Resilience—The role of place and time

Abstract

“Resilience” is an increasingly important term, which is used to characterise the ability of a system (either human or natural) to cope with uncertainty and change. This term has been supplementing “sustainability” and “vulnerability” in policy and academic discourse, as well as being positioned as a response to global climate change and natural hazards in particular (Achour et al., 2015; Weichselgartner & Kelman, 2015). The importance of this concept has become apparent to me with the development of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Resilience Centre, which has been developed to bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplines within the institution, facilitate engagement with other academic institutions, government, and industry, and provide the capacity to develop multidisciplinary teams centred on resilience. The key focus areas are climate, communities, disasters infrastructure, and nature, which match QUT strengths, as well as having a high degree of crossover. I am directly involved with the QUT Resilience Centre (as the Climate Theme Leader), and with its development, I have grappled with the definition and practicalities of “resilience,” as well as the role that place and time play in understanding the concept.

As a geographer, I see “place” as a central component of “resilience,” that is, the resilience of a system, whether natural or human, is directly related to the geographic characteristics of a location. For instance, the resilience of Brisbane is directly related to the place it is situated within. This is starkly illustrated by the Brisbane River or Maiwar (indigenous name of the river) and colloquially referred to as “The Brown Snake” (QUT [Queensland University of Technology] Digital Collection, 2024). Its modern-day characteristics (since European colonisation) are shaped by the fact it is tidal and has experienced extensive urbanisation and dredging, which in combination has significantly increased sediment load over the last 200 years (ABC, 2017). Despite these alterations, the Brisbane River has been relatively resilient in the face of significant land use and land cover changes (Kemp et al., 2015). However, particular challenges for resilience in the 21st century in the context of the Brisbane River are disasters in the form of floods, with the significant flood events of January 2011 and February 2022.

A wealth of academic discourse has emerged in relation to these events, with a focus on framing the floods in the context of media definitions and broader community narratives (Bohensky & Leitch, 2014), building community resilience (Hayes & Goonetilleke, 2012), and flood immunity myths (Cook, 2018). In addition, much of the research into resilience has been implemented in planning for climate resilience (Brage & Leardini, 2018), water sensitive design (Zaman & Chowdhooree, 2022), and restoring ecological infrastructure (Warner, 2011). In many ways, resilience is a direct response to pressing concerns (in this case, the flooding of the Brisbane River), but also characterises the importance of place in definitions, as well as highlighting the complexity associated with the term. Bohensky and Leitch (2014), for example, show that media coverage reinforced characteristics of resilience by recognising self-reliance, community spirit, and shared experiences for learning, as well as enunciating the role of climate change in increased risks of extreme events and trade-offs in planning. They also highlight that media discourse may constrain resilience through political opportunity and blame, as well as not paying heed to longer-term aspects. In addition, Cook (2018) highlights the myth “it will never happen again” from the 2011 floods, which was quickly dispelled by the more recent 2022 floods. The example of the Brisbane River clearly illustrates the important role that “place” plays with “resilience,” with different sets of geographic characteristics (both physical and social) influencing the resilience of different locations, particularly in terms of responses.

As a researcher primarily focused on reconstructing past environments, I can see that time is also a central concept related to resilience. This is particularly true with restoration activities, through the provision of critical baseline data, gaining insight into past periods of extreme climate change and understanding tipping points, namely, how far a system can be pushed until it changes into a new state (in-built resilience). Research focused on peatland restoration clearly highlights the importance of resilience in restoration activities. Moss (2023) provides an overview of the importance of peatlands in an Australian context and highlights that peat contains a record (from inception), through palaeoecological and geochemical proxies, of environmental change and how this has influenced the state of the ecosystem. Similarly, Ramdzan et al. (2022, 2023) examine a similar phenomenon in the context of Southeast Asian peatlands, which provides insight into how peatland systems have altered over thousands of years, with a particular focus on drivers of change.

These drivers provide crucial information, including baseline data, that can underpin restoration efforts and more effectively utilise resources, as well as examining how resilient a system is to past periods of environmental change. This is particularly useful as it can support the extensive peatland restoration efforts currently being undertaken across Kalimantan and Sumatra by the Indonesian Government and the specific Peatland Restoration Agency (known as the BRG). Similar initiatives are being undertaken across the globe (see for example the United Nations Environmental Programs Global Peatland Assessment, https://www.unep.org/resources/global-peatlands-assessment-2022) and incorporate community wellbeing, sustainable economic production, and indigenous knowledge. Terzano et al. (2022) outline the critical importance of community participation in peatland restoration efforts, illustrating that utilising resilience as an effective management or policy tool requires a multidisciplinary approach, particularly in terms of bringing together the physical and social sciences and facilitating a deeper temporal perspective through palaeoenvironment research (incorporating palaeoecology, geochemistry, and archaeology).

As highlighted above, resilience is intimately linked to place and time, two key facets that are strongly integrated with geography. The case studies of flooding in Brisbane illustrate the importance of place while peatland restoration illuminates the value of time in utilising resilience as an effective management and/or policy tool. Although in both cases, place and time are vital for effective application of a resilience-based approach, I would argue that geography plays a seminal role in the development of resilience in academic discourse, as well as effectively translating it into responses, whether management or policy based. This is not only based on the innate significant of place and time in the discipline, but also the long history of geography examining key issues from both a physical and a human perspective. I also suggest that resilience could act as an important anchoring point to bring physical and human geographers together, and in collaboration with other disciplines to address the big challenges we are facing in the 21st century. With this vein, I strongly encourage submission of articles focused on resilience in the journal, whether this is critically examining the concept or applying it in a range of activities that cut across social and natural dimensions.

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No ethics approval or funding statement is associated with this commentary.