Socio-ecological Systems Modeling for Climate and Community Resilience

Variability, complexity, simultaneity and change in environmental parameters affect social groups. Homeostatic advantages due to resource surplus, institutional access technology and social network alter perception and community response to climate risks. Modelling requires consideration of socio-ecological and eco-institutional interactions with social, biological and climatic parameters. We model and manage the multi-layer interactions among social institutions, climatic fluctuations and the resultant changes in the rules governing these interactions with the objective of increasing resilience of social and ecological systems to climate change. We enumerate coping strategies adopted across genders to suggest modelling approaches for climate-resilient socio-ecological systems. Statistical tools enable discrete and continuous perspectives in different classes: institutional; in different time frames and with varying degrees of freedom in heterogeneous social communities. Ecological systems under high climatic risks including drought / flood prone regions are inhabited by some of the poorest communities. Without modelling their compulsions, preferences, and possible consequences of their choices on socio-ecological systems, sustainable outcomes cannot be achieved. Interactions among crops, weeds, pest, temperature, fluctuating rainfall, agro-biodiversity, at farmer’s plots affected by different flooding levels in eastern India were studied at decadal intervals over thirty years. The findings of this study are drawn upon while suggesting modelling needs for knowledge rich-economically poor communities in tropical contexts, to enable future resilience.