Social-ecological resilience thinking as a bridging concept in transdisciplinary research on climate-change adaptation

This paper explores the advantages of applying the concept of social-ecological resilience (SER) and the related thinking in transdisciplinary research. The theoretical reflections are exemplified by transdisciplinary research experiences using the concept of SER as a bridging concept in the field of climate-change adaptation instead of developing a new and very context-specific conceptual bridge. The findings are based on ontological reflections concerning the complex and hybrid phenomenon of climate change and the need for transdisciplinary research as well as on reflections on the performed interdisciplinary research and the exploratory transdisciplinary research approach with practitioners from the German administration. The experiences so far have shown that it was more focused on the general ideas of social-ecological resilience thinking instead of using the concept of SER as an analytical tool. We conclude that the use of a common conceptual framework in general and of social-ecological resilience thinking in particular offers tangible advantages in transdisciplinary research dealing with climate change and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. In our case, social-ecological resilience thinking helped—after translation into practical terms—to open the field for further consideration from the very beginning as well as to open the space for common creative work; to define the problem; and to choose the relevant variables to look at.