Analyzing community resilience as an emergent property of dynamic social-ecological systems

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record. ; Community resilience is widely promoted so that communities can respond positively to a range of risks, including shocks, extreme events, and other changes. Although much research has identified characteristics or capacities that confer resilience, resilience is more than simply the sum of these. Resilience is an emergent property—the capacities are linked and act together. We present an empirical analysis of five different capacities and assess how interactions between them confer resilience in two coastal communities in Cornwall, UK. These capacities are place attachment, leadership, community cohesion and efficacy, community networks, and knowledge and learning. Based on a survey and focus group discussions, our results show that residents draw on these capacities in different combinations, enabling resilience in diverse ways. This provides a dynamic and socially nuanced perspective on community resilience as process, potentially informing theory and practice of conservation, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and community development. ; This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through Belmont Forum project, Multi-scale Adaptations to Global Change in Coastlines (MAGIC) project no: NE/L008807/1, and by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through the UK South West Doctoral Training Centre Studentship Award 2013 (Environment, Energy and Resilience).