In recent years, the ecological concept of ‘resilience’ – the idea that environmental systems and social forms can be designed to ‘bounce back’ from disasters and other disruptive changes – has influenced a rapidly growing range of planning strategies in northern British Columbia. For the numerous regional scientists involved in systems ecology research, the concept of resilience has also come to reflect highly personal anxieties about the institutional ruptures and inter-personal strains wrought by nearly two decades of government downsizing and results-based management. For researchers and their objects alike, resilience-based research has spurred new questions about how to “adapt” to a rapidly changing landscape, including what kinds of relationships to construct in the process. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Bulkley Valley-based researchers who have sought to deploy the terms of resilience theory in the ongoing construction of the BC Cumulative Effects Framework, this talk will examine how different scientists have reconciled the ambiguous legacies of their research in the region in the face of uncertain futures.

The Natural Resources & Environmental Studies Institute (NRESi) at UNBC hosts a weekly lecture series at the Prince George campus. Anyone from the university or wider community with interest in the topic area is welcome to attend. Presentations are also made available to remote participants through Livestream (Channel 1). Go to http://www.unbc.ca/nres-institute/colloquium-webcasts to view the presentation remotely.

Past NRESi colloquium presentations and special lectures can be viewed on our video archive, available here.