Social-ecological resilience: a key concept for the study of sustainability in agroecosystems

Background. In order to achieve food security and sustainability in society, current research focused on the evaluation of socio-ecological resilience (SER) of agroecosystems (AES), applies various methodological frameworks to address challenges arising from climate change and the deterioration of natural resources. Objective. To review the state of the art on the concept of socio-ecological resilience to identify and analyze the methodological frameworks, attributes, indicators, and indices applied to measure the degree of resilience currently presented in various AES models. Methodology. Publications from 1998 to 2022 were reviewed from the Dialnet, SciELO, Redalyc databases, and the Google Scholar search engine. 62 publications were selected that included the term socio-ecological resilience associated with the words "definition," "concept," "agroecosystem," and "indicators." The criteria considered were the presence or absence of the concept, the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator, as well as clarity and precision. The documents were analyzed with Nvivo 12 Pro software, applying the word frequency analysis technique. Main Results. Colombia (18), Mexico (14), the United States (7), and Sweden (5) stand out with the highest number of publications, respectively and the authors Holling (19%) as the main driver of ecological resilience, Folke (16%) emphasized the importance of SER research, Gunderson (10%) pioneered resilience in socio-ecological systems, while Berkes (9.5%) and Walker (9%) excelled in applied SER research. Methodological frameworks that attempted to operationalize the concept were the framework for assessing the management of natural resource systems incorporating sustainability indicators (MESMIS), the resilience approach, the holistic risk index (HRI), and the methodology for assessing socio-ecological resilience (MERS). Furthermore, eight publications that mentioned the term socio-ecological resilience identified its main attributes as external disturbance (21.1%), adaptive capacity (18.4%), self-organization capacity (18.4%), stability domain or attraction (15.8%), and resistance (5.3%). It was also revealed that the most suitable indicators for measuring socio-ecological resilience are dependence on external inputs, organic certification, the presence of drought-tolerant species, vulnerability to extreme climatic events, agrobiodiversity, and levels of productive organization. Implications. Deriving suitable attributes and indicators to measure the level of socio-ecological resilience will depend on the political, economic, social, ecological context, and the spatial and temporal scale of the study. Conclusion. This review shows evidence on the research efforts carried out by the scientific community to develop methodological frameworks that contribute to assess the SER of the various agricultural production models and particularly, the AES that face greater risks associated with climate change.