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Changing ecological and socio-economic conditions have resulted into increasing environmental stress, natural resource degradation and threats to peoples' livelihoods. This can only be reversed by understanding how coupled social and ecological systems operate. Managing natural resources has to be seen as a process of building resilience in coupled systems amidst escalating stress. The challenge is to identify, examine and manage processes that build resilience in households. This thesis uses the socio-ecological systems approach to examine resilience building in households. The study assesses land, human and social capital capacities in different types of households and constructs household trajectories or resilience paths. Through a careful analysis the different resilience paths, the processes that build or erode resilience are identified. The study then examines the level of application of various conservation technologies in the identified paths to establish when such technologies initiate or enhance the resilience building processes. Household data was collected from five sites in Kabale district, western Uganda using a case study design. Household data was supplemented by data obtained from extension officers working for Kabale district local Government and five NGOs. Primary data has been supplemented by secondary data obtained from national data bases and local reports. The results reveal that selective diversification, flexibility with internalisation of stress, constant re-organisation and progressive building of experience are important resilience building processes. Depending on the nature of the resilience path being followed by the household, conservation technologies can strengthen these processes and promote resilience building. However in some paths conservation technologies increase sensitivity of assets and household structures leading to erosion of resilience. The study concludes that the resilience building approach can guide participatory natural resource management by providing a set of principles around which managers can resolve issues including the nature of stress, heterogeneity in communities, scale and thus effectively link social and ecological systems.