Robustness Trade-offs in Social-Ecological Systems

Abstract

*[In this paper, we suggest that effective governance under uncertainty must include the ongoing analysis of trade-offs between robustness & performance, & between investments in robustness to different types of perturbations. The nature of such trade-offs will depend on society's perception of risk, the dynamics of the underlying resource, & the governance regime. Specifically, we argue that it is impossible to define robustness in absolute terms. The choice for society is not only whether to invest in becoming robust to a particular disturbance, but rather, what suit of disturbances to address and what set of associated vulnerabilities is it willing to accept as a necessary consequence. Ant data used in discussions.]