Connectivity as a Fundamental Quality of Resilience

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been on a road trip across southern Africa, meeting with farmers, land managers, catchment staff, conservationists, and engineers and scientists from across the region. And plenty of simply normal people, too, living their lives. I’ve given a handful of talks, but mostly I’ve been listening. How do people talk about the places where they live from a water-climate perspective? What are their hopes and fears? What are the decisions they are confronting?

One quick observation: many people are worried about settling to simply assessing risk or limiting their options to “defending” against climate change. Most of the people I’ve met have shifted to a resilience framework, which means (to me at least) that they are trying to articulate their choices in a continuously changing climate rather than just at some predefined date, such as 2050 or 2080. They are looking forward and trying to find new options. They sense they are entering another world.

Much of my focus has been around the concept of connectivity — what I believe as a resilience scientist is one way we can measure a fundamental quality of resilience. If we look at how climate has changed in the past, the degree of connectivity has been a profound influence on how communities, species, and even whole ecosystems have been able to respond. Sometimes high connectivity is a good thing to manage for. Sometimes you also need to disconnect systems, places, and communities. Either way, how nutrients, sediment, water, people, energy, or economic products move depends on connectivity.

At the most basic level, however, I felt the strong need for human connectivity around the issues of water and climate. People have been eager, even hungry to talk — even people around a hotel or on the street who knew something of our mission and work. The most basic aspect of connectivity and resilience may simply be sitting and talking together.

John Matthews
Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa