scholarly journals Adaptive Management of Ecosystem Services for Multisystemic Resilience

2021 ◽  
pp. 725-743
Author(s):  
Katharine F. E. Hogan ◽  
Kirsty L. Nash ◽  
Elena Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Adaptive Management ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Key Topics

Globally, ecosystems provide the equivalent of trillions of dollars every year in the form ecosystem services. These include provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. People are dependent on ecosystem services, yet their sustainability is at risk due to increasingly rapid global change that impacts the resilience of social-ecological systems at multiple scales. In this chapter, the authors outline the concepts and theory of multisystemic social-ecological resilience. They discuss management principles that embrace cycles of change in social-ecological systems and work with these systems toward sustainability rather than pushing for increased efficiency and stability, which tends to undermine resilience across systems and scales. They explore adaptive management as a framework that supports improved understanding and management of ecosystem services for resilience in light of global change, outlining key topics for questions of research and practice.

scholarly journals An education approach for the Anthropocene epoch

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. e448101119780
Author(s):  
Cristiane Mansur de Moraes Souza
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Considerable Uncertainty ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Social

It is now well established in the literature that there is a need to incorporate the concept of sustainability into education at all study levels. However, there is considerable uncertainty expressed concerning how it could best be achieved and how the resilience concept would enhance this idea. This article aims to address this gap. The objective is to explore aspects of socio-ecological resilience, that underlies a university case study. The methodology is exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory. Results demonstrate that civil engagement university activities are an education approach that provides students with experiences that build skills necessary for addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene Epoch. The conclusion of the article emphasizes that the education for the Anthropocene epoch should consider the enhancement of ecosystem services by demonstrating that humans are part of the social-ecological systems; considering interdisciplinarity as a methodological approach; demonstrating the variety of potentials on participation of stakeholders by civil engagement as developing autonomy both on students and stakeholders and developing the ability for proactive attitudes. Is also enhance learning and social learning by civil engagement and participation.

scholarly journals Delayed behavioural shifts undermine the sustainability of social–ecological systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1868) ◽  
pp. 20171192 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.-S. Lafuite ◽  
C. de Mazancourt ◽  
M. Loreau
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Ecological Feedbacks ◽  
Mixed Equilibria

Natural habitat destruction and fragmentation generate a time-delayed loss of species and associated ecosystem services. As social–ecological systems (SESs) depend on a range of ecosystem services, lagged ecological dynamics may affect their long-term sustainability. Here, we investigate the role of consumption changes for sustainability, under a time-delayed ecological feedback on agricultural production. We use a stylized model that couples the dynamics of biodiversity, technology, human demography and compliance with a social norm prescribing sustainable consumption. Compliance with the sustainable norm reduces both the consumption footprint and the vulnerability of SESs to transient overshoot-and-collapse population crises. We show that the timing and interaction between social, demographic and ecological feedbacks govern the transient and long-term dynamics of the system. A sufficient level of social pressure (e.g. disapproval) applied on the unsustainable consumers leads to the stable coexistence of unsustainable and sustainable or mixed equilibria, where both defectors and conformers coexist. Under bistability conditions, increasing extinction debts reduces the resilience of the system, thus favouring abrupt regime shifts towards unsustainable pathways. Given recent evidence of large extinction debts, such results call for farsightedness and a better understanding of time delays when studying the sustainability of coupled SESs.

scholarly journals How Does Agroecology Contribute to the Transitions towards Social-Ecological Sustainability?

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 4372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Oteros-Rozas ◽  
Federica Ravera ◽  
Marina García-Llorente
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Ecological Functions ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Complex Relationships

This Special Issue of Sustainability aims at compiling original theoretical, methodological, and empirical research exploring how agroecology approaches can promote the transition towards sustainability, particularly of agri-food social-ecological systems, taking into account the complex relationships established between ecological functions and ecosystem services, human wellbeing, innovative socio-technical innovations, and governance models as well as public policies. In this editorial, we carry out an overview of the 17 contributions that shape this number, around five main themes: Agroecological practices that enhance ecosystem services, the potential of agroecology to promote social learning and innovation, gender and feminist perspectives in agroecology, the political articulation of agroecology, and public policies and the institutionalization of agroecology. Finally, we reflect about suggested guidelines for agroecology research that truly aims at supporting the transition towards strong social-ecological sustainability, we then deepen on the main gaps revealed by the research works presented. Finally, we conclude with the insights provided by agroecology within the transition towards social-ecological sustainability.

scholarly journals Untapped capacity for resilience in environmental law

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (40) ◽  
pp. 19899-19904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahjond Garmestani ◽  
J. B. Ruhl ◽  
Brian C. Chaffin ◽  
Robin K. Craig ◽  
Helena F. M. W. van Rijswick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological

Over the past several decades, environmental governance has made substantial progress in addressing environmental change, but emerging environmental problems require new innovations in law, policy, and governance. While expansive legal reform is unlikely to occur soon, there is untapped potential in existing laws to address environmental change, both by leveraging adaptive and transformative capacities within the law itself to enhance social-ecological resilience and by using those laws to allow social-ecological systems to adapt and transform. Legal and policy research to date has largely overlooked this potential, even though it offers a more expedient approach to addressing environmental change than waiting for full-scale environmental law reform. We highlight examples from the United States and the European Union of untapped capacity in existing laws for fostering resilience in social-ecological systems. We show that governments and other governance agents can make substantial advances in addressing environmental change in the short term—without major legal reform—by exploiting those untapped capacities, and we offer principles and strategies to guide such initiatives.

scholarly journals A Resilience Framework for Chronic Exposures: Water Quality and Ecosystem Services in Coastal Social-Ecological Systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 242-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel H. Merrill ◽  
Kate K. Mulvaney ◽  
David M. Martin ◽  
Marnita M. Chintala ◽  
Walter Berry ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Resilience Framework

scholarly journals Intervene or wait? Modelling the timing of intervention in conservation conflicts adaptive management under uncertainty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Bach ◽  
Jeroen Minderman ◽  
Nils Bunnefeld ◽  
Aileen Mill ◽  
Alexander B. Duthie
Keyword(s):  
Adaptive Management ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Animal Population ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Delayed Action ◽  
Waiting Strategy ◽  
Conservation Conflict ◽  
High Yields ◽  
Waiting Periods

AbstractThe timing of biodiversity managers’ interventions can be critical to the success of conservation, especially in situations of conflict between conservation objectives and human livelihood, i.e., conservation conflicts. Given the uncertainty associated with complex social-ecological systems and the potentially irreversible consequences of delayed action for biodiversity and livelihoods, managers tend to simply intervene as soon as possible by precaution. However, refraining from intervening when the situation allows it can be beneficial, notably by saving critical management resources. Here, we introduce a strategy for managers to decide, based on monitoring, whether intervention is required or if waiting is possible. This study evaluates the performance of this waiting strategy compared to a strategy of unconditional intervention at every opportunity. We built an individual-based model of conservation conflict between a manager aiming to conserve an animal population and farmers aiming to maximize yield by protecting their crop from wildlife damage. We then simulated a budget-constrained adaptive management over time applying each strategy, while accounting for uncertainty around population dynamics and around decision-making of managers and farmers. Our results showed that when the decision for the manager to intervene was based on a prediction of population size trajectory, the waiting strategy performed at least as well as unconditional intervention while also allowing managers to save resources by avoiding unnecessary interventions. Under difficult budgetary constraints on managers, this waiting strategy ensured as high yields as unconditional intervention while significantly improving conservation outcomes by compensating managers’ lack of resources with the benefits accrued over waiting periods. This suggests that waiting strategies are worth considering in conservation conflicts, as they can facilitate equitable management with a more efficient use of management resources, which are often limiting in biodiversity conservation.

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