The power of social innovation to steer sustainable governance of nature

The governance of nature is facing remarkable dynamics resulting from massive societal challenges in socio-ecological systems. These challenges include land use and climate change, food insecurity and carbon intensive production, biodiversity losses and increasing pressures on the natural environment and human health. To address the challenges, the European Green Deal (2019) brings in essential arguments to transform the former course of action towards designing and implementing a long-term strategy of living with nature and using it. This ambition would require substantial societal changes at various levels, and social innovation opens new prospects to foster these.

Social innovation includes new institutional environments (e.g., of formal and informal rules) and arrangements (spatial and procedural), related actors' relationships and interactions (e.g., new attitudes, collaborations, values, behaviours, skills, practices and learning processes) and new fields of activity (e.g., social entrepreneurship, social enterprises). It manifests itself in new social relationships and collaborations (e.g., processes, interactions, networks), while governance mechanisms based on these collaborations commonly advance social capital and can create new social innovations (SCU, 2014).

The project ‘Social Innovation in Marginalised rural areas’ (SIMRA) defines social innovation as ‘the reconfiguring of social practices, in response to societal challenges, which seeks to enhance outcomes on societal well-being and necessarily includes the engagement of civil society actors’ (Polman et al., 2017). The term ‘social innovation’ is applied to depict a broad range of activities designed to address inherent problems of society (Neumeier, 2016). Attention to social innovation has risen with respect to its potential to promote civic values and foster transformation changes (Baker & Mehmood, 2015; Castro-Arce & Vanclay, 2020; Haxeltine et al., 2017; Kluvánková et al., 2021; Pel et al., 2019) associated with the steering of sustainable development and promoting a more sustainable governance of nature (Gorizz-Mifsud et al., 2019; Melnykovych et al., 2018; Nijnik et al., 2022; Secco et al., 2021; SIMRA, 2016-2020; Weiss et al., 2021). The COVID-19 outbreak interconnected economic–climate–environmental–health crises and necessitated immediate and adequate societal responses to be strategic by nature but with actions to be taken steadily and at the local level (Nijnik et al., 2021; Pedrini & Zaccone, 2021).

The European Union has provided an essential leverage capacity for the emergence of social innovation (Hubert, 2017). Social innovation is a product of policy discourses and a means of delivering support to local communities, especially when and where markets and existing public institutions fail (Millard, 2018; Moulaert et al., 2017; Nijnik et al., 2019a, 2019b). The European Union supported the Horizon 2020 projects of SIMRA, Sherpa, AgriLink and others. They have advanced the state-of-the-art knowledge of social innovation in agriculture, forestry and rural development (Kluvánková et al., 2018, 2021; Melnykovych et al., 2018; Nijnik et al., 2018, 2019a, 2019b; Sarkki et al., 2019a; Sarkki et al., 2019b; SIMRA, 2020).

Social innovation has been conceptualised (Kluvánková et al., 2018; Vercher et al., 2021) and a concept of diverging development paths (Kluvánková et al., 2021) developed, along with an innovative theory of how social innovation emerges and evolves, and how to boost it and scale up and out, in order to enhance human well-being and make transformative changes feasible (Barlagne et al., 2021; Nijnik et al., 2020; Ravazzoli et al., 2021; Sarkki et al., 2021).

Recent refinements of social science theories of sustainability transformation (Loorbach et al., 2020; Ostrom, 2009; Van der Have & Rubalcaba, 2016) embed social innovation into systematic processes of socio-ecological changes (Fischer-Kowalski et al., 2012; Melnykovych et al., 2018; Slee et al., 2022). The advancement of scientific knowledge (system, transformation and target knowledge, compare Nijnik et al., 2018; Gorizz-Mifsud et al., 2019; Kluvánková et al., 2021) and integration of empirical (Miller et al., 2020; Valero & Bryce, 2020), theoretical and expert knowledge of social innovation and innovative governance (Kluvánková et al., 2018; Ludvig et al., 2018) have enabled the co-production of solutions to challenges faced by people and nature with the formulation of recommendations for relevant EU, national and regional policies (Secco et al., 2019; Slee & Mosdale, 2020), and manifold communities of practice (Alkhaled & Jack, 2020; Metzger et al., 2019).

Specifically, the multi-dimensional transdisciplinary approaches developed enabled researchers to bring together a set of actors (representing businesses, academia, governments and civil society, including local communities across study areas) in a grouping of virtual laboratories. Interaction of stakeholder and science labs in two-way collaborative learning processes put into practice the concept of public innovation labs. The innovative living labs accelerated the creation of open, collaborative incubators for operationalising sustainable solutions to most pressing challenges and determining the role of social innovation in addressing these challenges.

These and other scientific advances in the conceptualization and operationalization of social innovation have been peer verified, and selected findings brought together in special journal issues of Forest Policy and Economics on Social innovation to increase the well-being of forest-dependent communities and promote sustainability in remote rural areas; and in Forest Policy and Economics on Innovation governance, as well as in Sustainability on Impact of Social Innovation on sustainable development of rural areas. The aim of this issue in the Environmental Policy and Governance journal is to reveal and explain the role of social innovation in steering the development of disadvantaged communities towards more prosperous futures through their more sustainable governance of nature.

Papers included in this journal issue seek to provide innovative solutions and sustainability considerations, ideas potentially useful for policymakers and practice communities at different levels, with an ultimate aim of building the resilience of socio-ecological systems to the main challenges that they face. The novelty provided includes showing that, in marginalised rural areas, where people have disadvantages and strongly depend on nature, social innovation has a high potential to deliver value and make a difference for both local communities and natural ecosystems. The novelty is also in suggesting innovative policy instruments, relevant incentives, and diverse entities as catalysts towards enhancing territorial governance and advancing environmental policy and management. The authors share their knowledge of how it can be done, explaining that this would entail new practices targeting new products, services, models and new social relationships, collaborations, and new fields of activity.

Specifically, in their paper ‘The green side of social innovation: using Sustainable Development Goals to classify environmental impacts of rural grassroots initiatives’, Marini Govigli et al. (2022) analyse the database of 238 validated social innovation examples in European and circum-Mediterranean rural areas, compiled within the SIMRA project. They use the characterisation of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to classify environmental impacts of rural grassroot social initiatives, determine the role of social innovation in addressing environmental impacts and demonstrate that 68% of the cases analysed have at least one direct environmental impact that aligns with an SDG target.

In their paper ‘Going out to get in – roles of forest conflicts in bottom-linked environmental governance progressing towards socio-political innovations’, Sarkki et al. (2022) elaborate a concept of bottom-linked environmental governance, which can take place either via collaboration, or by conflict, and then progress towards socio-political innovations. The findings from the analytical part of their research arrive at a heuristic framework to improve the knowledge of complex and dynamic relations between civil society and state-based institutions. The authors test their conceptual framework in two longitudinal cases of forest controversies in Northern Finland, and by examining a number of issues associated with the conflict-driven bottom-linked governance (including reasons for prolonged disputes; consideration of power relations, strategies, and counter-responses) they contemplate whether socio-political innovations can benefit all.

The paper by Brnkalakova et al. (2022) ‘Collective forestry regimes to enhance transition to climate smart forestry’ investigates forest ecosystem services as public or common goods that face a traditional social dilemma of individual versus collective interests, which could generate conflicts, and result in the overuse of resources and their depletion. The authors elaborate a conceptual analytical framework and examine the development of self-organised activities leading to carbon smart forestry initiatives, and how the self-organisation pathway supports and is supported by social innovations. The authors use selected European mountain areas to determine the potential for climate smart forestry, as a form of social innovation, in addressing the challenges faced by local communities.

Akinsete et al. (2022) in their paper ‘Social innovation for developing sustainable solutions in a fisheries sector’ explore how social innovation can provide a range of ecosystem services to local people while supporting public policies and private sector initiatives in delivering successful and innovative food distribution channels. Their results obtained for Greek fisheries identify third-sector social innovations as useful tools to develop novel distribution systems that provide employment and foster new networks and collaborations while improving governance practices by creating a fairer market that protects the marine environment. The findings can serve as a foundation upon which future evaluations of similar projects can build on and compare. Such comparisons among multiple cases are crucial in determining patterns related to innovation transfer processes.

In their article ‘Bridging social innovation with forest and landscape restoration’, Padovezi et al. (2022) search for nature-based solutions towards adapting and mitigating climate change, preventing mass species extinctions, and improving rural livelihoods. They contribute to theory development and by using a content analysis approach applied to existing literature, propose five possible conceptual bridges between forest and landscape restoration, and social innovation.

Xu et al. (2022), in their paper ‘Social innovation in a typical social-ecological system in China: identifying linkages between the dependence of key stakeholders on ecosystem services and the level of their multi-dimensional human well-being’, examine linkages between the ecosystem services offered by natural capital, and human well-being and underpin their investigation by the social innovation theory and a social–ecological system framework. The authors consider the heterogeneity of beneficiaries and assess human well-being, as it is valued by people, revealing their varied dependence on specific ecosystem services. The results allow the authors to discern key stakeholders and determine the driving factors mediating the linkages between ecosystem services and human well-being. In addition to contribution to science, the results have potential practical implications for steering a more sustainable governance of nature in the areas that are similar to the socio-ecological system in China analysed for this paper.

By analysing the case of indigenous northern shrimp community fisheries in Canada, Alberio and Soubirou (2022), in their paper of ‘How can a cooperative-based organization of indigenous fisheries foster the resilience to global changes? Lessons learned by coastal communities in Eastern Québec’, develop ideas around a sustainable socially innovative model for facing the effects of global changes and show that First Nations fisheries' initiative can foster resilience against the current decline of the fishery's resource. The authors provide evidence that a scaling up of organisational practices seems possible within the industry, and this could also be an answer to the challenges caused by the decline of the resource base faced by non-indigenous fishers. The authors show (i) how innovative cooperative-based organisation of fisheries that is oriented towards community development can foster the resilience in a socially vulnerable context, at a micro and macro level and (ii) how collaboration between diverse types of fisheries organisations can allow socially innovative practices to develop and scale up.

The paper by Špaček et al. (2022) ‘The role of knowledge in supporting the revitalisation of traditional landscape governance through social innovation in Slovakia’ focuses on social innovations that are supporting the revival of traditional landscape governance and on the role of knowledge in revitalisation of traditional farming in marginalised rural settings in Slovakia. The results demonstrate the importance of external knowledge for triggering social innovation in rural localities, and that the mix of local and external knowledge and the co-production of new knowledge (particularly through the networking of local stakeholders with science and policy representatives) are crucial for enhancing the development of social innovation and supporting a more sustainable governance of nature.

Thus, in this journal issue, we demonstrate that joint social initiatives and innovative actions, involving scientific and practice labs, policy and third-sector actors and representatives of local communities, along with a proper combination of top-down and bottom-up governance approaches, supported by adequate policy instruments and incentives, can help in the developing of capabilities to tackle the challenges that marginalised rural areas currently face. The articles included in this issue provide answers on how to integrate local knowledge in decision-making; how to assess relevant policies through an improved understanding of the prevailing attitudes and perceptions; how to bring natural capital and ecosystem services into climate change adaptation plans and address wider sustainability goals.

In the context of the arguments presented that are underpinned by empirical evidence, in this issue, we examine the emergence and development of social innovation associated with the use of natural capital. We strive to further advance the knowledge of how to initiate, boost and spread social innovation to help revive rural communities and how to build capacities and develop collaborations to promote innovative governance of nature. The common theme, making the papers a coherent set, is their focus on explaining social innovation and how it evolves; how local knowledge and cultures can be integrated into decision-making and how the impact of social innovation can be assessed.

The papers in this Special Issue highlight an important role of social innovation in enabling relevant policies and decision-making processes to achieve a more sustainable and multi-functional use of natural capital for the benefit of communities relying on it. Specifically, the importance is shown of connecting top-down policy with bottom-up endogenous action and of the realisation that social capital is crucial for success. Along with the contribution to the social science theory, the papers unlock the knowledge of how to establish social innovation actions and what factors can enable them to thrive. The authors bring examples from Europe and beyond to provide empirical evidence for academia, policy actors and communities of practice. They show that social innovation can have the power to open opportunities in disadvantaged communities to overcome existing challenges in natural resource management and foster sustainable development to leave no one behind.

Research questions that merit further attention include: how to empower innovators for the development of solutions to climate and environmental challenges, and to enhance the green recovery? What models of social innovation are most effective for improving mental health and well-being? What are the perceptions, driving forces and motivations of different actors initiating social innovations? How to foster and sustain social innovations, and to scale these up and out?

An advanced understanding of innovative environmental governance and social innovation (and digitalization) in forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and wider rural development can be useful for various end-users, including academics working in the field. However, the knowledge of social innovation for sustainable nature governance in rural areas is less advanced than in urban settings. It is also not easy to initiate, develop and especially spread social innovation in rural areas, whereas the societal role of social innovation in a countryside is increasing (Nijnik, 2021). Thus, new relationships among local rural communities, citizens, public–private bodies, farmers and landowners, advisors, businesses, et al., and academics need to be developed. The capacities to innovate socially are to be built.

The war in Ukraine has shown, as never before, the necessity to build resilience of socio-ecological systems to be able to tackle what the UN General Secretary, António Guterres described as a global ‘triple food, energy and financial crisis ’. This special journal issue is, therefore, pertinent and timely in demonstrating that social innovation and innovative governance of natural capital could be a powerful and valuable tool for designing, developing and diffusing solutions to multifaceted disturbances and crises, requiring societal or behavioural shifts towards more sustainable choices in environmental policy and management.