Is small hydropower beautiful? Social impacts of river fragmentation in China’s Red River Basin

Small hydropower (SHP) is promoted as a pro-poor renewable energy source that does not have the negative social impacts of large dams. This article challenges these claims, using data from a household survey in China’s upper Red River Basin. We find that SHP can fragment river systems in ways that reduce irrigation water availability, provoke changes to agricultural practices, and negatively impact river health. These social impacts of river fragmentation mainly occur in villages situated between a plant’s intake and outflow. The frequency of plant water diversions due to continued generation in the dry season significantly predicts all social impacts; installed capacity of the plant and the quality of the village’s irrigation infrastructure predict some impacts. Villages with strong local governance can negotiate with the plant to temporarily halt generation when irrigation water is needed, lessening social impacts. Our findings reveal that SHP plants are not as benign as they are made out to be; they must be built and managed according to community needs.     

Resilience and Challenges of Marine Social–Ecological Systems Under Complex and Interconnected Drivers

In this paper, we summarize the contributions made by an interdisciplinary group of researchers from different disciplines (biology, ecology, economics, and law) that deal with key dimensions of marine social–ecological systems. Particularly, the local and global seafood provision; the feasibility and management of marine protected areas; the use of marine ecosystem services; the institutional dimension in European fisheries, and the affordable models for providing scientific advice to small-scale fisheries. This Special Issue presents key findings from selected case studies around the world available to educators, policy makers, and the technical community. Together, these papers show that a range of diverse ecological, economic, social, and institutional components often mutually interact at spatial and temporal scales, which evidence that managing marine social–ecological systems needs a continuous adaptability to navigate into new governance systems.     

Planetary Stewardship in an Urbanizing World: Beyond City Limits

Cities are rapidly increasing in importance as a major factor shaping the Earth system, and therefore, must take corresponding responsibility. With currently over half the world’s population, cities are supported by resources originating from primarily rural regions often located around the world far distant from the urban loci of use. The sustainability of a city can no longer be considered in isolation from the sustainability of human and natural resources it uses from proximal or distant regions, or the combined resource use and impacts of cities globally. The world’s multiple and complex environmental and social challenges require interconnected solutions and coordinated governance approaches to planetary stewardship. We suggest that a key component of planetary stewardship is a global system of cities that develop sustainable processes and policies in concert with its non-urban areas. The potential for cities to cooperate as a system and with rural connectivity could increase their capacity to effect change and foster stewardship at the planetary scale and also increase their resource security.     

Regime shifts and resilience in China’s coastal ecosystems

Regime shift often results in large, abrupt, and persistent changes in the provision of ecosystem services and can therefore have significant impacts on human wellbeing. Understanding regime shifts has profound implications for ecosystem recovery and management. China’s coastal ecosystems have experienced substantial deterioration within the past decades, at a scale and speed the world has never seen before. Yet, information about this coastal ecosystem change from a dynamics perspective is quite limited. In this review, I synthesize existing information on coastal ecosystem regime shifts in China and discuss their interactions and cascading effects. The accumulation of regime shifts in China’s coastal ecosystems suggests that the desired system resilience has been profoundly eroded, increasing the potential of abrupt shifts to undesirable states at a larger scale, especially given multiple escalating pressures. Policy and management strategies need to incorporate resilience approaches in order to cope with future challenges and avoid major losses in China’s coastal ecosystem services.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0692-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

The Historical Dynamics of Social–Ecological Traps

Environmental degradation is a typical unintended outcome of collective human behavior. Hardin’s metaphor of the “tragedy of the commons” has become a conceived wisdom that captures the social dynamics leading to environmental degradation. Recently, “traps” has gained currency as an alternative concept to explain the rigidity of social and ecological processes that produce environmental degradation and livelihood impoverishment. The trap metaphor is, however, a great deal more complex compared to Hardin’s insight. This paper takes stock of studies using the trap metaphor. It argues that the concept includes time and history in the analysis, but only as background conditions and not as a factor of causality. From a historical–sociological perspective this is remarkable since social–ecological traps are clearly path-dependent processes, which are causally produced through a conjunction of events. To prove this point the paper conceptualizes social–ecological traps as a process instead of a condition, and systematically compares history and timing in one classic and three recent studies of social–ecological traps. Based on this comparison it concludes that conjunction of social and environmental events contributes profoundly to the production of trap processes. The paper further discusses the implications of this conclusion for policy intervention and outlines how future research might generalize insights from historical–sociological studies of traps.     

Scientists’ warning to humanity on the freshwater biodiversity crisis

Freshwater ecosystems provide irreplaceable services for both nature and society. The quality and quantity of freshwater affect biogeochemical processes and ecological dynamics that determine biodiversity, ecosystem productivity, and human health and welfare at local, regional and global scales. Freshwater ecosystems and their associated riparian habitats are amongst the most biologically diverse on Earth, and have inestimable economic, health, cultural, scientific and educational values. Yet human impacts to lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and groundwater are dramatically reducing biodiversity and robbing critical natural resources and services from current and future generations. Freshwater biodiversity is declining rapidly on every continent and in every major river basin on Earth, and this degradation is occurring more rapidly than in terrestrial ecosystems. Currently, about one third of all global freshwater discharges pass through human agricultural, industrial or urban infrastructure. About one fifth of the Earth’s arable land is now already equipped for irrigation, including all the most productive lands, and this proportion is projected to surpass one third by midcentury to feed the rapidly expanding populations of humans and commensal species, especially poultry and ruminant livestock. Less than one fifth of the world’s preindustrial freshwater wetlands remain, and this proportion is projected to decline to under one tenth by midcentury, with imminent threats from water transfer megaprojects in Brazil and India, and coastal wetland drainage megaprojects in China. The Living Planet Index for freshwater vertebrate populations has declined to just one third that of 1970, and is projected to sink below one fifth by midcentury. A linear model of global economic expansion yields the chilling prediction that human utilization of critical freshwater resources will approach one half of the Earth’s total capacity by midcentury. Although the magnitude and growth of the human freshwater footprint are greater than is generally understood by policy makers, the news media, or the general public, slowing and reversing dramatic losses of freshwater species and ecosystems is still possible. We recommend a set of urgent policy actions that promote clean water, conserve watershed services, and restore freshwater ecosystems and their vital services. Effective management of freshwater resources and ecosystems must be ranked amongst humanity’s highest priorities.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01318-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Climate change,risk perception,and protection motivation among high-altitude residents of the Mt. Everest region in Nepal

Mountain ecosystems are considered vulnerable to early impacts of climate change. Whether and how local residents of these areas perceive these changes, however, remain under-studied questions. By conducting a household survey in the Khumbu region of Nepal, this study assessed local residents’ experience-based perception of changes in climate trends and patterns, perceived risk, and attitudes towards climate issues. Multivariate cluster analysis based on residents’ climate change beliefs revealed three segments: “Cautious,” “Disengaged,” and “Alarmed.” A comparison of these segments along key psychosocial constructs of Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) revealed significant inter-segment differences in residents’ perception of severity, vulnerability, response efficacy, self-efficacy, and response cost associated with engaging in mitigating behavior. Results shed light on how residents of high elevation areas that are considered to be exposed to early impacts of climate change perceive the risk and intend to respond. These findings could also assist stakeholders working in other similar mountain ecosystems in understanding vulnerability and in working towards climate readiness.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01369-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Shaping more resilient and just food systems: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted weaknesses in global food systems, as well as opening windows of opportunity for innovation and transformation. While the nature and extent of this crisis is rare, extreme climatic events will increase in magnitude and frequency, threatening similar societal impacts. It is therefore critical to identify mechanisms for developing food systems that are resilient to such impacts. We examine impacts of the crisis on UK food systems and how these further entrenched social inequalities. We present data on the experiences and actions of producers, consumers, and community organisers. The data were collected by adapting ongoing research to include surveys, interviews and online workshops focused on the pandemic. Actors’ responses to the pandemic foreshadow how enduring change to food systems can be achieved. We identify support required to enable these transformations and argue that it is vital that these opportunities are embedded in food justice principles which promote people-centred approaches to avoid exacerbating injustices prevalent pre-crisis. Learning from these experiences therefore provides insights for how to make food systems elsewhere more resilient and just.     

Linking contemporary river restoration to economics,technology, politics,and society: Perspectives from a historical case study of the Po River Basin,Italy

River restoration is a novel paradigm of ‘mirescape’ (land-and-water-scape) management that developed along with the emergence of aquatic ecology. River restoration can be seen as the application of an ecological perspective to return rivers to nature. However, the river restoration paradigm is also the contemporary iteration of historical phases of mirescape management. We review the long and varied recorded history of the Po River in northern Italy as a case study to illustrate the transformations and common themes of mirescape management. We find, first, that significant changes in mirescape management and river condition only occur in the context of larger social, political, technological and economic transformations. Second, we show how particular cultural understandings, economic interests, technological innovations and political powers have driven particular paradigms of mirescape management. These have tended towards increasing territorial separation of wet and dry. We find, third, that these separations lead not only to increasing economic precariousness for many, but also to increasingly severe disasters. We conclude that river restoration faces social and political challenges to becoming relevant at a mirescape scale, due to its lack of integration with land management, or with current social, political, technological and economic transformations. To act on this conclusion, we suggest philosophically aligned social movements that river restoration could work with to improve impact and uptake.     

Prevalence and drivers of poison use by South African commercial farmers and perceptions of alternative livestock protection measures

The use of poison to eliminate predators is causing African vulture populations to collapse. To understand the prevalence and motivations of this practice we conducted an extensive survey with South African commercial farmers. Using a specialised questioning technique and ad hoc quantitative methods we found that an estimated 22% and 31% of farmers used poison over a 1-year and 5-year period, respectively. Poison use hotspots generally coincided with small stock farming areas. The strongest predictor of poison use was whether farmers believed the practice to be common amongst their peers. Our results suggest that farmers’ attitudes to vultures are primarily positive, and farmers are less likely to use poisons if they frequently encounter vultures on their farm. Overall, our findings provide an understanding on poison use that provides leverage points to change farmers’ behaviour and help avert the African vulture crisis and possible cascading ecosystem impacts.Supplementary informationThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01461-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Multiple impact pathways of the 2015–2016 El Niño in coastal Kenya

The 2015–2016 El Niño had large impacts globally. The effects were not as great as anticipated in Kenya, however, leading some commentators to call it a ‘non-event’. Our study uses a novel combination of participatory Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis tools, and new and existing social and biophysical data, to analyse vulnerability to, and the multidimensional impacts of, the 2015–2016 El Niño episode in southern coastal Kenya. Using a social-ecological systems lens and a unique dataset, our study reveals impacts overlooked by conventional analysis. We show how El Niño stressors interact with and amplify existing vulnerabilities to differentially impact local ecosystems and people. The policy significance of this finding is that the development of specific national capacities to deal with El Niño events is insufficient; it will be necessary to also address local vulnerabilities to everyday and recurrent stressors and shocks to build resilience to the effects of El Niño and other extremes in climate and weather.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01321-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Knowledge Production and Learning for Sustainable Landscapes: Seven Steps Using Social–Ecological Systems as Laboratories

There are multiple challenges regarding use and governance of landscapes’ goods, functions and intangible values for ecosystem health and human well-being. One group of challenges is to measure and assess principal sustainability dimensions through performance targets, so stakeholders have transparent information about states and trends. Another group is to develop adaptive governance at multiple levels, and management of larger geographical areas across scales. Addressing these challenges, we present a framework for transdisciplinary research using multiple landscapes as place-based case studies that integrates multiple research disciplines and non-academic actors: (1) identify a suite of landscapes, and for each (2) review landscape history, (3) map stakeholders, use and non-use values, products and land use, (4) analyze institutions, policies and the system of governance, (5) measure ecological, economic, social and cultural sustainability, (6) assess sustainability dimensions and governance, and finally (7) make comparisons and synthesize. Collaboration, communication and dissemination are additional core features. We discuss barriers bridges and bridges for applying this approach.     

Measurement, Collaborative Learning and Research for Sustainable Use of Ecosystem Services: Landscape Concepts and Europe as Laboratory

Policies at multiple levels pronounce the need to encompass both social and ecological systems in governance and management of natural capital in terms of resources and ecosystems. One approach to knowledge production and learning about landscapes as social–ecological systems is to compare multiple case studies consisting of large spaces and places. We first review the landscape concepts’ biophysical, anthropogenic, and intangible dimensions. Second, we exemplify how the different landscape concepts can be used to derive measurable variables for different sustainability indicators. Third, we review gradients in the three dimensions of the term landscape on the European continent, and propose to use them for the stratification of multiple case studies of social–ecological systems. We stress the benefits of the landscape concepts to measure sustainability, and how this can improve collaborative learning about development toward sustainability in social–ecological systems. Finally, analyses of multiple landscapes improve the understanding of context for governance and management.     

Ten Factors that Affect the Severity of Environmental Impacts of Visitors in Protected Areas

Protected areas represent the major method for conserving biodiversity. However, visitor use can threaten their conservation value. Based on a review of recent research, I have categorized factors that affect the severity of environmental impacts of visitor use. These factors need to be considered or evaluated when assessing visitor use of sites in protected areas. They are: (i) the conservation value of the site, (ii) its resistance to use, (iii) its recovery from use, (iv) its susceptibility to erosion, (v) the severity of direct impacts associated with specific activities, (vi) the severity of indirect impacts, (vii) the amount of use, (viii) the social and (ix) ecological dimensions to the timing of use, and (x) the total area affected. Although the factors may not be of equal importance or necessarily assessed on an equal scale, they allow people to make more informed assessments of potential impacts, assist in identifying where monitoring may be required, and indicate where additional site- or activity-specific research may be appropriate.     

Impacts of Surface Gold Mining on Land Use Systems in Western Ghana

Land use conflicts are becoming increasingly apparent from local to global scales. Surface gold mining is an extreme source of such a conflict, but mining impacts on local livelihoods often remain unclear. Our goal here was to assess land cover change due to gold surface mining in Western Ghana, one of the world’s leading gold mining regions, and to study how these changes affected land use systems. We used Landsat satellite images from 1986–2002 to map land cover change and field interviews with farmers to understand the livelihood implications of mining-related land cover change. Our results showed that surface mining resulted in deforestation (58%), a substantial loss of farmland (45%) within mining concessions, and widespread spill-over effects as relocated farmers expand farmland into forests. This points to rapidly eroding livelihood foundations, suggesting that the environmental and social costs of Ghana’s gold boom may be much higher than previously thought.     

Citizens of local jurisdictions enhance plant community preservation through ballot initiatives and voter-driven conservation efforts

Open space areas protected by local communities may augment larger scale preservation efforts and may offer overlooked benefits to biodiversity conservation provided they are in suitable ecological condition. We examine protected areas established by local communities through ballot initiatives, a form of direct democracy, in California, USA. We compare ecological conditions of wooded habitats on local ballot protected sites and on sites protected by a state-level conservation agency. Collectively, we found few differences in ecological conditions on each protected area type. Ballot sites had greater invasive understory cover and larger trees. Community dissimilarity patterns suggested ballot sites protect a complementary set of tree species to those on state lands. Overall, geographic characteristics influenced onsite conditions more than details of how sites were protected. Thus, community-driven conservation efforts contribute to protected area networks by augmenting protection of some species while providing at least some protection to others that might otherwise be missed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01469-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

From aquaculture goals to real social and ecological impacts: carp introduction in rural Central Mexico

Aquaculture has been seen as a solution to food/protein availability in rural populations of poor countries. It is mainly based on exotic species, that produce changes in host system dynamics once introduced. Aquaculture not only changes the ecology of freshwater systems, but can also lead to modification of social relations. Until now, aquaculture programs have not been adequately analyzed no questioned enough. We evaluate both ecological effects and local social benefits of common carp aquaculture programs in shallow ponds of rural areas, using a municipality in Central Mexico as a case study. Using an "environmental entitlements" approach, our findings suggest that: i) carp aquaculture increases water turbidity and depletes native species reducing the poor people's access to them; ii) aquaculture mainly benefits pond owners rather than poor peasants. This mainly results from changes in fishing rights. We conclude that aquaculture policy goals and assumptions of benefits should be reviewed, if the negative ecological effects are to be decreased and conditions for people in rural areas are to be improved.     

A new remote sensing index based on the pressure-state-response framework to assess regional ecological change

Ecological indicators have widespread appeal to scientists, environmental managers, and the general public. Remote sensing is unique in its capability to record variety of spatio-temporal information on land surface with complete coverage, especially with regard to larger spatial scales, which has been proven to be an effective data source to create indicators to rapidly identify regional eco-environment. In this paper, a new index, remote sensing based ecological index (RSEI) based on the pressure-state-response (PSR) framework, was applied to assess regional ecological changes in Fuzhou City of Fujian Province, southeastern China, using Landsat ETM+/OLI/TIRS images. Taking the advantages of being totally free of artificial interference in the calculation using principal components analysis (PCA) to assign weights of each variable, the RSEI can assess the regional ecological status more objectively and easily. The effectivity of the new index was validated by four approaches, including point-based, classification-based, correlation-based, and urban-rural-gradient-based comparisons. The case study showed that Fuzhou has witnessed ecological improvement during the study period, with the value of RSEI increasing from 0.663 in 2000 to 0.675 in 2016. Spatial variation analysis showed that the poor level of RSEI distributed mostly in the central urban areas, and the ecological degradation was attributed to the fast expansion of the built-up area, characterized by increasing greatly in the value of the normalized differential built up and soil index (NDBSI) in such areas.

     

Understanding interactions between urban development policies and GHG emissions: A case study in Stockholm Region

Human-induced urban growth and sprawl have implications for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that may not be included in conventional GHG accounting methods. Improved understanding of this issue requires use of interactive, spatial-explicit social–ecological systems modeling. This paper develops a comprehensive approach to modeling GHG emissions from urban developments, considering Stockholm County, Sweden as a case study. GHG projections to 2040 with a social–ecological system model yield overall greater emissions than simple extrapolations in official climate action planning. The most pronounced difference in emissions (39% higher) from energy use single-residence buildings resulting from urban sprawl. And this difference is not accounted for in the simple extrapolations. Scenario results indicate that a zoning policy, restricting urban development in certain areas, can mitigate 72% of the total emission effects of the model-projected urban sprawl. The study outcomes include a decision support interface for communicating results and policy implications with policymakers.

     

Environmental accounting on a communal level: A tool to support environmental management and decision-making by communal executives

Starting from an ecological perspective of urban-industrial areas, environmental accounting is used to analyse and to evaluate which environmental impacts are the result of communal activities (e.g. the results of different kinds of water supply systems). Therefore, the anthropogenic fluxes, the changing quality of areas as well as the processes between the environmental fields are taken into account. The approach is based on methodical elements of te Life Cycle Analysis and the Environmental Impact Assessment. Looking at the ‘urban systems’ within the communal activities, ‘ecological modelling’ gives us a new and fuller picture of the spatial and temporal character of urban metabolism. The approach supports the perception of cumulative effects and the postponement of environmental problems and opens new horizons for process-oriented environmental planning within the community. Greater efficiency and a decrease in costs can be arrived at by leaving ‘end of the pipe’ strategies; opportunities for a better planning process and measures for different individuals and organisations can be drawn up. A data base which acts as a ‘support system’ implements the computer-aided approach to environmental accounting.