Resilient oceans: policies and practices to protect marine ecosystems

Resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem – like marine environments – not only to persist with and adapt to sudden natural and human external perturbations but also to continue to regenerate without degrading or losing the capacity to supply its basic ecosystem goods and services. The term ‘resilience’ was originally developed within mechanical and engineering studies for defining the structural stability or robustness of a material or a structure. From this perspective, resilience is the ability of a structure to resist and absorb perturbations and disturbances without changing (Van der Leeuw & Leygonie, 2005; Woods, 2006). Further research has developed the definition of resilience within the ecology domain, as the ability of systems to absorb disturbances and persist. In this sense, resilience is a natural and emergent property of a system that allows its adaptation and persistence across dynamic environments and adversities (Holling, 1973; Gunderson, 2000; Klein et al., 2003; Bodin & Wiman, 2004; Olsson et al., 2004).