41 © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 G. Polgar, Z. Jaafar, Endangered Forested Wetlands of Sundaland, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52417-7_3 3 Ecotonal Networks (ENTs) 3.1 Ecological Diversity in an Urbanised World: From Conversion to Sustainable Management 3.1.1 The Resilience Theory The goal of sustainable environmental management of Sundaland forested wetlands and associated habitats can be discussed by adopting the ecological resilience theory (Holling 1973; Gunderson and Holling 2002; Walker et al. 2004; Resilience Alliance 2010). Ecological resilience is defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to withstand perturbations without changing its identity i.e. its structures, functions, and ecologi- cal feedbacks (Pisano 2012). According to this theory, social-ecological systems (SESs) are self-regulating and complex adaptive systems that do not reach single state equilibria definable by differential equations; instead, they cycle adaptively in a non-linear way through multiple states within regimes, or ‘basins of attraction’, created by stabilising or amplifying feedbacks, and accommodating uncertainty. Disturbance above critical thresholds of key variables, or ‘tipping points’, can move the SES to different basins of attraction (sometimes irreversibly), where states have drastically different structures and functions, i.e. performing regime shifts, or ‘transformations’. Resilience can be defined as the distance between a focal SES and these critical thresholds. Different regimes of the SES imply different delivery from the biophysical subsystem in terms of services and goods. Management can aim at decreasing the probability of transition to undesirable regimes, increasing or preserving resilience and adaptive capacity of the SES, or at increasing transition probabilities to more desirable regimes. Even if the position and quantity of the critical thresholds to change is unknown, as it is often the case, the same knowledge of their existence can inform management strategies. Command-and-control man- agement approaches that maximise efficiency or stability assuming a static model of the SES are therefore replaced with approaches that aim at sustainable long- term delivery of resources and services, analysing SES dynamics while avoiding erosion of resilience. Resilience assessment protocols can be applied to different