GRAID insight briefs: Regime shifts: The challenge of sudden, long-lasting changes in social-ecological systems

GRAID insight briefs: Regime shifts: The challenge of sudden, long-lasting changes in social-ecological systems looks at regime shifts – large, persistent changes in social-ecological systems. They persist over time, because of internal feedback processes that reinforce the new state of the system. Regime shifts have been shown to affect a range of systems for example coral reefs, freshwater lakes or savannah rangelands, and the people that interact with them. Common to all of them is that they often occur rapidly, are difficult to anticipate, and may be costly or even impossible to reverse. This brief also looks at how preventing undesired regime shifts requires knowledge of the types of pressures that lead to different regime shifts, and tools to identify and detect early warnings.

GRAID insight briefs are a series which introduce key findings from social-ecological resilience research, and how they relate to development challenges in the Anthropocene.