| 1. |
- Adger, W. Neil, et al.
(författare)
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Resilience implications of policy responses to climate change
- 2011
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Ingår i: Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews. - : Wiley. - 1757-7780 .- 1757-7799. ; 2:5, s. 757-766
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines whether some response strategies to climate variability and change have the potential to undermine long-term resilience of social-ecological systems. We define the parameters of a resilience approach, suggesting that resilience is characterized by the ability to absorb perturbations without changing overall system function, the ability to adapt within the resources of the system itself, and the ability to learn, innovate, and change. We evaluate nine current regional climate change policy responses and examine governance, sensitivity to feedbacks, and problem framing to evaluate impacts on characteristics of a resilient system. We find that some responses, such as the increase in harvest rates to deal with pine beetle infestations in Canada and expansion of biofuels globally, have the potential to undermine long-term resilience of resource systems. Other responses, such as decentralized water planning in Brazil and tropical storm disaster management in Caribbean islands, have the potential to increase long-term resilience. We argue that there are multiple sources of resilience in most systems and hence policy should identify such sources and strengthen capacities to adapt and learn.
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| 2. |
- Angeler, David, et al.
(författare)
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Management applications of discontinuity theory
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Applied Ecology. - : Wiley. - 0021-8901 .- 1365-2664. ; 53:3, s. 688-698
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- 1. Human impacts on the environment are multifaceted and can occur across distinct spatiotemporal scales. Ecological responses to environmental change are therefore difficult to predict, and entail large degrees of uncertainty. Such uncertainty requires robust tools for management to sustain ecosystem goods and services and maintain resilient ecosystems. 2. We propose an approach based on discontinuity theory that accounts for patterns and processes at distinct spatial and temporal scales, an inherent property of ecological systems. Discontinuity theory has not been applied in natural resource management and could therefore improve ecosystem management because it explicitly accounts for ecological complexity. 3. Synthesis and applications. We highlight the application of discontinuity approaches for meeting management goals. Specifically, discontinuity approaches have significant potential to measure and thus understand the resilience of ecosystems, to objectively identify critical scales of space and time in ecological systems at which human impact might be most severe, to provide warning indicators of regime change, to help predict and understand biological invasions and extinctions and to focus monitoring efforts. Discontinuity theory can complement current approaches, providing a broader paradigm for ecological management and conservation.
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| 3. |
- Angeler, David, et al.
(författare)
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Quantifying the Adaptive Cycle
- 2015
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 10:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The adaptive cycle was proposed as a conceptual model to portray patterns of change in complex systems. Despite the model having potential for elucidating change across systems, it has been used mainly as a metaphor, describing system dynamics qualitatively. We use a quantitative approach for testing premises (reorganisation, conservatism, adaptation) in the adaptive cycle, using Baltic Sea phytoplankton communities as an example of such complex system dynamics. Phytoplankton organizes in recurring spring and summer blooms, a well-established paradigm in planktology and succession theory, with characteristic temporal trajectories during blooms that may be consistent with adaptive cycle phases. We used long-term (1994-2011) data and multivariate analysis of community structure to assess key components of the adaptive cycle. Specifically, we tested predictions about: reorganisation: spring and summer blooms comprise distinct community states; conservatism: community trajectories during individual adaptive cycles are conservative; and adaptation: phytoplankton species during blooms change in the long term. All predictions were supported by our analyses. Results suggest that traditional ecological paradigms such as phytoplankton successional models have potential for moving the adaptive cycle from a metaphor to a framework that can improve our understanding how complex systems organize and reorganize following collapse. Quantifying reorganization, conservatism and adaptation provides opportunities to cope with the intricacies and uncertainties associated with fast ecological change, driven by shifting system controls. Ultimately, combining traditional ecological paradigms with heuristics of complex system dynamics using quantitative approaches may help refine ecological theory and improve our understanding of the resilience of ecosystems.
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| 4. |
- Cosens, Barbara, et al.
(författare)
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Governing complexity : Integrating science, governance, and law to manage accelerating in the commons
- 2021
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 118:36
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The speed and uncertainty of environmental change in the Anthropocene challenge the capacity of coevolving social-ecological-technological systems (SETs) to adapt or transform to these changes. Formal government and legal structures further constrain the adaptive capacity of our SETs. However, new, selforganized forms of adaptive governance are emerging at multiple scales in natural resource-based SETs. Adaptive governance involves the private and public sectors as well as formal and informal institutions, self-organized to fill governance gaps in the traditional roles of states. While new governance forms are emerging, they are not yet doing so rapidly enough to match the pace of environmental change. Furthermore, they do not yet possess the legitimacy or capacity needed to address disparities between the winners and losers from change. These emergent forms of adaptive governance appear to be particularly effective in managing complexity. We explore governance and SETs as coevolving complex systems, focusing on legal systems to understand the potential pathways and obstacles to equitable adaptation. We explore how governments may facilitate the emergence of adaptive governance and promote legitimacy in both the process of governance despite the involvement of nonstate actors, and its adherence to democratic values of equity and justice. To manage the contextual nature of the results of change in complex systems, we propose the establishment of long-term study initiatives for the coproduction of knowledge, to accelerate learning and synergize interactions between science and governance and to foster public science and epistemic communities dedicated to navigating transitions to more just, sustainable, and resilient futures.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Garmestani, Ahjond, et al.
(författare)
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Untapped capacity for resilience in environmental law
- 2019
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 116:40, s. 19899-19904
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over the past several decades, environmental governance has made substantial progress in addressing environmental change, but emerging environmental problems require new innovations in law, policy, and governance. While expansive legal reform is unlikely to occur soon, there is untapped potential in existing laws to address environmental change, both by leveraging adaptive and transformative capacities within the law itself to enhance social-ecological resilience and by using those laws to allow social-ecological systems to adapt and transform. Legal and policy research to date has largely overlooked this potential, even though it offers a more expedient approach to addressing environmental change than waiting for full-scale environmental law reform. We highlight examples from the United States and the European Union of untapped capacity in existing laws for fostering resilience in social-ecological systems. We show that governments and other governance agents can make substantial advances in addressing environmental change in the short term-without major legal reform-by exploiting those untapped capacities, and we offer principles and strategies to guide such initiatives.
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| 7. |
- Gelcich, Stefan, et al.
(författare)
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Navigating transformations in governance of Chilean marine coastal resources
- 2010
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 107:39, s. 16794-16799
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Marine ecosystems are in decline. New transformational changes in governance are urgently required to cope with overfishing, pollution, global changes, and other drivers of degradation. Here we explore social, political, and ecological aspects of a transformation in governance of Chile's coastal marine resources, from 1980 to today. Critical elements in the initial preparatory phase of the transformation were (i) recognition of the depletion of resource stocks, (ii) scientific knowledge on the ecology and resilience of targeted species and their role in ecosystem dynamics, and (iii) demonstration-scale experimental trials, building on smaller-scale scientific experiments, which identified new management pathways. The trials improved cooperation among scientists and fishers, integrating knowledge and establishing trust. Political turbulence and resource stock collapse provided a window of opportunity that triggered the transformation, supported by new enabling legislation. Essential elements to navigate this transformation were the ability to network knowledge from the local level to influence the decision-making processes at the national level, and a preexisting social network of fishers that provided political leverage through a national confederation of artisanal fishing collectives. The resultant governance scheme includes a revolutionary national system of marine tenure that allocates user rights and responsibilities to fisher collectives. Although fine tuning is necessary to build resilience of this new regime, this transformation has improved the sustainability of the interconnected social-ecological system. Our analysis of how this transformation unfolded provides insights into how the Chilean system could be further developed and identifies generalized pathways for improved governance of marine resources around the world.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Gunderson, Lance, et al.
(författare)
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Tricky Times
- 2011
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Ingår i: Ecology and society. ; 16:4, s. 31-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In many ways, the year 2011 has been extraordinary in terms of the frequency and scales of crises. We have seen exogenous environmental events such as the tsunami in the Pacific to floods in Brazil, Thailand, and the Philippines to cyclones in the heartland of the United States resulting in massive loss of lives and property. These variations in weather have not been unusual in their occurrence, but have been unusual in their impact to the human systems. In other words, these events have tested the resiliency of humans and their infrastructure. The other type of crises has been largely endogenous, namely social unrest, led by technologies that have created more connectivity, witnessed in the Arab Spring and continued with the Occupy movement. Although the longer term results are still uncertain, there can be little denying that the past year has been one of dramatic changes. The financial crisis still remains and there is overspending in many countries challenging collaborations of whole regions, like Europe. Understanding the linkages between the natural and human systems is a key theme of this journal. The journal also publishes work that attempts to explain abrupt and surprising change and how periods of gradual change can be prepared for or overwhelmed by external events. Much of resilience theory is about explaining shifts in controlling variables, whether they are ecological or social and interacting. To understand such shifts either in theory or in practice, as we are observing this year, involves questioning the extant boundaries and the processes that determine those boundaries. But this is where it gets tricky. Over long histories and through many cultures, humans have developed stories about key individuals, both real and imagined, who play critical roles transforming systems after crises. One such group is called tricksters because of their unexpected and surprising behaviors. Such individuals test existing boundaries and rules, but with positive results. These tricksters are so common that the myths appear universal. Native Americans personified these traits in the spirits of coyotes and ravens. One Greek myth had Prometheus steal fire from the gods, which has become a metaphor for the development and application of technology by humans. In more modern settings, the groups such as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters started a cultural revolution against the mores of the early 1960s in the United States. Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, is one of the more recent stories depicting such roles in fiction. We emphasize the creative roles of tricksters in questioning boundaries and producing positive outcomes, and not the mean and malicious sides of such actions. Their ability to innovate and find clever paths while navigating complex problems is a trait that is similar to the scholars that contribute to this journal. The intelligent, skillful, creative, and positive attributes characterize much of the scholarship within this issue, as described in the next section.
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