Resilience for Whom? The Problem Structuring Process of the Resilience Analysis

Resilience is a flexible concept open to many different interpretations. The openness of resilience implies that while talking about resilience, stakeholders risk talking past each other. The plurality of the interpretations has practical implications in the analysis and planning of resilience. This paper reflects on these implications that have so far not explicitly been addressed in the literature, by discussing the problem structuring process (PSP) of a modelling-based resilience analysis. The discussion is based on the analysis of food security resilience to climate change in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, jointly undertaken by the author, governmental authorities, small-scale farmers and academics of the national university. The aim of this discussion is to highlight the underestimated challenges and practical implications of the resilience concept ambiguity and potential avenues to address them. The contributions of the results presented in this paper are twofold. First, they show that, in practice, the resilience concept is constructed and subjective. Second, there remains a need for a participatory and contested framework for the PSP of resilience.