Alternatives Journal - Environmental Ideas + Action

Latest Issue: Building Resilience 36.2

Nicola Ross

Over Christmas, I used my recently learned Spanish. Each time I understood a taxi driver or shopkeeper, I felt a great sense of awe. What once seemed to be a jumble of indistinguishable sounds had sub-divided into individual words. It was as if a microscope in my brain were able to bear down on the language’s component parts.

Calling Buzz Holling

Nicola Ross

In this engaging interview with executive editor Nicola Ross, Buzz Holling applies his ecological theories to climate change, the economy and the fall of the Mayan empire.

Nicola Ross: You’ve written that “Novelty emerges from the interaction between opportunity and crisis.” Can you explain what you mean by novelty?

Resilience 101

Chris McLaughlin

If we factor resilience into how we manage our social-ecological systems, they should rebound from a good wallop.
The Collapse of Atlantic Cod
5 Key Concepts of Resilience
9 Ways to Manage for Resilience

"Resilience is … the ability to absorb and learn from disturbances, to be changed and then to re-organize and still retain basic structure and ways of functioning. Growth and efficiency alone can often lead ecological systems, businesses and societies into fragile rigidities, exposing them to turbulent transformation. Learning, recovery and flexibility open our eyes to novelty and new worlds of opportunity." (From www.resalliance.org/564.php – “key concepts”)

Don’t Bogart that Tree

Bruce Lourie

A bizarre Kyoto rule could result in Canada’s forests being cut, chipped, shipped and then burned to make electricity.

Canadians think of forests as “the lungs of the earth” or “natural air purifiers.” They understand that forests provide life-giving oxygen. They may not be familiar with the corollary benefit of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, but they appreciate that having large areas of healthy forests helps balance the web of life and maintain a stable climate.

How is it then that governments, industry and even some academic think tanks believe that climate change will be helped in the short term by cutting down forests, turning them into wood chips, shipping them hundreds of kilometres, and burning them to make electricity?