Professional resilience

Excerpt

In my last column I wrote about resilience from an ecological perspective and my growing unease that our national and international commitment to conservation is not strong enough to meet the challenges conservationists will confront as our climate changes. Several people have contacted me with their thoughts on resilience and the US commitment to conservation. Their emails left me even more convinced than I was when I wrote the column that we have the knowledge, understanding, technology, and practices we need to build the resilience of our soils, watersheds, and landscapes. Now we need to make sure we have the commitment to implementation.

Their emails also started me thinking about another kind of resilience—the resilience of our profession and of ourselves as professionals. An article I read recently stated that we must be prepared to cope with uncertainty and surprises to ensure we respond effectively to socioeconomic and ecological changes. The ethanol boom came to my mind the moment I read that sentence. The speed at which ethanol production has emerged as a major force shaping agricultural landscapes has taken me and many others by surprise. I find myself scrambling to keep up with a mindnumbing set of prognostications that …