scholarly journals Shock and Conflict in Social-Ecological Systems: Implications for Environmental Governance

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 610
Author(s):  
Kristof Van Assche ◽  
Monica Gruezmacher ◽  
Raoul Beunen
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Adaptive Governance ◽  
Evolutionary Patterns ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Path Creation ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Governance Theory

In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis of shock and conflict in social-ecological systems and investigate the implications of this perspective for the understanding of environmental governance, particularly its evolutionary patterns and drivers. We dwell on the distinction between shock and conflict. In mapping the relation between shock and conflict, we invoke a different potentiality for altering rigidity and flexibility in governance; different possibilities for recall, revival and trauma; and different pathways for restructuring the relation between governance, community and environment. Shock and conflict can be both productive and eroding, and for each, one can observe that productivity can be positive or negative. These different effects in governance can be analyzed in terms of object and subject creation, path creation and in terms of the dependencies recognized by evolutionary governance theory: path, inter-, goal and material dependencies. Thus, shock and conflict are mapped in their potential consequences to not only shift a path of governance, but also to transform the pattern of self-transformation in such path. Finally, we reflect on what this means for the interpretation of adaptive governance of social-ecological systems.

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 ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 441-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Folke ◽  
Thomas Hahn ◽  
Per Olsson ◽  
Jon Norberg
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Adaptive Governance ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological

scholarly journals Perception and Representation of the Resource Nexus at the Interface between Society and the Natural Environment

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Giampietro
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Adaptive Governance ◽  
Metabolic Pattern ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Resource Flows ◽  
Relational Analysis ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Eu

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the resource nexus. This has created the co-existence of different understandings and uses of the concept. In this regard, experiences in the EU H2020 project ‘Moving towards adaptive governance in complexity: Informing nexus security’ are consistent with findings reported in the literature: (i) The inconvenient message of the nexus is difficult to get across, it being incompatible with the currently dominant rosy narratives about sustainability. Indeed, from a historic perspective, the nexus can be seen as a revival of the ideological fight between cornucopians and neo-Malthusians; (ii) Silo structures in existing institutions are a problem for the governance of the nexus, and so is the resulting reductionist strategy of addressing and fixing one issue at the time; (iii) Scientific inquiry is currently not providing the quality inputs needed for a meaningful discussion of the resource nexus. Entanglement of resource flows is rooted in the complex metabolic pattern of social-ecological systems, the analysis of which requires a complex systems approach and relational analysis. Contemporary reductionist models simply make the nexus invisible to the analyst.

scholarly journals Decision-Making for Rewilding: An Adaptive Governance Framework for Social-Ecological Complexity

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. A. Butler ◽  
Mariella Marzano ◽  
Nathalie Pettorelli ◽  
Sarah M. Durant ◽  
Johan T. du Toit ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Adaptive Governance ◽  
Learning Networks ◽  
Governance Framework ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Resource Governance ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Social

Rewilding can be defined as the reorganisation or regeneration of wildness in an ecologically degraded landscape with minimal ongoing intervention. While proposals for rewilding are increasingly common, they are frequently controversial and divisive amongst stakeholders. If implemented, rewilding initiatives may alter the social-ecological systems within which they are situated and thus generate sudden and unforeseen outcomes. So far, however, much of the discourse on the planning and implementation of rewilding has focused on identifying and mitigating ecological risks. There has been little consideration of how rewilding could alter the human components of the social-ecological systems concerned, nor governance arrangements that can manage these dynamics. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a generic adaptive governance framework tailored to the characteristics of rewilding, based on principles of managing complex social-ecological systems. We integrate two complementary natural resource governance approaches that lend themselves to the contentious and unpredictable characteristics of rewilding. First, adaptive co-management builds stakeholder adaptive capacity through iterative knowledge generation, collaboration and power-sharing, and cross-scale learning networks. Second, social licence to operate establishes trust and transparency between project proponents and communities through new public-private partnerships. The proposed framework includes structural and process elements which incorporate a boundary organisation, a decision-into-practise social learning exercise for planning and design, and participatory evaluation. The latter assesses rewilding outcomes and pre-conditions for the continuation of adaptive governance and conservation conflict resolution.

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