Conceptualizing and measuring the economic issues in the evaluation of socio-ecological resilience : a commentary

Abstract

Resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a state controlled by a different set of environmental conditions and processes. Despite the growing importance of socioeconomic resilience, this concept has not been yet carefully defined or satisfactory measured within the more general issue of socio-ecological resilience of both natural (forest) and anthropogenic (agricultural) systems. Investigating socioeconomic resilience in a rapidly changing landscape is important for sustainable land management under intense and increasing human pressure, like observed in the Mediterranean region. This paper presents an overview of definitions and indicators of the socioeconomic resilience and comments on some possible measurements of the concept taken from the parallel ecological literature. The study is intended to contribute to this deserving issue in the light of the (increasingly complex) relationships between the environment, the economic systems, and the social sphere.