Ecological Mangrove Rehabilitation: Regional Seminar

Whole mangrove ecosystems have a high degree of resilience. Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. Resilience in socio-economic systems have the added capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future. Humans

are part of the natural world. We depend on ecological systems for our survival and we continuously impact the ecosystems in which we live from the local to global scale. Resilience is a property of these linked social-economic-ecological systems (SEE).

Resilience as applied to integrated systems of people and mangroves, has three defining characteristics:

• The amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls on function and structure;
• The degree to which the entire mangrove ecosystem is capable of self-organization/self-renewal
• The ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation – Management based on a continuous cycle of field trials and reflection is known as adaptive management and is discussed in the final section of this report under considerations.