ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION 

Resilience, Resourcefulness, and the Necessity of Scarcity: 
The Case of Malta (Mediterranean Sea) 


by ROGER BALM 


Dissertation Director: 
Professor J. Kenneth Mitchell 


This study investigates how a nation copes and flourishes under conditions of extreme scarcity of critical natural resources. The focus is on the densely populated and resource-impoverished island nation of Malta since 1800. The resources considered are those most vital to survival and development: soil, water and fuel. 

It is argued that as resources diminish, resourcefulness increases. It is further argued that the diminishing of resources makes its presence felt most decisively through shocks, surprises and disruptions to the status quo. As applied to resources, scarcity is a necessity for stimulating invention and creative change. The research evaluates associated changes in two domains: the technological and the regulatory. 

The strongest association is that between enhanced water supply technology and the occurrence of drought or declining water quality. There is also an association between economic perturbation and enhanced management of soil resources. In the post-World War I1 period increased resourcefulness for f&1 was stimulated by the transition from a gamson economy to relatively greater economic 

r. 

sel1-sufficiency. When the issues of shock frequency, pace of technological emergence and system impact are considered together, the findings indicate that frequent shocks of relatively low magnitude are more effective than widely spaced shocks of high magnitude in both assembling arrays of strategies and in maintaining them. In all cases the implementation of resourcefulness can be blunted or enhanced in specific ways. For both domains, the historical record is modeled and shows a progressive accumulation of strategies over time, induced by episodic shocks and changes, whenever the impulse to change exceeds inertia. In sum, these accumulated arrays of strategies provide resilience in coping with scarcity. 

The specific attributes of resilience that are laid out in the study, together with the modeling templates, provide a basis for extending the findings from the Maltese case to other locations and for establishing a theoretical foothold for resilience theory in the assessment of environment-society relationships. 

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