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Farming systems that support locally diverse agricultural production and high levels of biodiversity are in rapid decline, despite evidence of their benefits for climate, environmental health, and food security. Yet, agricultural policies, financial incentives, and market concentration increasingly constrain the viability of diversified farming systems. Here, we present a conceptual framework to identify novel processes that promote the emergence and sustainability of diversified farming systems, using three real-world examples where farming communities have found pathways to diversification despite major structural constraints. By applying our framework to analyze these bright spots in the United States, Brazil, and Malawi, we identify two distinct pathways—network and institutional—to diversification. These pathways emerge through alignment of factors related to social and ecological structure (policies, institutions, and environmental conditions) and agency (values, collective action, and management decisions). We find that, when network and institutional pathways operate in tandem, the potential to scale up diversification across farms and landscapes increases substantially.

Farming systems that support locally diverse agricultural production and high levels of biodiversity are in rapid decline, despite evidence of their benefits for climate, environmental health, and food security. Yet, agricultural policies, financial incentives, and market concentration increasingly constrain the viability of diversified farming systems. Here, we present a conceptual framework to identify novel processes that promote the emergence and sustainability of diversified farming systems, using three real-world examples where farming communities have found pathways to diversification despite major structural constraints. By applying our framework to analyze these bright spots in the United States, Brazil, and Malawi, we identify two distinct pathways—network and institutional—to diversification. These pathways emerge through alignment of factors related to social and ecological structure (policies, institutions, and environmental conditions) and agency (values, collective action, and management decisions). We find that, when network and institutional pathways operate in tandem, the potential to scale up diversification across farms and landscapes increases substantially.

Sustainability-focused research networks and communities of practice have emerged as a key response and strategy to build capacity and knowledge to support transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. This paper synthesises insights from the development of a community of practice on social-ecological systems (SES) research in southern Africa over the past decade, linked to the international Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS). This community consists of a network of researchers who carry out place-based SES research in the southern African region. They interact through various cross-cutting working groups and also host a variety of public colloquia and student and practitioner training events. Known as the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), its core objectives are to: (1) derive new approaches and empirical insights on SES dynamics in the southern African context; (2) have a tangible impact by mainstreaming knowledge into policy and practice; and (3) grow the community of practice engaged in SES research and governance, including researchers, students and practitioners. This paper reflects on experiences in building the SAPECS community, with the aim of supporting the development of similar networks elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Global South.

Social media data are transforming sustainability science. However, challenges from restrictions in data accessibility and ethical concerns regarding potential data misuse have threatened this nascent field. Here, we review the literature on the use of social media data in environmental and sustainability research. We find that they can play a novel and irreplaceable role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by allowing a nuanced understanding of human-nature interactions at scale, observing the dynamics of social-ecological change, and investigating the co-construction of nature values. We reveal threats to data access and highlight scientific responsibility to address trade-offs between research transparency and privacy protection, while promoting inclusivity. This contributes to a wider societal debate of social media data for sustainability science and for the common good.

Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resilience (robustness, recovery, and reorientation—the three “Rs”). We focus on enhancing resilience of food system outcomes and argue this will require food system actors adapting their activities, noting that activities do not change spontaneously but in response to a change in drivers: an opportunity or a threat. However, operationalizing resilience enhancement involves normative choices and will result in decisions having to be negotiated about trade-offs among food system outcomes for different stakeholders. New approaches to including different food system actors’ perceptions and goals are needed to build food systems that are better positioned to address challenges of the future. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Human societies are exploiting natural renewable sources such as fisheries, forests, groundwater basins, rivers, and soil at an increasing intensity. Around the world, these resources are being managed by various institutions or governments. One of the challenges faced by institutions is to develop strategies and policies to effectively manage these renewable resources under social and ecological uncertainties, disturbances, policy implementation difficulties, and measurement errors. In this paper, a fishery is considered as an example and the problem of managing a fishery is approached from a control systems perspective. The justification behind this approach is due to the observation that the problem of managing a renewable resource can be posed as a control systems problem and that the discipline of control systems possesses tools and methods to deal with model uncertainties, external disturbances, measurement errors and implementation issues. For the fishery, a depensation type population dynamics model is considered. Depensatory models are used in social/ecological systems in order to model dynamics of certain species of fish populations. An optimal control strategy based on Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle is derived and its sustainability and robustness properties with respect to parametric uncertainties, measurement errors and disturbances are examined. Finally, a sub-optimal but more robust control strategy is proposed and its robustness properties are provided. The main objective of the paper is to show that a control systems engineering approach can be applied to a social-ecological problem and it can provide easy to implement management strategies, insight, and guidance into the management of renewable resources.

ispartof: PEOPLE AND NATURE vol:4 issue:5 pages:1319-1338 status: published

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Adoption by livestock producers of preventive non-lethal innovations forms a critical pathway towards human and large carnivore coexistence. However, it is impeded by factors such as socio-cultural contexts, governing institutions, and ‘perverse’ economic incentives that result in a ‘lock-in’ of lethal control of carnivores in grazing systems. In Australian rangelands, the dingo is the dominant predator in conflict with ‘graziers’ and is subjected to lethal control measures despite evidence indicating that its presence in agricultural landscapes can provide multiple benefits. Here we explore the barriers to the uptake of preventive innovations in livestock grazing through 21 in-depth interviews conducted with Australian graziers, researchers, and conservation and government representatives. Drawing on Donella Meadow’s leverage points for system change framework, we focus, primarily, on barriers in the ‘political sphere’ because they appear to form the greatest impediment to the adoption of non-lethal tools and practices. These barriers are then discussed in relation to characteristics of lock-in traps (self-reinforcement, persistence, path dependencies, and undesirability) to assess how they constrain the promotion of human–dingo coexistence.

Tropical forests are complex systems containing myriad interactions and feedbacks with their biotic and abiotic environments, but as the world changes fast, the future of these ecosystems becomes increasingly uncertain. In particular, global stressors may unbalance the feedbacks that stabilize tropical forests, allowing other feedbacks to propel undesired changes in the whole ecosystem. Here, we review the scientific literature across various fields, compiling known interactions of tropical forests with their environment, including the global climate, rainfall, aerosols, fire, soils, fauna, and human activities. We identify 170 individual interactions among 32 elements that we present as a global tropical forest network, including countless feedback loops that may emerge from different combinations of interactions. We illustrate our findings with three cases involving urgent sustainability issues: (1) wildfires in wetlands of South America; (2) forest encroachment in African savanna landscapes; and (3) synergistic threats to the peatland forests of Borneo. Our findings reveal an unexplored world of feedbacks that shape the dynamics of tropical forests. The interactions and feedbacks identified here can guide future qualitative and quantitative research on the complexities of tropical forests, allowing societies to manage the nonlinear responses of these ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

Biological and cultural diversity are inextricably linked and rapidly eroding worldwide. As a response, many conservation efforts foster synergies between cultural and biological diversity agendas through biocultural approaches. However, such approaches do not always address biocultural conflicts, where certain cultural practices can lead to biodiversity loss and, in turn, threaten the continuance of such practices. In this study, we examined a biocultural conflict in the Dimi ceremony, the most important rite of passage of the Daasanach agro-pastoralists of north Kenya, in which skins from threatened carnivore species are used extensively as traditional ornaments. We quantified the current use of skins in Dimi as well as changes in the cultural ceremony that exacerbate its impacts on wildlife. We collected field-based data on the context of the use of skins through structured interviews, focus-group discussions, participant observation and counts of skins in two Dimi ceremonies. We counted a total of 121 skins of four carnivore species being used in a single ceremony. We also found that Dimi has become environmentally unsustainable, threatening distant cheetah Acinonyx jubatus and leopard Panthera pardus populations and local species with spotted skins (African civet Civettictis civetta, common genet Genetta genetta and serval Leptailurus serval). The young Daasanach are deeply concerned about the lack of availability of skins in their area, as well as the prohibitive prices, and they are calling for alternatives to the use of skins in Dimi. Overall, our study shows that acknowledging biocultural conflicts and opening space for dialogue with local communities are essential for the maintenance of both biological and cultural diversity.

Human societies face huge environmental and societal challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, and social unrest as intersecting crises and periods of rapid change impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. There are a wide variety of concepts, approaches, and tools employed to respond to these challenges including the idea of enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to sustain the vital flow of ecosystem services(ES) that humanity depends on. Thisresearch examinesthe concept of ecosystem services as a metaphor and practical conservation tool, highlighting both the flexibility in its application alongside concerns about its effectiveness and anthropocentric focus. The aim of this thesis is to increase the visibility of the systems and structures underlying the framings used to justify different conservation approaches in order to realise more equitable and actionable outcomes for people and nature. The framing of nature’s benefits to people as ‘ecosystem services’, using the context of peatland conservation in Ireland, is the overarching concept being explored. The central question is whether the ES framework is an effective, inclusive and actionable framework for delivering better outcomes for people and peatlands. The thesis also examines the role of local conservation initiatives in the governance of peatlands, and how community voices and values can be included when applying the ES approach. Organised around three journal articles, the research explores a different facet of ecosystem services including cultural ecosystem services of peatlands; the broader context of ecosystem services as co-produced in social-ecological systems; and applications of the ES concept in Ireland. Each of these articles primarily explores the context of peatland conservation, with related applications in ES research and agriculture also emerging in the course of the research. The first phase of this research involved conducting an in-depth literature review to identify ES frameworksthat relate to cultural services, to present a theoretical basisfor the study, and to provide a rationale for the chosen methodology design. The research applied a mixed methods approach with case studies of three peatland sitesin the Irish midlands. The methods employed included an online survey, mapping workshops with participants in the three case study sites, and qualitative semi-structured interviews with a selection of individuals working in ecosystem services research, policy and practice in Ireland. Empirical findings of thisresearch support the idea that cultural ecosystem services are not adequately accounted for in ES assessments and valuations and that their integration is crucial in order for applications of the concept to be credible. Furthermore, the research reveals the need for such assessments to include temporal, sensory, and emotional aspects of people’s experiences with landscapes in order to adequately represent the deeply meaningful relationships people have to these places. This study also highlights the reciprocal nature of people’s interactions with peatlands as they work and volunteer to restore and care for these places, countering the idea of a one-way flow of services from nature to people. This research reveals how the restorative ‘work’ carried out by communities stems from the resourcefulness of communities on the ground who are actively shaping and managing these landscapes in novel ways. These new cultural practices and narratives manifest in the diverse forms of volunteer work and community activities that draw on an extensive network of resources, partnerships, and local ‘economies’ to achieve their aims. Finally, the findings reveal a range of ways the ES concept is being applied at local and national levels in Ireland, examining the consequences and effects of the ES framing to better observe and manage power dynamics and inequities in its application. Fostering transparency and reflection on values, language and power dynamics helps make visible the cultural and social structures that underlie the ES framing and encourages the development of ES approaches that are effective inclusive, and actionable.

In this article, we propose an agenda promoting the development of a new integrated assessment toolkit (theory-based toolkit) of environmental governance in overlooked ecosystems of grasslands and savannahs in the Global South. To explore the complexity of social-ecological and governance systems, a growing number of systems-thinking approaches provide academics/practitioners with numerous analytical frameworks, theories, and methodologies that are potentially useful for unveiling institutional aspects along with their causal variables for the access, use and management of natural resources. Yet, we argue that achieving a comprehensive understanding of environmental governance systems only by using one single framework or theory is limiting. Further, there is a growing need of more social science knowledge and grassland and savannah context-specific frameworks that are tailored and applicable to policy settings. Therefore, by building on the five approaches of the political ecological framework of community-based governance (CBG) relating to key environmental governance frameworks, such as the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and the institutional and development framework (IAD), we propose a theory-based toolkit that would review, synthesize, connect, relate and test multiple core principles in a way that more fully accounts for social-ecological interactions in focal ecosystems. We are convinced that future empirical analysis/research following our agenda and the toolkit approach can generate hypotheses that are testable in real-life contexts. To this end, we suggest guiding research questions, research methods, as well as comparable cases and their rationales.

Urban waterways are an important part of urban ecosystems, and well-managed urban waterways can support diverse benefits to communities and nature. The literature suggests that collaborative engagement is a pathway to unlocking broader benefits. There is, however, an intention–implementation gap, limiting the adoption of community collaboration in urban waterways governance. This paper reports on two case studies based on interviews and analysed with the aim of better understanding the factors that cause this dilemma. The case studies are in Melbourne, Australia, and are examples of where such community participation practices have been attempted. Our analysis includes twenty-three semi-structured interviews from these two cases. Data were analysed using the Values–Rules–Knowledge framework, a heuristic to help decision-makers analyse how social systems shape decision contexts. The results from the case study highlight three key factors that hinder effective community involvement. Bureaucratic processes act as de facto gatekeepers, reinforcing existing power dynamics. Inclusivity is difficult to define and achieve, highlighting the limited availability of appropriate tools. Finally, implementing participatory practices is resource intensive in terms of time, staff skills, and funding, leading to inadequate resourcing. Overcoming these challenges requires a comprehensive change in bureaucratic procedures, choice of engagement methods, and improved resource management.

Conservation research and practice are increasingly engaging with people and drawing on social sciences to improve environmental governance. In doing so, conservation engages with power in many ways, often implicitly. Conservation scientists and practitioners exercise power when dealing with species, people and the environment, and increasingly they are trying to address power relations to ensure effective conservation outcomes (guiding decision-making, understanding conflict, ensuring just policy and management outcomes). However, engagement with power in conservation is often limited or misguided. To address challenges associated with power in conservation, we introduce the four dominant approaches to analyzing power to conservation scientists and practitioners who are less familiar with social theories of power. These include actor-centered, institutional, structural, and, discursive/governmental power. To complement these more common framings of power, we also discuss further approaches, notably non-human and Indigenous perspectives. We illustrate how power operates at different scales and in different contexts, and provide six guiding principles for better consideration of power in conservation research and practice. These include: (1) considering scales and spaces in decision-making, (2) clarifying underlying values and assumptions of actions, (3) recognizing conflicts as manifestations of power dynamics, (4) analyzing who wins and loses in conservation, (5) accounting for power relations in participatory schemes, and, (6) assessing the right to intervene and the consequences of interventions. We hope that a deeper engagement with social theories of power can make conservation and environmental management more effective and just while also improving transdisciplinary research and practice.

Building a harmonious relationship between human society and river ecosystems has attracted much attention from both government officials and the academy community. Based on the perspective of social-ecological systems (SES), taking the Carp Brook (located in northern Fujian Province, China) as an example, the construction and maintenance of a time-honored artificial river ecosystem was investigated, and its ecosystem services were analyzed. Findings show that the Carp Brook was constructed through a series of ecological engineering, including a transformation of the river channel, building a stable habitat, and breeding carps. The carps have been protected effectively by some folk customs, such as village regulations and folk belief. Meanwhile, the water quality has been maintained through some engineering and institutional measures, which were completed by the local government and villagers. Furthermore, some cultural elements with local characteristics have been formed during the long years of coexistence between human society and the Carp Brook. Based on a healthy ecosystem and abundant culture elements, the Carp Brook provided continuous ecosystem services to human society for more than 800 years, including regulation services (e.g., water purification and flood control) and cultural services (e.g., tourism, research and education, inspiration). Major enlightenments from the Carp Brook are: (a) the Chinese traditional view of nature is important for the construction and maintenance of an artificial ecosystem; (b) traditional folk customs have a strong binding force regarding the protection of the ecosystem; and (c) the choice between material and immaterial services should be made carefully.

Hunting is a widespread but often overlooked land-use activity, providing major benefits to society. Hunting takes place in most landscapes, yet it remains unclear which types of landscapes foster or dampen hunting-related services, and how hunting relates to other land uses. A better understanding of these relationships is key for sustainable land-use planning that integrates wildlife management. This is particularly urgent for Europe, where wildlife populations are increasing. Focusing on Sweden, we explored the spatial associations among hunting, agriculture, and forestry to identify archetypical combinations of these land uses. Specifically, we combined indicators on the extent and intensity of agriculture and forestry, with data on hunting bags for 63 game species using self-organizing maps, a non-parametric clustering approach. We identified 15 typical bundles of co-occurring land uses at the municipality level across Sweden. The harvest of forest grouse, bears, and moose co-occurred with forestry in northern Sweden, whereas the harvest of small game, different deer species, and wild boar co-occurred with agriculture across southern Sweden, reflecting species’ biology, environmental factors, and management. Our findings also highlight the strength of associations among hunting and other land uses. Importantly, we identified large areas in central Sweden where harvest of game was below average, possibly indicating that intensity of hunting is out of balance with that of agriculture or forestry, potentially fostering conflict between wildlife and land use. Collectively, our results suggest that (1) hunting should be considered a major land use that, in Sweden, is more widespread than agriculture and forestry; (2) land-use planning must therefore integrate wildlife management; and (3) such an integration should occur in a regionalized manner that considers social-ecological context. Our approach identifies a first spatial template within which such context-specific land-use planning, aiming at aligning wildlife and diverse land uses, can take place.

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits-"win-wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119 (7), ISSN:0027-8424, ISSN:1091-6490

PurposeThis article seeks to broaden how researchers in supply chain management view supply chain resilience by drawing on and integrating insights from other disciplines – in particular, the literature on the resilience of social-ecological systems.Design/methodology/approachBefore the authors import new notions of resilience from outside the discipline, the current state of the art in supply chain resilience research is first briefly reviewed and summarized. Drawing on five practical examples of disruptive events and challenges to supply chain practice, the authors assess how these examples expose gaps in the current theoretical lenses. These examples are used to motivate and justify the need to expand our theoretical frameworks by drawing on insights from the literature on social-ecological systems.FindingsThe supply chain resilience literature has predominantly focused on minimizing the consequences of a disruption and on returning to some form of steady state (often assumed to be identical to the state that existed prior to the disruption) implicitly assuming the supply chain behaves like an engineered system. This article broadens the debate around supply chain resilience using literature on social-ecological systems that puts forward three manifestations of resilience: (1) persistence, which is akin to an engineering-based view, (2) adaptation and (3) transformation. Furthermore, it introduces seven principles of resilience thinking that can be readily applied to supply chains.Research limitations/implicationsA social-ecological interpretation of supply chains presents many new avenues of research, which may rely on the use of innovative research methods to further our understanding of supply chain resilience.Practical implicationsThe article encourages managers to think differently about supply chains and to consider what this means for their resilience. The three manifestations of resilience are not mutually exclusive. For example, while persistence may be needed in the initial aftermath of a disruption, adaptation and transformation may be required in the longer term.Originality/valueThe article challenges traditional assumptions about supply chains behaving like engineered systems and puts forward an alternative perspective of supply chains as being dynamic and complex social-ecological systems that are impossible to entirely control.

In this paper, we explore the complex entanglements between ongoing land conflicts and climate shocks, and their implications for risk governance paths and evolution. We focus on ways in which concepts of shock and conflict can be incorporated into social–ecological systems thinking and applied to risk governance practice in a southern cities context. Through a qualitative inquiry of two slum redevelopment projects in Bhubaneswar city in India, we trace the origin and evolution of conflict around land tenure and eviction in informal settlements, as well as its interaction with local manifestations of climate shocks. Climate policies, as responses to climate shock and intended to mitigate climate risk, are observed as constructed, interpreted, framed, and used strategically by formal actors to further urban development objectives, while the local knowledge systems, risk perceptions, and adaptations are ignored in practice. This study helps to re-think the complexities of climate risk governance in southern urban spaces where multiple risks overlap and interact within the diverse realities of informality and vulnerability. A singular focus on one type of risk, on the formal order to manage that risk, is likely to overlook other risks and opportunities. Hence, shocks are likely to produce more unanticipated effects, conflicts function as the unobserved middle term, and the formal policies and plans to mitigate climate risk contribute to the creation of new risk.

The social-ecological systems (SES) approach has become prominent in the social sciences over the past few decades. It understands societies as complex and dynamic systems comprised of interacting social, economic, and environmental components. Originating in the natural sciences, concepts such as resilience, adaptability, and vulnerability have been adapted to examine the responses of social systems to various social- ecological challenges. We rely on the SES approach in assessing the quality of life in Croatia’s rural areas in light of global and local social, economic and ecological changes. We will present the results from deep semi-structured interviews conducted in 2022 among the Croatian rural population (N=50) on their evaluation of objective and subjective aspects of their quality of life. The results confirmed the applicability of the SES approach to rural quality of life assessment. This research was conducted as part of the project SECRURAL funded by the Croatian National Science Foundation (UIP-2019-04-5257).

Wind erosion from agricultural land is an underrated and understudied environmental challenge in Europe. Its societal and policy relevance will likely increase in the near future due to climate change and associated increases in the frequency, severity and patterns of atmospheric events such as droughts. We review the research on this issue and find it to be fragmented, siloed and dominated by natural sciences, leaving important research gaps. The most important gaps that circumscribe a research agenda for the future include specific effects of future climate change on wind erosion, the relevance of wind erosion for public health and ecosystem functioning, farmers' behaviour affecting erosion risk and feedback between land management and environmental change, and appropriate policy approaches to address wind erosion risks. Social science contributions are thus required to make wind erosion research relevant for addressing the related societally most pressing questions. We provide a social–environmental systems perspective to highlight the potential of inter‐ and transdisciplinary research into wind erosion in times of climate change and the increasingly recognized need to transform agriculture towards more sustainability and climate resilience.

This cumulative dissertation takes a comparative approach to studying the spatial patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes of Germany and Japan. In both countries, biodiversity and ecosystem services maintained by the respective traditional farming systems are declining due to agricultural intensification and land abandonment. Landscape associations of bird species that are typical in agricultural landscapes of Germany and Japan were analyzed jointly, while spatial associations of ecosystem services were investigated using data from Japan only owing to the different frameworks used by public institutions for gathering data. Findings from the latter study were compared to published results from the literature in Europe. Both studies were carried out at the national level. Distribution data on bird species were obtained from nationwide monitoring programs, and metrics of landscape structure and ecosystem services linked to agroecosystems were calculated based on spatial datasets and public statistics using a geographical information system. The first chapter demonstrates that farmland bird diversity responds to the proportions of farmland cover and semi-natural habitat cover in a similar way between Germany and Japan. The results also suggest that landscape associations can vary according to the countries. Woodland edge density had a pronounced effect on species numbers in Germany where farmland dominates. In contrast, farmland cover was more relevant in Japan than in Germany; in Japan, where forests dominate, the effect of woodland edge density was only marginal. The importance of open habitats and landscape heterogeneity for maintaining farmland bird diversity was supported by these findings. In the second chapter, landscapes in Japan specializing either in commodity production or in cultural services and habitat features were identified based on indicators for agricultural ecosystem services and farmland biodiversity. The latter landscapes coincided with areas at risk of land abandonment. The spatial aggregation of biodiversity and culturally valuable resources on marginal land, where traditional farming systems are likely to persist, underlies the importance of conserving the structural features of traditional farming systems. To conclude, this dissertation supports the notion that landscape structure, biodiversity, and ecosystem services are linked significantly, and that such links apply generally in Germany and Japan.

Human interferences within the Earth System are accelerating, leading to major impacts and feedback that we are just beginning to understand. Summarized under the term 'global change' these impacts put human and natural systems under ever-increasing stress and impose a threat to human well-being, particularly in the Global South. Global governance bodies have acknowledged that decisive measures have to be taken to mitigate the causes and to adapt to these new conditions. Nevertheless, neither current international nor national pledges and measures reach the effectiveness needed to sustain global human well-being under accelerating global change. On the contrary, competing interests are not only paralyzing the international debate but also playing an increasingly important role in debates over social fragmentation and societal polarization on national and local scales. This interconnectedness of the natural and the social system and its impact on social phenomena such as cooperation and conflicts need to be understood better, to strengthen social resilience to future disturbances, drive societal transformation towards socially desirable futures while at the same time avoiding path dependencies along continuing colonial continuities. As a case example, this thesis provides insights into southwestern Amazonia, where the intertwined challenges of human contribution to global change in all its dimensions, as well as human adaptation and mitigation attempts to the imposed changes become exaggeratedly visible. As such, southwestern Amazonia with its high social, economic, and biological diversity is a good example to study the deep interrelations of humans with nature and the consequences these relations have on social cohesion amid an ecological crisis. Therefore, this thesis takes a social-ecological perspective on conflicts and social cohesion. Social cohesion is in a wider sense understood as the way "how members of a society, group, or organization relate to each other and work together" (Dany and Dijkzeul 2022, p. 12). In particular in contexts of violence, conflicts, and fragility, little has been investigated on the role of social cohesion to govern public goods and build resilience for (future) environmental crises. At the same time, governments and international decision-makers more and more acknowledge the role of social cohesion _ comprising both relations between social groups and between groups and the state _ to build upon resilience against crises. Facing uncertainty in how natural and social systems react to certain disturbances and shocks, the governance of potential tipping points, is an additional challenge for the governance of social-ecological systems (SES). Therefore, this thesis asks: "How does governance shape pathways towards cooperative or conflictive social-ecological tipping points?" The results of this thesis can be distinguished into theoretical/conceptual results and empirical results. Initial systematic literature research on the nexus of climate change, land use, and conflict revealed, an extensive body of literature on direct effects, for example, drought-related land use conflicts, with diverging opinions on whether global warming increases the risk for conflicts or not. Adding the perspective of indirect implications, we further identified research gaps, and also a lack of policy recognition, concerning the negative externalities on land use and conflict through climate mitigation and adaptation measures. On a conceptual note, taking a social cohesion perspective into the analysis is beneficial to shift the focus from the problem-oriented perspective of vulnerabilities and conflicts to global change and potential resulting conflicts to a solution-oriented perspective of enhancing agency and resilience to strengthen collaboration. The developed Social Cohesion Conceptual Model and the related analytical framework facilitate the incorporation of societal dynamics into the analysis of SES dynamics. In addition, the elaborated Tipping Multiverse Framework took up this idea and enhanced it with a more detailed perspective on the soil ecosystem and the household livelihood system to identify entry points to potential social-ecological tipping cascades. As such, the Tipping Multiverse Framework offered two matrices that can advance the understanding of regional SES by identifying core processes, functioning, and links in each TE and thus provide entry points to identify potential tipping cascades across SES sub-systems. The exemplified application of these two frameworks on southwestern Amazonia shows the analytical potential of both proposed frameworks in advancing the understanding of social-ecological tipping points and potential tipping cascades in a regional SES. On an empirical note, zooming in on questions of governance by applying a political ecology lens to human security, we find that 'glocal' resource governance often reproduces, amplifies, or creates power imbalances and divisions on and between different scales. Our results show that the winners of resource extraction are mostly found at the national and international scale while local communities receive little benefit and are left vulnerable to externalities. Hence, our study contributes to the existing research by stressing the importance of one underlying question: "governance by whom and for whom?" This question raised the demand to understand the underlying dynamics of resource governance and resulting conflicts. Therefore, we aimed at analyzing how (environmental) institutions influence the major drivers of social-ecological conflicts over land in and around three protected areas, Tambopata (Peru), the Extractive Reserve Chico Mendes (Brazil), and Manuripi (Bolivia). We found that state institutions, in particular, have the following effects on key conflict drivers: Overlapping responsibilities of governance institutions and limited enforcement of regulations protecting and empowering rural and disadvantaged populations, enabling external actors to (illegally) access and control resources in the protected areas. Consequently, the already fragile social contract between the residents of the protected area and its surrounding areas and the central state is further weakened by the expanding influence of criminal organizations that oppose the state's authority. For state institutions to avoid aggravating these conflict drivers but instead better manage them or even contribute to conflict prevention and mitigation, a transformation from reactive to reflexive institutions and the development of new reflexive governance competencies is needed. This need for reflexive governance becomes particularly visible when sudden disturbances or shocks impact the SES. Our analysis of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the interconnections of land use change, ecosystem services, human agency, conflict, and cooperation that the pandemic has had a severe influence on the human security of marginalized social groups in southwestern Amazonia. Civil society actions have been an essential strategy in the fight against COVID-19, not just in the health sector but also in the economic, political, social, and cultural realms. However, our research also showed that the pandemic has consolidated and partly renewed criminal structures, while the already weak state has fallen further behind due to additional tasks managing the pandemic and other disasters such as floods. In conclusion, it can be said that the reflexivity of governance is crucial to foster cooperation and preventing conflicts in the realm of social-ecological systems. By not only reacting to already occurring changes but also reflecting upon potential future changes, governance can shape transformation pathways away from the detrimental and towards life-sustaining pathways. It can do so, by exercising agency across scales to avoid the crossing of detrimental social-ecological tipping points but rather to trigger life-sustaining tipping points that contribute to global social-ecological well-being.

Cities worldwide face multiple social and ecological challenges, such as climate change and its impacts. Adapting and transforming our urban environments is urgent to improve their resilience to uncertain scenarios. These challenges require renewed urban solutions and force us to rethink their design processes. Multiple actors are involved in such processes, coming from different sectors, and sometimes having conflicting agendas and knowledge backgrounds. Many of these processes can be considered co-design processes, with actors interacting to improve the design quality, legitimacy, and feasibility. Many conceptualise cities as social-ecological systems and public spaces are their subsystems. A collaborative approach to designing public spaces contributes to integrating the social-ecological knowledge from the public, private, and citizen actors. The question remains: How is sometimes conflicting social-ecological knowledge integrated into public space co-design processes? We study two large-scale urban parks in Chile. We framed them as social-ecological systems and analysed their co-design processes. This study aims to provide insights into the difficult-to-grasp phenomena of knowledge integration in co-design processes. We analysed these cases in previous studies. Now we provide insights into social-ecological knowledge integration in co-design processes. Although framed in Latin America, the findings may be helpful elsewhere.

Small farms are thought to produce around a third of the global crop supply. But, in the wake of the climate crisis, their existence is increasingly vulnerable to changes in the spatial and temporal availability of water. The small-scale irrigation systems which water these farms present a social-ecological dilemma: Upstream farms have prevailing access to a canal's resources, but all farms along the canal must contribute to maintaining the irrigation infrastructure. Thus, it is key to assess the social mechanisms which promote resilience in these systems and, more widely, in complex social-ecological dilemmas under changing conditions. Toward this, we build on previous work in which a stylized irrigation dilemma was simulated via a social lab experiment. Studies of the data produced from this experiment modeled participants' behavior with multiple, theoretically grounded agent-based models (ABMs). These models encode causal, human-interpretable hypotheses of decision making which generates the real-world behavior observed in the experiment. However, the accuracy of these models in fitting the experimental data is limited. Using Evolutionary Model Discovery, a recent algorithm for inverse generative social science (iGSS), we show the ability to automatically generate a wide variety of unique new ABMs which fit the experimental data more accurately and robustly than the original, manually-constructed ABMs. To do this, we algorithmically explore the space of possible behavioral rules for agents choosing how to contribute to the maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure. We find that, in contrast to the original models, our best-performing models typically have an additional element of stochasticity and favor factors such as other-regarding preferences and perceived relative income. Given that this change in just a small part of the original model has yielded such an advance, our results suggest that iGSS methods have great potential for continuing to derive more accurate models of complex social-ecological dilemmas.

The legal boundaries of protected areas, such as national parks are established and enforced by humans. Therefore, jurisdictional boundaries are ultimately have human meaning but not necessarily ecological relevance as natural phenomena such as watersheds and wildlife habitat often extend beyond a jurisdictional boundary. When considering the extent of natural system, we find that protected areas only make up part of a given ecosystem. The result is a large expanse of lands that fall under a various ownership types that include both publicly and privately designated tracts of land. This presents a management challenge when attempting to manage at the landscape-scale. Therefore, this research aims to explore cooperation among, and between the various actors living and working within a protected area-centered ecosystem (PACE). Through interviews with public land management officials, we found that successful cooperation is comprised of two overarching components: (1) Process (the ways in which success is achieved) and; (2) Outcome (measures, or evidence of successful cooperation). Additionally, a survey conducted among private landowners provided findings that suggest cooperation is correlated to shared objectives and shared beliefs about the need for cross-boundary management activities. Finally, this research suggests that the majority of private landowners are willing to work with public agencies and organizations and the importance of peer-to-peer communication in fostering cooperative engagement at the public-private interface.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M "Action situations"-instances of decision-making and agency-have become central to studying social-ecological systems. This special feature collects research using the network of action situations (NAS) approach to structure the way these action situations are embedded into broader interdependent instances of decision-making in different policy or discursive realms, spatial and jurisdictional context, or at different institutional levels. In this editorial, we summarize the key themes that emerged throughout the collection of the 17 articles included in this special feature. The editorial emphasizes the value of NAS in appropriately and sensitively reconstructing relations while pursuing consistency in modes of analysis. It highlights as key themes the complementarity of and disconnects between situations, temporality of NAS, and how NAS can structure the analysis of power in SES. Going further, we suggest expanding on the relational turn, developing NAS archetypes, and studying polycentric governance theories and hypotheses using the NAS approach.

Restoring riparian ecosystems in human-dominated landscapes requires attention to complexity, and consideration of diverse drivers, social actors, and contexts. Addressing a Global North bias, this case study uses a mixed-method approach, integrating historical data, remote sensing techniques and stakeholder perceptions to guide restoration of a river in the Western Cape, South Africa. An analysis of aerial photographs of the riparian zone from 1953 to 2016 revealed that although anthropogenic land conversion happened primarily before the 1950s, several land use and land cover classes showed marked increases in area, including: waterbodies (+ 1074%), urban areas (+ 316%), alien weeds (+ 311%) and terrestrial alien trees (+ 79%). These changes have likely been driven by land fragmentation, disturbance, and agricultural intensification. Stakeholder interviews revealed that despite the clear need for restoration, several barriers exist to successful implementation; these stem from inadequate financial resources, inappropriate funding models, institutional challenges, and a lack of techno-scientific knowledge. We give several recommendations to overcome these barriers. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-021-01691-y.

International audience; This paper aims to identify drivers and barriers to the achievement of EU water policy objectives in the agricultural sector by adopting an institutional perspective on water quality management at the landscape level. We apply a conceptual framework combining Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) and Institutional Design Principles (IDP) perspectives to analyze cooperation initiatives involving water suppliers and agricultural stakeholders to protect drinking water catchments from agricultural diffuse pollution. Three cases representing different forms of cooperation in rural landscapes in France were investigated on the basis of primary data collected at the local, water-basin and national levels. The results show that the success of multi-stakeholder collective action depends on both local factors such as characteristics of the water resource and stakeholders (knowledge, resources, trust and social capital) and on factors linked to the EU and national water and agricultural policy frameworks. In addition to the identification of drivers of and constraints on the implementation of EU water policy in agricultural landscapes, the analysis highlights the conceptual added value in combining the IDP and ILM approaches to understand policy implementation processes at the landscape level.

Long-term livestock grazing has shaped landscapes, biodiversity, societies, cultures, and economies in the North Atlantic over time. However, overgrazing has become a major environmental sustainability challenge for this region, covering the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Scotland. The objective of this study was to elicit narratives and spatial patterns of local people's management preferences for sheep grazing in the Faroe Islands through a socio-cultural lens. We collected data via a Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) survey with an open question about hopes and concerns for sheep management in the Faroe Islands and a mapping exercise for expressing spatial preferences for sheep management. Four distinct narratives emerged from a qualitative analysis of responses to the open question (n = 184): (1) Sustainable sheep management, (2) Nature without sheep, (3) Sheep as part of Faroese culture, and (4) Sheep as nuisance. Visual inspection of narrative-specific maps with locations where either no or fewer sheep were preferred indicated that sheep management is not simply a 'sheep vs. no sheep' issue but embedded in a more nuanced consideration of the place of sheep in the landscape and society. For example, for some residents sheep-farming is not a commercial enterprise but a social activity and local source of food. Our combined methodological approach using qualitative and spatial data can help researchers in other fields identify the interplay between place-specific areas of grazing management concern and socio-cultural values, enabling more targeted land-use management policies or plans.

We consider the case of the Flemish city of Ypres and its reconstruction after World War I to analyze the legacies of war, as a violent shock to social- ecological systems for the meaning and organization of land. We argue that these legacies can only be understood when considering the multiple meanings of land, including its association with identity, and when distinguishing between the effects on the land itself, on the community inhabiting that land and the governance system in that community. We demonstrate that war, in its diversity of effects reinforces some path dependencies while erasing others and creates space for reinvention. If a city and its countryside are entirely devastated, as with Ypres, actors in governance come and go, old institutions lose their binding powers, some stories and forms of knowledge remain persuasive and locally rooted, while others whither. The necessity to decide on the future, in a landscape that requires rebuilding, triggers debate, discursive production and options for reinvention. We reflect on the lessons of Ypres for other communities forced to contemplate reconstruction.

Recreational anglers have been key players in aquatic conservation, but this role is increasingly obscured. Other environmental sectors are now more visible stakeholders engaged with biodiversity. Recreational fishing has relevant environmental and moral implications, but these can be resolved via improved governance and management. More difficult is replacing the stewardship capacity provided by anglers. When analysed against a novel environmental stewardship framework based on place and identity, care, knowledge and agency, we find that marginalizing anglers could diminish aquatic biodiversity conservation. This outcome is likely because excellence in recreational fishing involves habituation of skills and ethical imperatives associated with sustainable and responsible use of fish populations. These dimensions are probably not so pertinent and correspondingly less developed in other nature stakeholders. Importantly, catching and killing wild animals catapults anglers into a food web and associated ecological conscience that most other outdoor activities cannot generate. As a result, recreational fishing often engenders feelings of care and responsibility for aquatic systems that support personal well‐being, bridging the stewardship value‐action gap through development of local assessment, management and evaluative competencies and associated agency. Transdisciplinary cooperation with scientists, managers and policymakers can unleash the stewardship potential of recreational anglers and engage their capacity for the common good.

The demand the human population is placing on the environment has triggered accelerated rates of biodiversity change and created trade-offs among the ecosystem services we depend upon. Decisions designed to reverse these trends require the best possible information obtained by monitoring ecological and social dimensions of change. Here, we conceptualize a network framework to monitor change in social–ecological systems. We contextualize our framework within Ostrom’s social–ecological system framework and use it to discuss the challenges of monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services across spatial and temporal scales. We propose that spatially explicit multilayer and multiscale monitoring can help estimate the range of variability seen in social–ecological systems with varying levels of human modification across the landscape. We illustrate our framework using a conceptual case study on the ecosystem service of maple syrup production. We argue for the use of analytical tools capable of integrating qualitative and quantitative knowledge of social–ecological systems to provide a causal understanding of change across a network. Altogether, our conceptual framework provides a foundation for establishing monitoring systems. Operationalizing our framework will allow for the detection of ecosystem service change and assessment of its drivers across several scales, informing the long-term sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Major global initiatives such as the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have overlooked the prospects of the river ecosystem in achieving SDGs (e.g., SDGs 6, 14), despite the substantial role of the river in human civilisation, and the contribution of river restoration to ecological improvement. Realising the role of river social-ecological systems in providing ecosystem services (ES) to society, we have made the first step, through a systematic review, to identify progress, gaps and future research directions for river restoration research across the globe. We systematically reviewed articles and summarised the trends of river restoration within the explicit context of ES assessment. The economic and ecological aspects of river restoration were the prime focus of major studies, whereas social benefits have been least addressed. The results identified the research gaps and future opportunities and tried to supplement those gaps by addressing the questions that need to be researched in future studies. The proposed conceptual framework is designed how application of ES perspective help to integrate social benefits in river restoration research. If we are to achieve sustainable management of water, food production and zero hunger goals, overcoming the identified conceptual and methodological gaps and conceptualising the river as a social-ecological system is necessary for future river restoration research.

As the COVID‐19 pandemic continues to affect societies across the world, the ongoing economic and social disruptions are likely to present fundamental challenges for current and future biodiversity conservation.We review the literature for outcomes of past major societal, political, economic and zoonotic perturbations on biodiversity conservation, and demonstrate the complex implications of perturbation events upon conservation efforts. Building on the review findings, we use six in‐depth case studies and the emerging literature to identify positive and negative outcomes of the COVID‐19 pandemic, known and anticipated, for biodiversity conservation efforts around the world.A number of similarities exist between the current pandemic and past perturbations, with experiences highlighting that the pandemic‐induced declines in conservation revenue and capacity, livelihood and trade disruptions are likely to have long‐lasting and negative implications for biodiversity and conservation efforts.Yet, the COVID‐19 pandemic also brought about a global pause in human movement that is unique in recent history, and may yet foster long‐lasting behavioural and societal changes, presenting opportunities to strengthen and advance conservation efforts in the wake of the pandemic. Enhanced collaborations and partnerships at the local level, cross‐sectoral engagement, local investment and leadership will all enhance the resilience of conservation efforts in the face of future perturbations. Other actions aimed at enhancing resilience will require fundamental institutional change and extensive government and public engagement and support if they are to be realised.The pandemic has highlighted the inherent vulnerabilities in the social and economic models upon which many conservation efforts are based. In so doing, it presents an opportunity to reconsider the status quo for conservation, and promotes behaviours and actions that are resilient to future perturbation. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article., A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Species spreading beyond their native ranges are important study objects in ecology and environmental sciences and research on biological invasions is thriving. Along with an increase in the number of publications, the research field is experiencing an increase in the diversity of methods applied and questions asked. This development has facilitated an upsurge in information on invasions, but it also creates conceptual and practical challenges. To provide more transparency on which kind of research is actually done in the field, the distinction between invasion science, encompassing the full spectrum of studies on biological invasions and the sub-field of invasion biology, studying patterns and mechanisms of species invasions with a focus on biological research questions, can be useful. Although covering a smaller range of topics, invasion biology today still is the driving force in invasion science and we discuss challenges stemming from its embeddedness in the social context. Invasion biology consists of the building blocks ‘theory’, ‘case studies’ and ‘application’, where theory takes the form of conceptual frameworks, major hypotheses and statistical generalisations. Referencing recent work in philosophy of science, we argue that invasion biology, like other biological or ecological disciplines, does not rely on the development of an all-encompassing theory in order to be efficient. We suggest, however, that theory development is nonetheless necessary and propose improvements. Recent advances in data visualisation, machine learning and semantic modelling are providing opportunities for enhancing knowledge management and presentation and we suggest that invasion science should use these to transform its ways of publishing, archiving and visualising research. Along with a stronger focus on studies going beyond purely biological questions, this would facilitate the efficient prevention and management of biological invasions.

As cornerstones for biodiversity conservation, protected areas (PAs) are critical to safeguard biodiversity. However, PAs are criticized for their limited ecological effectiveness and their negative social impacts. This article seeks to provide an overview on the contested nature of PAs and places PAs in the tension field of conservation and development, which are diverging forces specifically in the Global South. A reconciliation of PAs as parts of a wider landscape of interlinked social-ecological systems may increase the potential of PAs to contribute to the sustainable development goals, including the creation of sustainable human-nature relationships, environmental health and landscape resilience. The environmental justice framework appears useful in the endeavour to improve the social-ecological integrity of current conservation practises and to increase the ability of PA systems to withstand shocks. Considering PAs as systems in which people and nature interact in manifold ways may help increase their integrity, but understanding these interactions requires sustainability researchers and conservation practitioners to recognize the diversity in value towards nature, nature understanding and conceptualisations. Such deep understanding seems pivotal in working towards synergies of sustainable use, biocultural diversity and wilderness. Concludingly, this article emphasizes the need for holistic approaches rather than in sectoral specialisations and radicalisations to achieve arrays of sustainability goals. As cornerstones for biodiversity conservation, protected areas (PAs) are critical to safeguard biodiversity. However, PAs are criticized for their limited ecological effectiveness and their negative social impacts. This article seeks to provide an overview on the contested nature of PAs and places PAs in the tension field of conservation and development, which are diverging forces specifically in the Global South. A reconciliation of PAs as parts of a wider landscape of interlinked social-ecological systems may increase the potential of PAs to contribute to the sustainable development goals, including the creation of sustainable human-nature relationships, environmental health and landscape resilience. The environmental justice framework appears useful in the endeavour to improve the social-ecological integrity of current conservation practises and to increase the ability of PA systems to withstand shocks. Considering PAs as systems in which people and nature interact in manifold ways may help increase their integrity, but understanding these interactions requires sustainability researchers and conservation practitioners to recognize the diversity in value towards nature, nature understanding and conceptualisations. Such deep understanding seems pivotal in working towards synergies of sustainable use, biocultural diversity and wilderness. Concludingly, this article emphasizes the need for holistic approaches rather than in sectoral specialisations and radicalisations to achieve arrays of sustainability goals.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) - working with and enhancing nature to address societal challenges - are increasingly being featured in climate change adaptation policy and plans. While there is growing evidence that NbS can reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts in general, there is a lack of understanding on the mechanisms through which this can be achieved, particularly in the Global South. To address this, we analyse 85 nature-based interventions in rural areas across the Global South, and factors mediating their effectiveness, based on a systematic map of peer-reviewed studies encompassing a wide diversity of ecosystems, climate impacts, and intervention types. We develop and apply an analytical framework of people’s social-ecological vulnerability to climate change, in terms of six pathways of vulnerability reduction: social and ecological exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Most cases (95%) report a reduction in vulnerability, primarily by lowering ecosystem sensitivity to climate impacts (73% of interventions), followed by reducing social sensitivity (52%), reducing ecological exposure (36%), increasing social adaptive capacity (31%), increasing ecological adaptive capacity (19%) and/or reducing social exposure (14%). An analysis of mediating factors shows that social dimensions are equally important as technical factors in NbS to achieving equitable and effective outcomes. Attention to the distinct social and ecological pathways through which vulnerability is reduced helps to harness the multiple benefits of working with nature in a warming world.

The diversification of biomass resources is key to the transition towards a bioeconomy. Acrocomia spp., a neotropical genus of palms, is an example of plants’ diversity potential for a sustainable bioeconomy. Acrocomia’s adaptability to environments outside rainforests, its specific fruit properties and high yields has generated the interest of researchers and entrepreneurs, triggering its introduction as a multipurpose oil crop. Developing sustainability-oriented and knowledge-based acrocomia value webs requires a collaborative, systems approach from the outset. Fostering an inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue on acrocomia through a participatory workshop with both academic and non-academic actors contributed to this endeavor. This allowed the identification of priorities, knowledge gaps, and stakeholder roles, and served as the basis for the co-creation of a research and development roadmap. Key steps for the introduction of acrocomia include intertwined technical aspects relating to the development of planting material, cultivation systems, processing technologies and applications, market entry, and value web governance aspects. A broad collaboration among scientists, the public and private sectors, farmers, and civil society, is required for the development of acrocomia value webs. The incorporation of sustainability and a consideration of context in the design and development phases are fundamental to fostering the sustainable performance of acrocomia value webs.

As part of its effort to balance economic development with environmental objectives, China has established a new national park system, with the first five locations formally established in 2021. However, as the new parks all host or are proximate to human populations, aligning the socioeconomic needs and aspirations of local communities with conservation aims is critical for the long-term success of the parks. In this narrative review, the authors identify the ecological priorities and socioeconomic stakeholders of each of the five national parks; explore the tensions and synergies between these priorities and stakeholders; and synthesize the policy recommendations most frequently cited in the literature. A total of 119 studies were reviewed. Aligning traditional livelihoods with conservation, limiting road construction, promoting education and environmental awareness, and supporting the development of a sustainable tourism industry are identified as important steps to balance conservation with economic development in the new national parks.

Enhancing the resilience of complex social‐ecological systems (SES) to climate change requires transformative changes. Yet, there are knowledge gaps on how best to achieve transformation. In this study, we present an approach for assessing governance performance in SES and identifying leverage points to ultimately enhance climate resilience. The approach combines three different methods including a capital approach framework, fuzzy cognitive mapping, and a leverage points analysis. Using a coastal case‐study in Algoa Bay, South Africa, the performance of governance processes contributing to different forms of capital is assessed. Subsequently, leverage points ‐ where a small shift may lead to transformative changes in the system as a whole ‐ are identified based on measures of centrality and performance. Results suggest that a range of leverage points can improve governance performance and therefore climate resilience in the case‐study. Leverage points include improving (a) support from the provincial government; (b) priority given to climate change in the integrated development plan; (c) frequency of collaborations; (d) participation in the implementation of climate action plans; (e) allocation of funding to climate change actions; (f) the overall level of preparedness in terms of staff with relevant expertise; (g) public awareness and understanding of climate change. The approach can also be used to analyze and model the relations and interactions between capitals. The study advances methodological and theoretical knowledge on the identification of leverage points for enabling transformations toward climate resilience and broader sustainability goals in SES., Plain Language Summary: Climate change has severe impacts on both people and nature. Enhancing the ability to persist and adapt to climate change requires transformative governance of social‐ecological systems. However, more knowledge is required on how to enable such transformations. In this paper, we present an approach to measure the performance of different governance processes, such as decisions and actions for climate change adaptation made by public and governmental organizations. The approach aims to identify key processes, where a small intervention may improve overall performance for climate change adaptation, and therefore transformation. We apply the approach in a real‐world example in Algoa Bay, South Africa. Results suggest that different processes in the case‐study can be changed in order to enhance the ability to persist and adapt to climate change. This includes seven actions: (a) more support from governmental organizations; (b) greater priority given to climate change in relevant policies; (c) increasing the frequency of interactions between organizations; (d) enhancing the participation in the implementation of climate action plans; (e) better allocation of funding to climate change actions; (f) training staff within organizations to enhance their climate expertise; (g) improving public awareness and understanding of climate change., Key Points: The study presents an approach for assessing governance performance and identifying leverage points in social‐ecological systems. The approach combines three different methods: a capital approach framework, fuzzy cognitive mapping, and a leverage points analysis. The study advances methodological and theoretical knowledge on how to operationalize transformation toward climate resilience., Helmholtz‐Zentrum Hereon, Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100009106, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20732788

In this article, we provide a review of research on the existing and abandoned wells in Marsabit County, Northern Kenya, and associated Indigenous Knowledge concerning water governance, institutions of leadership, and how these have contributed to sustaining a resilient pastoral economy in these harsh landscapes. The article discusses the socio‐ecological systems that have been maintained by pastoralists for generations, linking their sustainability to leadership structures and institutional memory, with a particular focus on the Gabra. It further highlights internal and external interventions by governmental and nongovernmental organizations that are expected to improve the livelihoods of the Gabra and other pastoralists inhabiting the area, but have sometimes had a negative effect on the traditional strategies of water governance and socio‐ecological systems, undermining the long‐term viability of the pastoral economy in Marsabit. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance Human Water > Value of Water Human Water > Rights to Water

The understanding of urban social-ecological systems requires integrated and interdisciplinary methods. This paper explores differences in the accessibility of urban green spaces (UGS) based on urban morphology. In contrast to other comparative analyses that followed simplified quantification of UGS provision and/or omitted the impact of morphological properties of urban space, this study proposes three improvements. First, it uses the share of UGS in the service area of 300 m walking distance around each residential building in a city as a measure of UGS provision. Second, it includes the potential physical accessibility of UGS as warranted by key actors, such as owners or managers, who decide whether UGS are open or not to potential users. Third, it links UGS accessibility and heterogeneous urban structures. We developed a mixed-methods analysis that combines multiple data sources regarding UGS, the spatial distribution of residential buildings, and street networks. We conducted our analysis in five case-study cities (Barcelona, Halle, Lodz, Oslo, and Stockholm). Our findings suggest that the urban structures where the human–environment interaction transformed the space (such as in the core city areas) are characterized by limited UGS in the service area. Urban structures that are less transformed by human activity (especially suburbia) have the highest share of selected UGS in the service area. In addition, even if the share of UGS in the service area is high, many of them might have limited physical accessibility. In the broader sense, this highlights that social-ecological processes are linked to urban form and cannot be separated in an analysis. Therefore, social-ecological systems could be better understood through the lens of urban morphology. GIS; land use; landscape metrics; social-ecological systems; spatial analysis; urban green space management

A synthetic review of academic literature and government agency records to understand sources of mortality that impact endangered whales within the California Current Ecosystem.

Fisheries throughout the world play many important roles, and they are also subject to many pressures. The tension between roles and pressures is increasing, and as a result, many fisheries are being utilized to, or over their capacity, which ultimately threatens their sustainability. To address these challenges, this dissertation provides insights and tools to help us better understand fisheries and the challenges they face. The first study explores the impacts of an earlier spring runoff in Montana. Earlier runoff has resulted in lower and warmer summer flows, which is stressing coldwater species like trout. This stress is affecting fishing quality, and the state of Montana, along with outfitters and guides, are altering fishing practices to reduce resource impacts. As runoff trends continue, August, the once-coveted month offering high quality angling opportunities, will be fraught with unfavorable conditions and fishing restrictions. The second study presents an innovative method for developing social-ecological models. I show how this approach can illustrate the breadth and interconnectedness of a social-ecological system and explore the components and interactions affecting a system’s sustainability. Using a collaboratively developed model of the Kenai fishery, I identified how the nature of salmon (migratory) and their habitat (large and unpredictable) leads to uncertainty about effective management strategies. This uncertainty, in addition to a large and diverse set of people using the fishery, creates conflicting management visions, which ultimately paralyze the governance system. The third study evaluates how fire and post-fire flooding can affect a fishery. Through stakeholder interviews and a literature review, I identified fish populations that are the most vulnerable to long-term fire-related impacts. Vulnerable populations are isolated, lack quality habitat alternatives, and have low abundance. Applying this to the Kenai, I concluded that early-run Chinook salmon are the most vulnerable to fire, and if impacted, early-run Chinook have the greatest potential to severely impact the broader fishery through a chain of negative interactions. Collectively, this dissertation provides insights and tools to help us better understand fisheries and the challenges they face.

Ecologists who study human-dominated places have adopted a social-ecological systems framework to recognize the coproduced links between ecological and social processes. However, many social scientists are wary of the way ecologists use the systems concept to represent such links. This wariness is sometimes due to a misunderstanding of the contemporary use of the systems concept in ecology. We aim to overcome this misunderstanding by discussing the contemporary systems concept using refinements from biophysical ecology. These refinements allow the systems concept to be used as a bridge rather than a barrier to social-ecological interaction. We then use recent examples of extraordinary fire to illustrate the usefulness and flexibility of the concept for understanding the dynamism of fire as a social-ecological interaction. The systems idea is a useful interdisciplinary abstraction that can be contextualized to account for societally important problems and dynamics.

In recent decades, foresight has been connected to various disciplines that engage with complex societal problems, leading to specific interpretations of foresight. We offer an interdisciplinary perspective on foresight's increasing use for governance of social-ecological systems (SES). We seek to strengthen the use of foresight in this domain by bridging to insights from other disciplines that can help overcome its limitations. Participatory foresight for SES governance offers potential to elicit thinking about uncertainty and complexity, facilitate dialogue between stakeholders, and improve inclusiveness of governance processes, but often fails to be sufficiently reflexive and politically aware to be truly impactful and inclusive. It can be strengthened, we argue, by a more thorough integration with adjacent research fields: critical futures studies, critical systems theory and environmental governance. We distill key insights from these fields, including the importance of being politically reflexive about whose perspectives are considered, whom foresight processes should benefit, and the importance of co-producing methodology and outcomes. We encourage scholars and practitioners to further explore integration with these fields, highlighting the importance of inter- and transdisciplinary teams. Finally, we offer an example for how limitations of foresight as used in a particular field can be overcome through interdisciplinary integration.