scholarly journals Strategies for managing complex social-ecological systems in the face of uncertainty: examples from South Africa and beyond

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs ◽  
Clint Rhode ◽  
Sally Archibald ◽  
Lucky Makhosini Kunene ◽  
Shingirirai S. Mutanga ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Face

scholarly journals Integrated modelling to support decision-making for marine social–ecological systems in Australia

2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (9) ◽  
pp. 2298-2308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Melbourne-Thomas ◽  
Andrew J Constable ◽  
Elizabeth A Fulton ◽  
Stuart P Corney ◽  
Rowan Trebilco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Marine Environment ◽  
Marine Species ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
System Level ◽  
Integrated Modelling ◽  
Marine Systems ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Face

Abstract Policy- and decision-makers require assessments of status and trends for marine species, habitats, and ecosystems to understand if human activities in the marine environment are sustainable, particularly in the face of global change. Central to many assessments are statistical and dynamical models of populations, communities, ecosystems, and their socioeconomic systems and management frameworks. The establishment of a national system that could facilitate the development of such model-based assessments has been identified as a priority for addressing management challenges for Australia’s marine environment. Given that most assessments require cross-scale information, individual models cannot capture all of the spatial, temporal, biological, and socioeconomic scales that are typically needed. Coupling or integrating models across scales and domains can expand the scope for developing comprehensive and internally consistent, system-level assessments, including higher-level feedbacks in social–ecological systems. In this article, we summarize: (i) integrated modelling for marine systems currently being undertaken in Australia, (ii) methods used for integration and comparison of models, and (iii) improvements to facilitate further integration, particularly with respect to standards and specifications. We consider future needs for integrated modelling of marine social–ecological systems in Australia and provide a set of recommendations for priority focus areas in the development of a national approach to integrated modelling. These recommendations draw on—and have broader relevance for—international efforts around integrated modelling to inform decision-making for marine systems.

scholarly journals Adaptive capacity: from assessment to action in coastal social-ecological systems

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte K. Whitney ◽  
Nathan Bennett ◽  
Natalie Ban ◽  
Edward H. Allison ◽  
Derek Armitage ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Coastal Communities ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Assessment Approach ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
Evaluation And Monitoring

Because of the complexity and speed of environmental, climatic, and socio-political change in coastal marine social-ecological systems, there is significant academic and applied interest in assessing and fostering the adaptive capacity of coastal communities. Adaptive capacity refers to the latent ability of a system to respond proactively and positively to stressors or opportunities. A variety of qualitative, quantitative, and participatory approaches have been developed and applied to understand and assess adaptive capacity, each with different benefits, drawbacks, insights, and implications. Drawing on case studies of coastal communities from around the globe, we describe and compare 11 approaches that are often used to study adaptive capacity of social and ecological systems in the face of social, environmental, and climatic change. We synthesize lessons from a series of case studies to present important considerations to frame research and to choose an assessment approach, key challenges to analyze adaptive capacity in linked social-ecological systems, and good practices to link results to action to foster adaptive capacity. We suggest that more attention be given to integrated social-ecological assessments and that greater effort be placed on evaluation and monitoring of adaptive capacity over time and across scales. Overall, although sustainability science holds a promise of providing solutions to real world problems, we found that too few assessments seem to lead to tangible outcomes or actions to foster adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems.

Resilience

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Folke
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Ecological Dynamics ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Resilience Thinking ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Individual

Resilience thinking in relation to the environment has emerged as a lens of inquiry that serves a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. Resilience is about cultivating the capacity to sustain development in the face of expected and surprising change and diverse pathways of development and potential thresholds between them. The evolution of resilience thinking is coupled to social-ecological systems and a truly intertwined human-environment planet. Resilience as persistence, adaptability and, transformability of complex adaptive social-ecological systems is the focus, clarifying the dynamic and forward-looking nature of the concept. Resilience thinking emphasizes that social-ecological systems, from the individual, to community, to society as a whole, are embedded in the biosphere. The biosphere connection is an essential observation if sustainability is to be taken seriously. In the continuous advancement of resilience thinking there are efforts aimed at capturing resilience of social-ecological systems and finding ways for people and institutions to govern social-ecological dynamics for improved human well-being, at the local, across levels and scales, to the global. Consequently, in resilience thinking, development issues for human well-being, for people and planet, are framed in a context of understanding and governing complex social-ecological dynamics for sustainability as part of a dynamic biosphere.

scholarly journals Cooperation in the face of thresholds, risk, and uncertainty: Experimental evidence in fisher communities from Colombia

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0242363
Author(s):  
Juan C. Rocha ◽  
Caroline Schill ◽  
Lina M. Saavedra-Díaz ◽  
Rocío del Pilar Moreno ◽  
Jorge Higinio Maldonado
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Use ◽  
Dynamic Game ◽  
Fishing Effort ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Risk And Uncertainty ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Face

Cooperation is thought to be a necessary condition to solve collective action dilemmas such as climate change or the sustainable use of common pool resources. Yet, it is poorly understood how situations pervaded by thresholds shape the behaviour of people facing collective dilemmas. Here we provide empirical evidence that resource users facing thresholds maintain on average cooperative behaviours in the sense of maximising their individual earnings while ensuring future group opportunities. A framed field experiment in the form of a dynamic game with 256 Colombian fishers helped us investigate individual behavioural responses to the existence of thresholds, risk and uncertainty. Thresholds made fishers extract less fish compared to situation without thresholds, but risk had a stronger effect on reducing individual fishing effort. Contrary to previous expectations, cooperation did not break down. If cooperation can be maintained in the face of thresholds, then communicating uncertainty is more policy-relevant than estimating precisely where tipping points lay in social-ecological systems.

scholarly journals Prawns, justice, and relationships of care in Stilbaai, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke Norton
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Marine Protected Areas ◽  
Access Point ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Everyday

Abstract This story is concerned with the intersection of governance, stewardship, care taking, and extraction. It is centred on insights gained through repeated encounters with bait prawns during 7 years of fieldwork in Stilbaai, South Africa. These prawns are intended as angling bait, but they are entangled in a host of complications—or relations—the discovery of which eventually led me see them differently than before. More recently, I have looked into the role of marine protected areas in the everyday lives of residents, researching conservation management in Stilbaai in connection with the Southern Cape Interdisciplinary Fisheries Research project. In that work, I use the idea of relationality, as understood from an anthropological perspective, to speak about what long-term stewardship needs to take into account. Understanding more about the mudprawn and where it lives in the ecosystem, how people extract it, what it is used for, and how it is thought of has provided an access point for me into thinking about coastal social–ecological systems and how to communicate their needs. In this story, I reflect on these creatures as they live in my research, showing what this species can teach about coastal sustainability more generically.

scholarly journals Understanding Regime Shifts in Social-Ecological System Using Data on Direct Ecosystem Service Use

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Censkowsky ◽  
Ilona M. Otto
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Kwazulu Natal

This paper takes a new look on transition processes in social-ecological systems, identified based on household use of direct ecosystem services in a case study in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We build on the assumption that high dependence on local ecosystems for basic needs satisfaction corresponds to a “green loop” type of system, with direct feedbacks between environmental degradation and human well-being. Increasing use of distant ecosystems marks a regime shift and with that, the transition to “red loops” in which feedbacks between environmental degradation and human well-being are only indirect. These systems are characterized by a fundamentally different set of sustainability problems as well as distinct human-nature connections. The analysis of a case study in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, shows that social-ecological systems identified as green loops in 1993, the average share of households using a characteristic bundle of direct ecosystem services drops consistently (animal production, crop production, natural building materials, freshwater, wood). Conversely, in systems identified as red loops, mixed tendencies occur which underpins non-linearities in changing human-nature relationships. We propose to apply the green to red loop transition model to other geographical contexts with regards to studying the use of local ecosystem services as integral part of transformative change in the Anthropocene.

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