Search

Copyright of People & Nature is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Complex networks of relationships among and between people and nature (social‐ecological networks) play an important role in sustainability; yet, we have limited empirical understanding of their temporal dynamics.We empirically examine the evolution of a social‐ecological network in a common‐pool resource system faced with escalating social and environmental change over the past two decades.We first draw on quantitative and qualitative data collected between 2002 and 2018 in a Papua New Guinean reef fishing community to provide contextual evidence regarding the extent of social and environmental change being experienced. We then develop a temporal multilevel exponential random graph model using complete social‐ecological network data, collected in 2016 and 2018, to test key hypotheses regarding how fishing households have adapted their social ties in this context of change given their relationships with reef resources (i.e. social‐ecological ties). Specifically, we hypothesized that households will increasingly form tight‐knit, bonding social and social‐ecological network structures (H1 and H3, respectively) with similar others (H2), and that they will seek out resourceful actors with specialized knowledge that can promote learning and spur innovation (H4).Our results depict a community that is largely 'bunkering down' and looking inward in response to mounting risk to resource‐dependent livelihoods and a breakdown in the collaborative processes that traditionally sustained them. Community members are increasingly choosing to interact with others more like themselves (H2), with friends of friends (H1), and with those connected to interdependent ecological resources (H3)—in other words, they are showing a strong, increasing preference for forming bonding social‐ecological network structures and interacting with like‐minded, similar others. We did not find strong support for H4.Bonding network structures may decrease the risk associated with unmonitored behaviour and help to build trust, thereby increasing the probability of sustaining cooperation over time. Yet, increasing homophily and bonding ties can stifle innovation, reducing the ability to adapt to changing conditions. It can also lead to clustering, creating fault lines in the network, which can negatively impact the community's ability to mobilize and agree on/enforce social norms, which are key for managing common resources. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental problems often span a set of challenges that each may engage different policy actors across different policy domains. These challenges, or policy issues, nonetheless exhibit interdependencies that may constrain the ability of actors to work together towards joint solutions.Still, we have limited knowledge about whether and how policy issue interdependencies actually shape how actors collaborate.Using data derived from two venues for collaborative water governance in the Norrström basin, Sweden, we investigate whether and how policy issues and policy issue interdependencies influence actors' selection of collaborative partners. We test two alternative sets of propositions; one set assumes that partner selection is driven by actors' engagement in policy issues and their interdependencies, while the other set emphasises social positions and actor attributes.Our results show that in one venue, actors' choices of collaborative partner were associated with factors from both sets, but not with policy issue interdependencies specifically. In the other venue, only actor and relational attributes shaped social tie formation. These results suggest that how actors interact does not necessarily align with the policy issues and the policy issue interdependencies defined by the environmental problem they are to address.Our results provide an important step towards arriving at evidence‐based recommendations for more effective collaborative efforts in addressing complex environmental problems that no actor can address alone. 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conservation Biology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The effectiveness of collaboration is often explained by the alignment of social networks with collective‐action problem characteristics, yet previous research on social tie formation has focused almost exclusively on actor and relational attributes. We theorize that collective‐action problem characteristics together with actor and relational attributes explain social tie formation and that the relative effect of these factors varies with uncertainty about collaboration partners. The study tests seven hypotheses associated with these factors by estimating multilevel network models of collaboration and task engagement among managers responding to a major wildfire in Sweden. The combination of actors and tasks in a single model captured key characteristics of the collective action problem (task engagements and task interdependencies), and disentangled the relative effects of these factors from actor and relational attributes. Results suggest that social tie formation can be explained both by actors' task engagements, and actor attributes associated with leadership, professionalization, and experience. Further, the effect of task engagements decreases in organizational relationships where collaborative uncertainty is high. Since the alignment of social ties with problem characteristics is supposedly positively associated with collaborative effectiveness, this finding suggests that risk‐aversion is a more deep‐rooted driver of tie formation than the pursuit of collective performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative approaches to environmental governance are drawing increased interest in research and practice. In this article we investigate the structure and functioning of actor networks engaged in collaboration.We specifically seek to advance understanding of how and why collaborative networks are formed as actors engage in addressing two broad classes of collective action problems: coordination and cooperation. It has been proposed that more risk‐prone cooperative problems favour denser and more cohesive bonding network structures, whereas less risky coordination problems favour sparser and more centralized bridging structures.Recent empirical findings, however, cast some doubts on these assumptions. In building on previous work we propose and evaluate a set of propositions in order to remedy these ambiguities. Our propositions build on the assumption that bridging structures could, if actors experience sufficient levels of trust in the collaborative process, adequately support both cooperation and coordination problems.Our empirical investigation of four UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserves gives initial support for our assumptions, and suggests that bridging structures emerge when actors have trust in the collaborative endeavour, and/or when the cost of collaborative failure is deemed low. While caution is warranted due to data limitations, our findings contribute to improved policies and guidelines on how to stimulate and facilitate more effective collaborative approaches to environmental governance. 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 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small‐scale fisheries often involve weak management regimes with limited top‐down enforcement of rules and minimal support from legal institutions, making them useful model systems for investigating the role of social influence in determining economic and environmental outcomes. In such regimes, interpersonal relationships are expected to have a strong effect on a fisher's catch portfolio, the set of fish species targeted by an individual fisher. Here, we test three competing hypotheses about social influence using belief propagation network models and show that a peer‐to‐peer information‐sharing social network is key to explaining catch portfolios at a small‐scale fishery in Jamaica. We find that experience dictates the direction of influence among fishers in the social network, with older fishers and information brokers having distinct roles in shaping catch patterns for large‐ and small‐sized fish species, respectively. These findings highlight concrete opportunities for harnessing social networks in natural resource management. Our new approach to modelling social influence is applicable to many social–ecological systems with minimal legal and institutional support or those that rely heavily on bottom‐up participatory processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT With the ambition to contribute to the endeavour of co-management, this paper focuses on the critical aspect of legitimacy and sets out to explain stakeholder acceptance in natural resource governance. A comparative study of five coastal and marine areas in Sweden is conducted. The empirical results demonstrate, first, how the past and the present institutional landscape set the underlying conditions and affect stakeholders' acceptance of new co-management initiatives. Second, the results point to the critical function of network governance. Conscious choices regarding what composition of actors to involve, and in particular the inclusion and commitment of government actors, have significant bearing on stakeholder acceptance. Furthermore, deliberative efforts to reframe the process, adjusting the agenda to ongoing collaborative processes and key stakeholder goals, are seemingly as important. Thus, strivings towards legitimate co-management require skilful manoeuvring of the present institutional landscape as well as deliberate strategies for the evolution of social networks. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity conservation is often limited by inadequate investments in monitoring and enforcement. However, monitoring and enforcement problems may be overcome by encouraging resource users to develop, endorse, and subsequently enforce conservation regulations. In this article, we draw upon the literature on common‐pool resources and social networks to assess the impacts of participation and network ties on the decisions of fishers to voluntarily report rule violations in two Jamaican marine reserves. Data was collected using questionnaires administered through personal interviews with fishers (n = 277). The results suggest that local fishers are more likely to report illegal fishing if they had participated in conservation planning and if they are directly linked to community‐based wardens in information sharing networks. This research extends well‐established findings regarding the role and impacts of participation on biodiversity conservation by highlighting the importance of synergies between participation and social networks for voluntary monitoring of conservation regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]