11 March 2026 (Wednesday), 14:00 – 15:00 (JST)
IDEC Large Conference Room (in-person only)
About the Lecture
Response diversity is increasingly used to explain why some social–ecological systems maintain key functions under shocks while others experience synchronized failure. Originally formulated in ecology, response diversity describes the variation in how different species contributing to the same ecosystem function respond to environmental change. The central claim is not that “more species” automatically implies greater resilience, but that differences in response traits within functional groups provide functional insurance: when disturbances occur, asynchronous or contrasting responses stabilize processes, support renewal, and reduce the risk of abrupt regime shifts. Discussing response diversity from a largely ecological mechanism and general sustainability metaphor to a measurable, coupled social–ecological framework for post-crisis recovery, explicitly addressing high-intensity disturbances and conflict where coping, adaptive, and transformative capacities must be layered.
About the Speaker
Thomas Elmqvist, PhD, is a professor in Natural Resource Management at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. His research is focused on urbanization, urban ecosystem services, land use change, natural disturbances and components of resilience including the role of social institutions.
He has led and coordinated several major international interdisciplinary research projects, such as the UN-initiated global project “Cities and Biodiversity Outlook” and the Future Earth Project “Urban Planet” He currently serves as Editor in chief for the Nature Research journal “npj Urban Sustainability” and as associated editor for the journals Sustainability Science, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. He has published over 125 papers, 30 books and book chapters and received the Biodiversa prize 2018 for “Excellence in science and impact” and the Ecological Society of America prize for best paper in “Sustainability Science” in 2019 and 2023.
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