Response diversity as a sustainability strategy (original) (raw)

Financial advisers recommend a diverse portfolio to respond to market fluctuations across sectors. Similarly, nature has evolved a diverse portfolio of species to maintain ecosystem function amid environmental fluctuations. In urban planning, public health, transport and communications, food production, and other domains, however, this feature often seems ignored. As we enter an era of unprecedented turbulence at the planetary level, we argue that ample responses to this new reality-that is, response diversitycan no longer be taken for granted and must be actively designed and managed. We describe here what response diversity is, how it is expressed and how it can be enhanced and lost. On the morning of 23 March 2021, the giant container ship Ever Given was passing through the Suez Canal on its way to Rotterdam when it suddenly ran aground diagonally, blocking the entire canal. Because the ship was one of the largest in the world, traffic was jammed in both directions for six days. Hundreds of vessels came to a standstill, and billions of US dollars' worth of trade were lost given the lack of alternative routes and modes of transport. Disruptions at bottlenecks like this (Fig. 1) can have major consequences for billions of people, enterprises and nations, influencing food supplies, prices or access to spare parts, with potentially far-reaching social consequences 1 .