Ecology and Society最新文献

Recognizing the global challenges faced by marine ecosystems and the people that depend on them, there is a growing worldwide uptake of the “Blue Economy” approach for establishing equitable and sustainable ocean industries. Research has shown that the capacity to achieve these Blue Economies is largely shaped by enabling governance conditions related to social and economic equity, more so than available natural resources. Yet there is often a very wide variation across such enabling conditions even within nations and subregions of the world. This must be addressed to build the foundations necessary for regional development and cooperation in shared ocean systems, but will require much beyond investments in scientific knowledge, technology, or infrastructure. Indeed, in most developing (and some developed) regions of the world, enabling conditions for and establishing a Blue Economy will require confronting and redressing colonial and postcolonial histories of systematic underdevelopment. Accordingly, we conduct a regional, historical comparative analysis to assess how country differences in colonial and post-colonial development processes correspond with varying levels of Blue Economy capacity. We focus on the Caribbean given its deep reliance on ocean systems, the wide variability in current enabling conditions for a Blue Economy, and its long history of colonial exploitation. Our structural analysis emphasizes how the historical forces of colonial and neocolonial development serve as long-standing obstacles to achieving high Blue Economy capacity in the region. We reason that these findings provide further justification for reparation programs, which possess relevance for ocean sustainability and development across the Global South.

The post Colonialism and the Blue Economy: confronting historical legacies to enable equitable ocean development first appeared on Ecology & Society.

Reintroducing locally extinct/extirpated species has been considered as an approach for restoring ecosystems. Although such projects share the same goals of rebuilding previously affected ecosystems, the overall impacts that such reintroductions generate on both ecosystems and human society, i.e., on the social-ecological system, are difficult to measure. We propose a system dynamics approach, a platform on which both natural and social scientists could collaborate to identify the social-ecological impacts of species reintroduction as well as factors that affect such decision making. We use cases in Japan to demonstrate the potential applicability of system dynamics in terms of (1) understanding the impacts of a previously reintroduced species, the Oriental Stork (Ciconia boyciana), and (2) predicting the impacts of reintroduction of wolves (Canis lupus). We present a causal loop diagram of the social and ecological effects of Oriental Stork reintroduction, and we discuss how the relationships between factors could be articulated based on empirical data and ongoing projects in Japan. The model demonstrates how local residents began to appreciate the rich biodiversity, including the Oriental Stork, following its reintroduction, and how public support toward such reintroduction enhanced further projects to reintroduce these species in different parts of Japan. A similar diagram, created to illustrate the social and ecological effects of the potential reintroduction of wolves to Japan, demonstrates how social factors such as environmental education and public attitudes could affect decision making as well as ecological factors such as predator-prey dynamics and overall biodiversity. Further, human-wolf conflicts could negatively affect the overall loop. Creating causal loop diagrams can help managers and stakeholders understand that species reintroduction projects need to be considered via an interdisciplinary approach. The models illustrate that these problems are dynamic and that the factors affecting or affected by such projects change over time, implying the importance of both the spatial and temporal scales in managing reintroduction projects.

The post Developing a system model for articulating the social-ecological impacts of species reintroduction first appeared on Ecology & Society.

This study explores social-psychological barriers that may affect resilience in the context of sustainability. These barriers can be understood as unobserved processes that reduce the capacity of a social-ecological system to recover after a perturbation or transformation. Analyzing social-psychological processes enables us to distinguish passive and active processes, at the individual and collective levels. Our work suggests that interacting social and psychological processes should be considered as dynamically evolving determinants of resilience, especially when perturbations can change the psychology of individuals, and thus the underlying dynamics of social-ecological systems. Hence, considering social-psychological barriers and the conditions under which they emerge may provide decision makers with useful insights for coping with ineluctable uncertainties that reduce systems’ transformative capacity and thus their general resilience.

The post Emergence of social-psychological barriers to social-ecological resilience: from causes to solutions first appeared on Ecology & Society.

Adaptation and livelihood resilience are two key concepts for understanding the climate change process of smallholder farmers, but the relationships between them are not well understood. In this paper, with supporting data from household questionnaire surveys in four regions of the Tibetan Plateau (n = 1552), we aim to explore the relationships between smallholder farmers’ climate adaptation and livelihood resilience. Based on existing studies, we developed a conceptual framework to integrate adaptation and livelihood resilience, and constructed a quantitative indicator system to measure livelihood resilience. The adaptation measures adopted by smallholders were classified into stepping out (SO) and stepping up (SU) strategies, and the livelihood resilience of smallholders with different adaptation strategies was calculated and compared using one-way analysis of variance. The multinomial logit (mlogit) model was used to examine the factors influencing the adoption of different adaptation strategies by smallholders. The results showed that the livelihood resilience of smallholders who adopted adaptation strategies was higher than that of those who did not, while the livelihood resilience of smallholders who adopted SO strategies was higher than that of those who adopted SU strategies. The mlogit model reported the factors that influence the adoption of different adaptation strategies by smallholders: household size, health conditions, number of cropland plots, agricultural equipment, number of livestock, and nonagricultural income. These indicators play different roles in the adoption of different adaptation strategies by smallholders. In particular, local government interventions (credit, cooperatives, training) are not only an important component of smallholders’ livelihood resilience, but also important determinants of their livelihood strategies. Based on our findings, it is recommended that the government should promote smallholders’ adaptation and strengthen their livelihood resilience to climate change by expanding the coverage of credit, cooperatives, and training, diversifying the forms of cooperatives, enriching the content of training, and increasing the frequency of training.

The post Linking smallholders’ livelihood resilience with their adaptation strategies to climate impacts: insights from the Tibetan Plateau first appeared on Ecology & Society.

In this article we examine the role of accountability in the emergence of adaptive water governance drawing on a case study of shifts in governance on the Pongola River Floodplain in South Africa. The case study illustrates how lack of accountability by decision makers over the years inhibited the emergence of adaptive water governance on the floodplain. An important lesson to be drawn from the case study is that although adaptive governance can offer decision makers the capacity to confront change and uncertainty, this capacity is diminished when accountability is lacking or blurred because of conflicting interests. We demonstrate the need for accountable entities (such as government and NGOs) in contextualized situations to augment the emergence of adaptive water governance. Importantly, this research demonstrates how the emergence of adaptive water governance in part depends on the capacity of other stakeholders to hold decision makers accountable for the consideration and resolution of governance trade-offs. The role of accountability in this case is broadly based on the need to sustain delivery of aquatic ecosystem services so that generations can continue to enjoy them in the present and into the future. This case analysis is aimed at informing environmental governance scholarship and policies regarding the conditions that promote or inhibit the emergence of adaptive water governance.

The post The role of accountability in the emergence of adaptive water governance first appeared on Ecology & Society.

The relatively rapid expansion of protected areas (PAs) has outpaced their effective governance, monitoring, and evaluation processes, resulting in a knowledge gap, particularly in relation to the impact and efficacy of co-managed protected areas in conserving biodiversity globally. Bangladesh, like numerous other nations, is expanding its existing co-management model to incorporate additional PAs while simultaneously making only limited modifications to the management of these protected areas. Evaluations, however, are relatively rare throughout the world, including Bangladesh, despite their potential to improve PA quality and effectiveness. The purpose of this article is to examine current co-management practices at two sites in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans to identify significant challenges and the efficacy of co-management initiatives through the establishment of a novel evaluative framework. The primary empirical data collection methods included key informant interviews, stakeholder consultation in focus group discussions, and uncontrolled personal observation. Despite significant progress in terms of policy and legislative reforms, many issues remained unattended, such as a goal of balancing conservation and development, increasing locals’ say in decision making, access to resources, and establishing strong institutions. This addition is believed to aid in reconciling the local community and the government. We also need to give more weight to such things as accounting and transparency, income diversification, and showing respect for preexisting social norms. The problems raised in this article are thought to be significant in bridging the gap between management plans and actual management of PAs, not just in Bangladesh but also in other regions of the world that use co-management to achieve sustainability.

The post Evaluating co-management in the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangladesh: success and limitations from local forest users’ perspectives first appeared on Ecology & Society.

Community-based co-management strategy has been implemented in coastal and marine protected areas to reconcile resource use with biodiversity conservation, and to foster governance through the participation of multiple actors like governments, social civil organizations, and traditional resource users. How actors engage in collaboration will determine specific network structures that can facilitate or hinder different processes. The analysis of network structures can evidence the presence of social capital and leadership, both necessary to achieve collective action and contribute to build resilience and increase adaptability. Through the statement of collective action problems related to (1) biodiversity, (2) governance, and (3) socioeconomic issues we study the potential for collaboration between institutions in the Deliberative Council of Canavieiras Extractive Reserve. We identify network structures that can promote the presence of social capital and leadership necessary to address the collective action problems that may arise. The federal environmental agency was the most sought institution for solving almost all problems. This central institution can act as a coordinator and fosters collective action. Regardless, the high dependency on this federal environmental agency can affect the system’s resilience because of its complex and bureaucratic structure, which can delay and hinder the collective action process. Traditional communities and their leadership institution have high social capital for collective action. Several institutions seem to share the bridging position in the networks, revealing the decentralization of this role that may provide resilience to changes in the governance of the system.

The post Collaborative networks for collective action in a Brazilian Marine Extractive Reserve first appeared on Ecology & Society.

Anthropogenic stressors such as land-use change, habitat degradation, and climate change stress inland fish populations globally. Such ecological disturbances can affect actors throughout the social-ecological system by contributing to uncertainty in landings, landing prices, and coastal incomes. Most literature to date on the resilience of the fishing sector has focused on fishing (production), fisheries management, and the livelihoods of fishers, whereas little attention has been paid to the post-harvest sector and the livelihoods of fish processors, logistics providers, wholesalers, and retailers. In the empirical case of the small-scale usipa (Engraulicypris sardella) trade in Malawi, we investigated the impacts of price volatility, a form of uncertainty, on small-scale fish retailers’ livelihood outcomes. By concentrating on fish retailers in the downstream region of the value chain, we provide new insight into how small-scale fisheries actors in the broader fish food system experience and adapt to uncertainty. We find that price volatility negatively impacts net income for retailers, and that an important adaptive strategy is spatial arbitrage. However, gender dynamics and access to capital limit retailers’ ability to employ the spatial arbitrage adaptive strategy.

The post Price volatility in fish food systems: spatial arbitrage as an adaptive strategy for small-scale fish traders first appeared on Ecology & Society.

Addressing complex social-ecological issues requires all relevant sources of knowledge and data, especially those held by communities who remain close to the land. Centuries of oppression, extractive research practices, and misrepresentation have hindered balanced knowledge exchange with Indigenous communities and inhibited innovation and problem-solving capacity in all scientific fields. A recent shift in the research landscape reflects a growing interest in engaging across diverse communities and ways of knowing. Scientific discussions increasingly highlight the inherent value of Indigenous environmental ethics frameworks and processes as the original roadmaps for sustainable development planning, including their potential in addressing the climate crisis and related social and environmental concerns. Momentum in this shift is also propelled by an increasing body of research evidencing the role of Indigenous land stewardship for maintaining ecological health and biodiversity. However, a key challenge straining this movement lies rooted in colonial residue and ongoing actions that suppress and co-opt Indigenous knowledge systems. Scientists working with incomplete datasets privilege a handful of narratives, conceptual understandings, languages, and historical contexts, while failing to engage thousands of collective bodies of intergenerational, place-based knowledge systems. The current dominant colonial paradigm in scientific research risks continued harmful impacts to Indigenous communities that sustain diverse knowledge systems. Here, we outline how ethical standards in researcher practice can be raised in order to reconcile colonial legacies and ongoing settler colonial practices. We synthesize across Indigenous and community-based research protocols and frameworks, transferring knowledge across disciplines, and ground truthing methods and processes in our own practice, to present a relational science working model for supporting Indigenous rights and reconciliation in research. We maintain that core Indigenous values of integrity, respect, humility, and reciprocity should shape researcher responsibilities and methods applied in order to raise ethical standards and long-term relational accountability regarding Indigenous lands, rights, communities, and our shared futures.

The post A values-centered relational science model: supporting Indigenous rights and reconciliation in research first appeared on Ecology & Society.

Environmental discourse frequently understands the values of nature as being instrumental, intrinsic, or relational and measured in biophysical, sociocultural, or monetary terms. Yet these specific values and value indicators are underpinned by worldviews, knowledge systems, and broad values that orient people towards nature in different ways and can be shared (or diverge) across spatio-temporal and social scales. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Values Assessment emphasized the need for decision-making to embrace a plural-values approach that encompasses these diverse meanings of value to catalyze outcomes based on sustainability-aligned broad values like care, unity, reciprocity, and justice. Navigating these diverse values also highlights the salience of religion and its complexity in real-world scenarios as a force that shapes how people conceive the values of nature. For example, proposed modes of plural-value deliberation to reform institutions and shift social norms toward justice and sustainability need to be able to bridge sacred–secular policy divides. This article evaluates how religion interacts with nature’s values by building upon reviews conducted for the IPBES Values Assessment. We present different conceptualizations of religion and explore how these relate to various understandings of social-ecological change. Further, we delineate how religion interacts with values based on three interrelated forms of agency: personal, social, and more-than-human processes. Upon this foundation, we discuss how to better engage religion in environmental policy and research, considering four modes of mobilizing sustainability-aligned values: (1) enabling, (2) including, (3) reflecting, and (4) shifting values and two analytical axes regarding religion’s (1) social scale (individual versus collective) and (2) dynamic continuum (religion as stable versus changeable). Our assessment provides conceptual and practical tools to help consider religion in the processes and practices that shape, reinforce, or impede sustainability-aligned values for more inclusive and effective conservation decision-making.

The post The role of religion in shaping the values of nature first appeared on Ecology & Society.