Abstracts - Posters
Climate Change and Agroecosystems on the Canadian Prairies: A Resilience Approach
Peter Myers1, Fikret Berkes, Henry David Venema and Darren Swanson
1University of Manitoba
pgmyers88@hotmail.com
Some Canadian Prairie agroecosystems seem to be more resilient to climate-related stresses than others. This raises the question of whether we can learn from the ways in which agroecosystems respond to shocks and stresses to build capacity to adapt to climate change. The research is part of a larger project entitled, “Adaptation as resilience building: a policy study of climate change vulnerability and adaptation on the Canadian Prairies”, a collaborative project of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), with the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), and the Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba. The objectives are to identify existing climate shocks and stresses that act on the Prairie agroecosystems, to investigate sources of resilience, and to develop policy interventions aimed at strengthening the capacity to adapt to climate change.
The project takes a systems approach, dealing with people and the environment together, on how agroecosystems respond and adapt to change. We use the C.S. Holling definition of resilience - the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks. Adaptability is the capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience. In a social-ecological system such as an agroecosystem, this amounts to the capacity of humans to manage resilience. In the present case, relevant factors may include crop diversity, practices such as rotation, and impact of existing policies on such characteristics. The project uses Participatory Rural Appraisal methodology in selected case study areas, in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, to collect data through focus groups, questionnaires, and interviews.
2005-04-06 |
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