Towards a framework for cross-scale and multi-level analysis of coastal and marine social-ecological systems dynamics

As the Anthropocene proceeds, regional and local sustainability problems are ever more likely to originate at multiple levels of the earth system. The rate of global environmental change is now vastly outpacing our policy response, and social-ecological systems analysis needs to support global environmental governance. To respond to this challenge, this paper initiates the development of a coastal social-ecological typology and applies it in an exemplary fashion to nine coastal and marine case studies. We use an explicit distinction between the definitions of scale and level and a problem or issue-specific approach to the delineation of social-ecological units. A current major challenge to social-ecological systems analysis is the identification of the cross-level and cross-scale interactions and links which play key roles in shaping coastal and marine social-ecological dynamics and outcomes. We show that the regional level is the best point of departure to generate sustainability-oriented cross-scale and multi-level analyses and offers the outline of a typology in which different disciplinary and other forms of knowledge can be integrated as both part of regionally grounded analysis and action which engages with global sustainability challenges.     

Communities and change in the anthropocene: understanding social-ecological vulnerability and planning adaptations to multiple interacting exposures

The majority of vulnerability and adaptation scholarship, policies and programs focus exclusively on climate change or global environmental change. Yet, individuals, communities and sectors experience a broad array of multi-scalar and multi-temporal, social, political, economic and environmental changes to which they are vulnerable and must adapt. While extensive theoretical—and increasingly empirical—work suggests the need to explore multiple exposures, a clear conceptual framework which would facilitate analysis of vulnerability and adaptation to multiple interacting socioeconomic and biophysical changes is lacking. This review and synthesis paper aims to fill this gap through presenting a conceptual framework for integrating multiple exposures into vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning. To support applications of the framework and facilitate assessments and comparative analyses of community vulnerability, we develop a comprehensive typology of drivers and exposures experienced by coastal communities. Our results reveal essential elements of a pragmatic approach for local-scale vulnerability analysis and for planning appropriate adaptations within the context of multiple interacting exposures. We also identify methodologies for characterizing exposures and impacts, exploring interactions and identifying and prioritizing responses. This review focuses on coastal communities; however, we believe the framework, typology and approach will be useful for understanding vulnerability and planning adaptation to multiple exposures in various social-ecological contexts.     

Vietnam’s seafood boom: Economic growth with impoverishment?

By 2050 most seafood will be sourced through aquaculture, with a range of production intensities being required to sustain livelihoods and to meet future needs from seafood. This makes Vietnam a particularly insightful case, since Vietnam is at the forefront of the trend toward greater aquaculture production. Our aim in this paper is to examine the social-ecological sustainability of small producer livelihoods contributing to Vietnam’s seafood boom. This paper uses original survey data to understand the range of fishery-based livelihoods that have contributed to Vietnam being a leading global exporter of seafood. We investigate the kinds of fishery-based livelihood activities that households are engaged in, consider the type and amount (kilograms) of species caught or farmed annually, and examine household perceptions’ of change in species quantity. We find that Vietnam’s seafood sector is facing real sustainability challenges: Nearly 30 % of small producers—fishers and fish farmers—within our sample rest at or below Vietnam’s rural poverty line. Ecological decline and disease in farmed fish is perceived to be a serious issue for all fishers. In this context, policy and management interventions need to better reflect social and ecological variability, adopt an integrated coastal systems perspective across fisheries and aquaculture, and consider the most impact-effective poverty interventions.     

Objectives for management of socio-ecological systems in the Great Barrier Reef region,Australia

A wide range of goals and objectives have to be taken into account in natural resources management. Defining these objectives in operational terms, including dimensions such as sustainability, productivity, and equity, is by no means easy, especially if they must capture the diversity of community and stakeholder values. This is especially true in the coastal zone where land activities affect regional marine ecosystems. In this study, the aim was firstly to identify and hierarchically organise the goals and objectives for coastal systems, as defined by local stakeholders. Two case study areas are used within the Great Barrier Reef region being Mackay and Bowen–Burdekin. Secondly, the aim was to identify similarities between the case study results and thus develop a generic set of goals to be used as a starting point in other coastal communities. Results show that overarching high-level goals have nested sub-goals that contain a set of more detailed regional objectives. The similarities in high-level environmental, governance, and socio-economic goals suggest that regionally specific objectives can be developed based on a generic set of goals. The prominence of governance objectives reflects local stakeholder perceptions that current coastal zone management is not achieving the outcomes they feel important and that there is a need for increased community engagement and co-management. More importantly, it raises the question of how to make issues relevant for the local community and entice participation in the local management of public resources to achieve sustainable environmental, social, and economic management outcomes.     

A global empirical typology of anthropogenic drivers of environmental change in deltas

It is broadly recognized that river delta systems around the world are under threat from a range of anthropogenic activities. These activities occur at the local delta scale, at the regional river and watershed scale, and at the global scale. Tools are needed to support generalization of results from case studies in specific deltas. Here, we present a methodology for quantitatively constructing an empirical typology of anthropogenic change in global deltas. Utilizing a database of environmental change indicators, each associated with increased relative sea-level rise and coastal wetland loss, a clustering analysis of 48 global deltas provides a quantitative assessment of systems experiencing similar or dissimilar sources and degrees of anthropogenic stress. By identifying quantitatively similar systems, we hope to improve the transferability of scientific results across systems, and increase the effectiveness of delta management best practices. Both K-Means and Affinity Propagation clustering algorithms find similar clusters, with relative stability across small changes in K-Means cluster number. High-latitude deltas appear similar, in terms of anthropogenic environmental stress, to several low-population, low-latitude systems, including the Amazon delta, despite substantially different climatic regimes. Highly urbanized deltas in Southeast Asia form a distinct cluster. By providing a quantitative boundary between groups of delta systems, this approach may also be useful for assessing future delta change and sustainability given projected population growth, urbanization, and economic development trends.     

Linking global drivers with local and regional change: a social-ecological system approach in Chilika Lagoon,Bay of Bengal

Global scale drivers such as international markets for shrimp can trigger large changes at local and regional scales. But there is also a poorly appreciated reverse process, operating from the bottom up, with potential for triggering changes at higher scales. Thus, effects of drivers can be seen as a two-way process in which global drivers and local and regional drivers can potentially impact each other. Here, we argue that not only can global drivers impact the sustainability of local and regional social-ecological systems, but sustainability at higher scales can also be impacted by changes at the scale of local and regional social-ecological systems. Using Chilika, a large lagoon on the Bay of Bengal, Odisha State in India as a case, we show that traditional small-scale capture fisheries supporting 150 fisher villages with some 400,000 people were marginalized by aquaculture development for tiger prawn and by state-driven hydrological interventions, with impacts on the ecology of the lagoon. These changes, in turn, contribute to global poverty and food insecurity, making it difficult for India to meet international targets such as millennium development goals. The marginalized fisherfolk become part of environmental justice and other social movements. With large parts of the lagoon converted into a virtual monoculture for the production of tiger prawn, changes in Chilika (a Ramsar site) contribute to wetland habitat loss at the global scale, and biodiversity losses, possibly including IUCN red-listed species.     

The scientific challenge of bridging the gap from the local to the earth system level: lessons from the study of mangroves and people in North Brazil

This article aims to address the challenges of sustainable earth system governance from a multi-scale level perspective. The local to regional system level reviews findings from a social–ecological system approach of a mangrove ecosystem in North Brazil. Seven challenges (Glaser et al. in Mangrove dynamics and management in North Brazil. Ecological studies series. Springer, Berlin, pp 307–388, 2010) that could provide relevant knowledge to society were identified. Their respective justification and recommendations are presented here. Further, these “challenges from the field” are linked and discussed with those challenges on earth system level elaborated by the International Council for Science in 2010. There it was stressed that sustainability problems are increasingly caused by drivers from multiple spatial and institutional levels in a single global human–nature system. The comparison between the global and local to regional challenges shows that most of these are reappearing disregarding the level of analysis, indicating that there is a universal core of global change problems. However, there are gaps visible which hamper the effective connections across the different spatial levels. These pertain to the subjects of knowledge generation and stakeholder inclusion. The final section elaborates on these recognized gaps and their science–policy dimensions. The article closes with the identification of a number of factors which currently impede global sustainability efforts: shortcomings in inter- and transdisciplinary research practice, lack of consistent structures for earth system governance and shortcomings in dealing with upscaling challenges whilst remaining locally relevant. A blueprint for a globally focused but regionally informed social–ecological analysis framework remains to be worked out.     

An ecohydrological adaptive approach to a salt lake in the semiarid grasslands of Argentina: future management perspectives

Past extreme hydrological events, future climate change scenarios and approaches for lake management were studied in the Argentinean Pampa. Anthropogenic climate change will impact water bodies and create enormous challenges for water management. Adaptation strategies are needed urgently to deal with the uncertainties originated by climate change on inland or coastal basins. Only a few studies have addressed practical strategies to mitigate global change impacts on lakes and practically none in South America. The purpose of this work was to discuss management options and seek better adaptive alternatives for the nature reserve Lake Chasicó, and to propose future management experiments and actions at a regional level. The ecohydrological approach is likely to increase the ecological resilience of the lake, dampen climate-driven hydrological variations and reduce eutrophication problems. Future projects should include wetland creation, fish management, water quality control, engineering work studies and education programs. Ecohydrology as an integrative natural science should be considered as a water management strategy to build ecological resilience into water bodies. The building of social-ecological resilience is also crucial for the stability of coupled human-ecological systems. The integration of natural and social sciences into sustainability approaches represents a robust strategy for adapting to climate change.     

Multiscale system dynamics of humans and nature in The Bahamas: perturbation, knowledge, panarchy and resilience

The analysis of the dynamic interactions between social systems, integrated by governance and communication, and biophysical systems, connected by material and energy flows, remains a challenge. In this paper, we draw on the heuristic models of the “adaptive renewal cycle” and “panarchy” [Gunderson and Holling (eds) Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press, Washington, 2002], which are embedded in the theory of complex adaptive systems. Taking island development research in The Bahamas as a case study, we investigate environmental stressors, knowledge and social response in the context of three distinct social–ecological subsystems: (1) the interaction between tropical storms/hurricanes and the social system of disaster preparedness/management; (2) coastal ecosystem degradation coupled with land development; and (3) the fishery, in which we also consider the impact of a recent biological invasion, the Indo-Pacific red lionfish. The findings demonstrate the complexity of panarchical relations and the crucial role of diverse and uncertain knowledge systems and underlying mental models of risk and environment for resilience and sustainability. These are acquired at different scales and form key variables of change. This also applies to processes of communication. Bringing together the various constantly evolving multi-level knowledge systems for effective communication and decision-making remains a major challenge.     

Are neoliberalist behaviours reflective of bullying? New perspectives on influences on sustainability and global citizenship

The global sustainability crisis facing humanity is a cultural crisis with neoliberal culture, the primary driver. The necessity for global change away from neoliberal systems is well established with cultural systems pursued through sustainability seen as the most viable options to alleviate this global crisis. Whilst the goals of neoliberalism and sustainability are systemic and universal, those implementing them work at a specific level with individuals, groups and/or collectives. The literature fails, however, to provide specific examples of why, on a practical level, social change agents often struggle to implement sustainability goals. One of the primary reasons for these struggles can be found in an examination of human behaviour, for instance personality types, group dynamics and/or interpersonal or group communication skills (or lack thereof). This exploratory paper will investigate the existence of a nexus between neoliberalist and adult bullying behaviours to initiate discussion on the barriers this combination may have on social change for sustainability and global citizenship. This examination is warranted as the propensity in the neoliberalist system to support the use of bullying behaviours by its advocates is a complex, nuanced and underresearched topic. There are implications here for policy development, social and urban planning, education and governance for sustainability and global citizenship.     

Cross-scale and multi-level mismatch problems in marine natural resources management: case studies in the Penghu Archipelago,Taiwan

Humans utilize natural resources for their livelihood and form institutions that are meant to manage the resources. However, many institutions tend to mismanage the natural resources and fail to solve the natural resources crisis because mismatches occur between the institutions and the systems to be governed. Although mismatch problems on temporal, spatial and functional scales are recognized in many natural resources management cases, a need remains to understand how mismatch problems emerge in complex humans in nature systems. This study used social–ecological system (SES) as a framework for conducting a cross-scale assessment of multi-level linked systems for better understanding of mismatch problems. Both bottom-up and top-down institutions regulating the utilization of marine natural resources were examined to unveil the cause of temporal, spatial and functional mismatch problems in Penghu Archipelago, a regional SES in Taiwan. Results of the assessment indicated that the single-level design of conventional institutions in marine natural resources management was a primary cause of mismatch problems. Thus, for better governance, adaptive and cooperative management systems of the marine natural resources in Penghu Archipelago, a more integrated institutional design is recommended.     

Regional Research Capacity -Building inSustainability Science:Facts, Gaps, and Futures in Northeast Asia

Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seems to be a very positive signal for the future development of sustainability science in this region. However,studyes show that there are still some major gaps there. One is the problem of how to build up the regional research capacity of sustainability science among northeast Asian research institutes across different disciplines as well as different political systems. Another is how to shift the conceptual frameworks of sustainability science into the operational policy frameworks. There are four major obstacles to the enhancement of regional research capacity-building in sustainability science. In order to build up the regional research capacity in sustainability science and to realize both local and global goals of the sustainable development in northeast Asia, this paper proposes some ba     

Influence of community-based natural resource management strategies in the resilience of social-ecological systems

Different social-ecological systems around the world are managed under community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) strategies. This paper analyses how CBNRM strategies influence the resilience of social-ecological systems to the disturbances they face, drawing upon the experience of three Latin American cases (two in Mexico and one in Colombia). The cases differ in their CBNRM approach and in the time these governance systems have been in place. By using a mixed-method approach, we review the socio-ecological history and describe each CBNRM characteristics. We then assess their resilience to socioeconomic and environmental disturbances through a set of indicators. We found that CBNRM strategies influence positively and negatively resilience and that internal decisions might address important threats. On the positive side, the social-ecological systems with longer tradition of CBNRM and more local buy-in of commonly agreed objectives appear to be more resilient to environmental challenges. But, internal governance factors such as power imbalances, poor income distribution, and gender inequities linked to CBNRM undermine resilience and foster out migration. Finally, communities appear to have limited capacities to cope with external disturbances such as global drivers of change or national policies that negatively affect their social-ecological resilience.

     

Regional Research Capacity-Building in Sustainability Science: Facts,Gaps, and Futures in Northeast Asia

Abstract

Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seems to be a very positive signal for the future development of sustainability science in this region. However, studyes show that there are still some major gaps there. One is the problem of how to build up the regional research capacity of sustainability science among northeast Asian research institutes across different disciplines as well as different political systems. Another is how to shift the conceptual frameworks of sustainability science into the operational policy frameworks. There are four major obstacles to the enhancement of regional research capacity-building in sustainability science. In order to build up the regional research capacity in sustainability science and to realize both local and global goals of the sustainable development in northeast Asia, this paper proposes some basic frameworks, including regional institutional innovations, establishment of a regional sustainability information network, initiatives of the regional assessment programme, and focus on the regional education and training of sustainability knowledge.     

A conceptual framework for analyzing deltas as coupled social–ecological systems: an example from the Amazon River Delta

At the nexus of watersheds, land, coastal areas, oceans, and human settlements, river delta regions pose specific challenges to environmental governance and sustainability. Using the Amazon Estuary-Delta region (AD) as our focus, we reflect on the challenges created by the high degree of functional interdependencies shaping social–ecological dynamics of delta regions. The article introduces the initial design of a conceptual framework to analyze delta regions as coupled social–ecological systems (SES). The first part of the framework is used to define a delta SES according to a problem and/or collective action dilemma. Five components can be used to define a delta SES: social–economic systems, governance systems, ecosystems-resource systems, topographic-hydrological systems, and oceanic-climate systems. These components are used in association with six types of telecoupling conditions: socio-demographic, economic, governance, ecological, material, and climatic-hydrological. The second part of the framework presents a strategy for the analysis of collective action problems in delta regions, from sub-delta/local to delta to basin levels. This framework is intended to support both case studies and comparative analysis. The article provides illustrative applications of the framework to the AD. First, we apply the framework to define and characterize the AD as coupled SES. We then utilize the framework to diagnose an example of collective action problem related to the impacts of urban growth, and urban and industrial pollution on small-scale fishing resources. We argue that the functional interdependencies characteristic of delta regions require new approaches to understand, diagnose, and evaluate the current and future impacts of social–ecological changes and potential solutions to the sustainability dilemmas of delta regions.     

Typifying cities to streamline the selection of relevant environmental sustainability indicators for urban water supply and sewage handling systems: a recommendation

Measuring performance and setting targets and benchmarks for the future entail the adoption of metrics or indicators. Sustainability is a multi-pronged objective encompassing social, economic, health, cultural, governance and environmental aspects. Indicators can be grouped under these categories. The selection of environmental sustainability indicators for a water and wastewater utility in a city needs to be based on concerns specific to the utility in question. The authors, in this paper, have recommended the classification of cities into city types based on specific attributes and identification of relevant environmental sustainability indicators, from a pool of 13 indicators, for these different city types. Having selected the relevant indicators, utilities can use them as tools to improve their environmental performance. The purpose is to not facilitate inter-utility comparisons within or across city types. Every utility would compare its environmental performance at a given point in time with what it was in the past. Towards the end, the paper also applies the methodology to nine cities across four continents—Europe (Oslo, Trondheim and Turin), Asia (the National Capital Territory of Delhi, Beijing, Tel Aviv and Male), North America (Sacramento) and South America (São Paulo). In all, 13 environmental sustainability indicators have been identified. Two cities—Oslo and Trondheim (both from Norway) belong to the same city type, while the other seven are different from each other in this regard. The number of relevant indicators ranged from 4 for Trondheim to 11 for Tel Aviv. The methodology is not restricted to urban water supply and sewage handling systems. It can be extended to other infrastructure systems as well—waste management, transportation, etc.     

Contributions of sustainability science to the study of environmental health problems

From the ontological point of view, environmental health problems do not differ from problems of unsustainability. This leads us to think that sustainability science could contribute to resolve important questions that studies on environmental health are not resolving. A literature review was made in order to analyse the scope and limitations of studies on environmental health problems. Based on the characteristics of environmental health studies, we highlighted some examples of questions that are being ignored and analysed four contributions that sustainability science could make to solve them. These contributions come from three key components of sustainability science: (1) the unit of analysis—social–ecological systems, (2) a theory—resilience theory and, specifically, social–ecological resilience, (3) and the approaches of complex systems and transdisciplinarity. From a sustainability science perspective, four contributions could be made: environmental health problems are redefined as social–ecological systems; environmental health is assumed to be the result of adaptation processes; the environment and society are recognized as systems, not as matrices of factors; and human action acquires content and structure and, in turn, explains the behaviour of environmental health problems.     

Direct and indirect effects of climate and fishing on changes in coastal ecosystem services: a historical perspective from the North Sea

Humanity depends on the marine environment for a range of vital ecosystem services, at global (e.g. climate regulation), regional (e.g. commercial fisheries) and local scales (e.g. coastal defence and recreation). At the same time, marine ecosystems have been exploited for centuries, and many systems today are under stress from multiple sources. Recent studies have shown how both climate change and fishing have caused long-term changes in the marine environment. However, there is still poor understanding of how these changes influence change in coastal ecosystem services. In this paper, an integrated modelling approach is used to assess how the final delivery of marine ecosystem services to coastal communities is influenced by the direct and indirect effects of changes in ecosystem processes brought about by climate and human impacts, using fisheries of the North Sea region as a case study. Partial least squares path analysis is used to explore the relationships between drivers of change, marine ecosystem processes and services (landings). A simple conceptual model with four variables—climate, fishing effort, ecosystem process and ecosystem services—is applied to the English North Sea using historic ecological, climatic and fisheries time series spanning 1924–2010 to identify the multiple pathways that might exist. As expected, direct and indirect links between fishing effort, ecosystem processes and service provision were significant. However, links between climate and ecosystem processes were weak. This paper highlights how path analysis can be used for analysing long-term temporal links between ecosystem processes and services following a simplified pathway.     

Learning for change: an educational contribution to sustainability science

Transition to sustainability is a search for ways to improve the social capacity to guide interactions between nature and society toward a more sustainable future and, thus, a process of social learning in its broadest sense. Accordingly, it is not only learning that is at issue but education and educational science, of which the latter is about exploring the preconditions of and opportunities for learning and education—whether individual or social, in formal or informal settings. Analyzing how educational science deals with the challenge of sustainability leads to two complementary approaches: the ‘outside-in’ approach sees the idea of sustainability influencing educational practice and the way the relationship of learning and teaching is reviewed, theoretically as well as within the social context. In an ‘inside-out’ approach, an overview is given of how educational science can contribute to the field of sustainability science. An examination of the literature on education and sustainability shows that, while sustainability features prominently in one form or another across all sectors, only little work can be found dealing with the contributions of educational science within sustainability science. However, as sustainability is a concept that not only influences educational practices but also invites disciplinary contributions to foster inter- and transdisciplinary research within the sustainability discourse, the question remains as to how and to what extent educational science in particular can contribute to sustainability science in terms of an ‘inside-out’ approach. In this paper, we reconstruct the emergence of education for sustainable development as a distinctive field of educational science and introduce and discuss three areas of sustainability research and throw into relief the unique contribution that educational science can make to individual action and behavior change, to organizational change and social learning, and, finally, to inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.     

Feeding the world sustainably: knowledge governance and sustainable agriculture in the Argentine Pampas

This article discusses the role of knowledge governance arrangements in the mainstreaming of sustainable practices, in particular, in the creation, sharing and use of integrated and contextualized knowledge. That is, knowledge which accounts for the social, economic, institutional, and ecological dimensions of potentially sustainable practices, and which considers the need to adapt generic practices to the sustainability requirements of specific places. An actor-centered approach is proposed for the study of the historical evolution of knowledge governance arrangements in order to understand their role in the adoption of sustainable practices. The approach is applied to explain the rapid adoption of no-till agriculture in the Argentine Pampas. A radical knowledge governance transformation occurring in this region during the 1990s led to increasing knowledge exchange and pushing sustainability practices to the top of key actors’ agendas. This embracing of no-till agriculture illustrates the crucial role played by farmers’ associations as boundary organizations: linking farmers with actors specialized in the generation of scientific knowledge and technology. This case reveals that sustainability transitions can be fostered through knowledge governance arenas characterized by: (a) promoting public–private collaboration through boundary organizations, (b) assigning private actors a leading role in the adoption of sustainability practices at the production unit scale, (c) fostering the public sector competence in regional and socio-ecological research, and (d) addressing the heterogeneous needs of knowledge users. However, the case also shows that the success of no-till agriculture in the Pampas is pushing the agriculturization of surrounding areas where this practice is largely unsustainable. This finding suggests that present knowledge governance arrangements fail to contextualize practices that are potentially sustainable.