Panarchies of transformation and resilience: Delineating systemic change in the society, economy, and ecology of Malakand

Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan has been going through phenomenal transformations in the socioeconomic, political, and ecological spheres since 1969. To understand these transformations, this article employs the theories of ‘panarchy’, ‘resilience’, and ‘adaptive cycles’, borrowed from the literature on socio-ecological systems and sustainability transformation. These studies see disruptive transformation as a systemic change in the economy and society in relation to ecology. The evidence for the article is derived from fieldwork conducted by the first author during his doctoral study in 2007–2008 and later visits in September to October 2012. The scales chosen for the analysis are local (Batkhela, Malakand) and regional (North West of Pakistan). The article argues that theoretical constructs such as panarchy, and adaptive cycles have explanatory value to delineate the socioeconomic, political, and ecological transformation, in the Malakand region, over a period. The article finds out that in Malakand, smaller actors at smaller scales enacted change at bigger scales of adaptive cycles. The change at a smaller scale due to the emergence of Batkhela Bazaar brought changes at bigger scales in the region. However, due to the interaction between multiple cycles at different scales, the system demonstrated some resilience to change, consequently forging a sustainable change in the region. Despite these explicit findings, we understand that interpreting theoretical constructs such as panarchies and adaptive cycles requires more rigorous research, particularly to develop a more precise connection between ecological change and socio-economic transformation in Malakand.