This special issue results from a call for papers to address the connection between resilience and sustainability, and stems from the fact that the ecological concept of resilience has been exercising an increasing influence on the economics of development. Resilience is interpreted in two different ways by ecologists: one capturing the speed of return to equilibrium following perturbation (Pimm, 1984), the other capturing the size of a disturbance needed to dislodge a system from its stability domain (Holling, 1973). The latter may be interpreted as the conditional probability that a system in one stability domain will flip into another stability domain given its current state and the disturbance regime (Perrings, 1998). The relevance of this concept for the problem of sustainable economic development has been recognized for at least fifteen years (Common and Perrings, 1992). Indeed, Levin et al. (1998) claimed that resilience is the preferred way to think about sustainability in social as well as natural systems, and a research network – the Resilience Alliance – has subsequently developed around the idea.

Policies to influence land use decisions in agriculture or grazing can increase the ability of invasive species to out-compete native species and thereby disrupt seemingly stable ecological-economic systems. Building off of models of interdependent resources, invasive species and soil fertility, this paper develops a model of shifting cultivation decisions for two types of farmers, one who sees the threat of invasive grasses and one who does not. The paper uses numerical solutions to this dynamic decision problem to examine the impact of various policies on farmer welfare and on the stability of the economic-ecological system. Some policies undermine the resilience of the system, while other policies augment the system's ability to withstand species invasions.

The paper treats the economy of controlling an African pest rodent, the multimammate rat, causing major damage in maize production. An ecological population model is presented and used as a basis for the economic analyses carried out at the village level using data from Tanzania. This model incorporates both density-dependent and density-independent (stochastic) factors. Rodents are controlled by applying poison, and the costs are made up of the cost of poison plus the damage to maize production. We analyse how the present-value costs of maize production are affected by various rodent control strategies, by varying the duration and timing of rodenticide application. Our numerical results suggest that it is economically beneficial to control the rodent population. In general, the most cost-effective duration of controlling the rodent population is 3–4 months every year, and especially at the end of the dry season/beginning of rainy season. The paper demonstrates that changing from today's practice of symptomatic treatment when heavy rodent damage is noticed to a practice where the calendar is emphasized, may substantially improve the economic conditions for the maize producing farmers. This main conclusion is highly robust and not much affected by changing prices of maize production.

This paper provides a new explanation for the persistent land degradation in some parts of the world, despite the availability of seemingly effective soil conservation technologies. We demonstrate that soil conservation technologies may induce agricultural systems to exhibit equilibria characterized by both low and high levels of soil degradation. These two equilibria are separated by a threshold level of soil degradation beyond which a conservation investment will not yield a positive return. Once a parcel of land crosses this productivity threshold, soil degradation becomes economically irreversible (it is not profitable to invest in soil conservation) even though the degradation may be technically reversible. A case study of terracing investments in Peru is used to demonstrate the existence of multiple equilibria under conditions typical of many marginal agricultural areas. These findings help explain why attempts to encourage permanent adoption of soil conservation practices often fail, and how more successful policies could be designed.

This study investigates the optimal use of ‘dirty’ technologies for economic development and when to stop polluting (either temporarily or forever). This question is addressed within a real option framework where three different kinds of options arise: for stopping pollution temporarily or forever and for re-starting. The possibility to shelve a polluting technology temporarily allows for a more conservationist policy. Costs associated with the option of a re-start lead to hystereses effects that complicate empirical cross-country comparisons of environmental policies.

The operation of a number of non-contiguous parcels of land as a single farming unit is known as land fragmentation. It is a widespread and persistent phenomenon and, at the same time, widely criticized by development agencies. Available evidence clearly suggests that the unqualified faith in the merit of consolidation is not justified; fragmentation may have some rationale. This paper substantiates the latter position with a case study of an irrigated agricultural system. Thereafter, it locates fragmentation within the broader context and analyses its role within a hierarchy of phenomena in the linked social and ecological local system. For this analysis an evolutionary game model is used. It is shown that fragmentation increases the resilience of the system of cooperation. The study concludes by suggesting an appropriate strategy for resilience management.

This paper applies recent advances in ecology to our understanding of firm development, sustainability, and economic development. The ecological literature indicates that the greater the functional richness of species in a system, the greater its resilience – that is, its ability to persist in the face of substantial changes in the environment. This paper focuses on the effects of functional richness across firm size on the ability of industries to survive in the face of economic change. Our results indicate that industries with a richness of industrial functions are more resilient to employment volatility.