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AcknowledgementsWe are very grateful to the research assistants and field officers in Zambia for facilitating communication with farmers and the implementation of individual interviews as well as the participatory system dynamics model building workshops. Our sincere gratitude goes to the traditional leadership in the workshop communities for their support and to all the farmers who generously shared their time and insight with us. Funding sourcesWork on this article was supported by the Norwegian Research Council through the project "Simulation based tools for linking knowledge with action to improve and maintain food security in Africa" (contract number 217931/F10) and the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study through the project "Knowledge analysis in coupled social-ecological systems. A pilot study in smallholder farmer communities in Zambia". The views and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding sources. The funding sources had no role in study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, in the writing of this article or in the decision to submit this article for publication. Conflicts of interestThe authors declare no conflict of interest. AbstractFood systems will need to undergo considerable transformation. To be better prepared for and resilient to uncertainty and disturbances in the future, resource users and managers need to further develop knowledge about the food and farming system, with its dominating feedback structures and complexities, and to test robust and integrated system-based solutions. This paper investigates how participatory system dynamics modeling can be adapted to groups at the community level with low or no formal educational background. The paper also analyses the refinement of workshop participants' mental models as a consequence of a participatory system dynamics intervention. For this purpose, we ran two workshops with small-scale farmers in Zambia. Analysis of workshop data and postworkshop interviews shows that participatory system dynamics is well adaptable to support an audience-specific learning-by-doing approach. The use of pictures, objects and water glasses in combination with the basic aspects of causal loop diagramming makes for a wellbalanced toolbox. Participants acquire understanding that is also relevant beyond systems thinking in that it offers a range of practical insights such as a critical evaluation of common food security strategies.

This paper operationalizes an analysis of resilience for social‐ecological systems using system dynamics (SD) modelling. Resilience is a versatile concept that continues to gain popularity among researchers who study ways to reduce the vulnerability of social‐ecological systems to a wide range of disturbances. However, its application in the policymaking domain still remains underdeveloped because it is difficult to understand the mechanisms that might enhance resilience and to measure the impact of potential policies. This paper proposes to use SD modelling as a tool to analyse resilience using simulations to quantify system response to disturbances and a causal analysis to identify ways to influence this response. With this aim, this paper proposes a set of fundamental characteristics of resilient responses and describes how to measure them using the results produced by SD models. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract:Resilience is a flexible concept open to many different interpretations. The openness of resilience implies that while talking about resilience, stakeholders risk talking past each other. The plurality of the interpretations has practical implications in the analysis and planning of resilience. This paper reflects on these implications that have so far not explicitly been addressed in the literature, by discussing the problem structuring process (PSP) of a modelling-based resilience analysis. The discussion is based on the analysis of food security resilience to climate change in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, jointly undertaken by the author, governmental authorities, small-scale farmers and academics of the national university. The aim of this discussion is to highlight the underestimated challenges and practical implications of the resilience concept ambiguity and potential avenues to address them. The contributions of the results presented in this paper are twofold. First, they show that, in practice, the resilience concept is constructed and subjective. Second, there remains a need for a participatory and contested framework for the PSP of resilience.

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Resilience has emerged as a buzzword among researchers and practitioners. However, despite its popularity, there has been little progress in moving it from a metaphor to applied projects. While case study research is rich with examples of systems that have proven to be resilient or are striving to develop resilience, the approaches for operationalising concepts described in the literature are still under development. This paper contributes to this development by incorporating system dynamics (SD) modelling within participatory approaches to resilience assessment. With this aim, we combined concepts and practices from the resilience literature with experiences, those documented in the literature and our own, applying system dynamics to resilience assessment. The proposed approach builds and complement other the literature by outlining a modelling process that is consistent with both the resilience literature and the SD modelling practices and providing a generic structure for designing interventions.