting a forward facing, inclusive and explicitly defined approach to resilience are we likely to produce targets and systems that can continue to support both people and nature under rapidly changing conditions.