| 1. |
- Biggs, Reinette, et al.
(författare)
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Social-ecological change : insights from the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecosystems and People. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2639-5908 .- 2639-5916. ; 18:1, s. 447-468
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social-ecological systems (SES) research has emerged as an important area of sustainability science, informing and supporting pressing issues of transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. To date, much SES research has been done in or from the Global North, where the challenges and contexts for supporting sustainability transformations are substantially different from the Global South. This paper synthesises emerging insights on SES dynamics that can inform actions and advance research to support sustainability transformations specifically in the southern African context. The paper draws on work linked to members of the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), a leading SES research network in the region, synthesizing key insights with respect to the five core themes of SAPECS: (i) transdisciplinary and engaged research, (ii) ecosystem services and human well-being, (iii) governance institutions and management practices, (iv) spatial relationships and cross-scale connections, and (v) regime shifts, traps and transformations. For each theme, we focus on insights that are particularly novel, interesting or important in the southern African context, and reflect on key research gaps and emerging frontiers for SES research in the region going forward. Such place-based insights are important for understanding the variation in SES dynamics around the world, and are crucial for informing a context-sensitive global agenda to foster sustainability transformations at local to global scales.
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| 2. |
- Biggs, Reinette, et al.
(författare)
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The Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society : an emergent community of practice
- 2023
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Ingår i: Ecosystems and People. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2639-5908 .- 2639-5916. ; 19:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 3. |
- Luvuno, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Perceived impacts of woody encroachment on ecosystem services in Hluhluwe, South Africa
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecology & Society. - 1708-3087. ; 27:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Anticipating, avoiding, and managing disruptive environmental change such as regime shifts and the impacts it has on human well-being is a key sustainability challenge. Woody encroachment is a globally important example of a regime shift that occurs in savanna systems, where a large fraction of the world’s poor live. Woody encroachment is known to negatively impact a variety of ecosystem services, but few studies have investigated the impact of woody encroachment on local land users and their livelihoods. In this study, we conducted semi-structured interviews to determine how different land users—local subsistence communities and managers of conservation tourism areas—perceive woody encroachment in the Hluhluwe region of South Africa, how it affects the ecosystem services they rely upon, and what costs they incur in undertaking activities to reverse woody encroachment. Most interviewees perceived trees to be increasing in the landscape (83%). However, perceptions about the causes of woody encroachment differed: community members cited the reduced usage of trees as the reason for woody encroachment, whereas conservation managers mostly attributed the change to increased CO2. Most community members felt woody encroachment was harmful to their household and general well-being, citing loss of grazing for livestock, and fear of attacks by wild animals and criminals as the main impacts. In contrast, conservation managers perceived woody encroachment to have both harmful and beneficial impacts, with the main negative impacts being loss of grazing for wildlife and impacts on tourism through reduced visibility for game viewing. All the conservation areas invested in tree clearing compared to only 20% of respondents in the community areas, where an average of ZAR367 (US$25) was spent per year on clearing, compared to ZAR293,751 (US$20,000) and ZAR163,000 (US$11,000) spent in private game reserves and government reserves, respectively. Our findings highlight the negative impacts of ongoing woody encroachment, the differentiated impacts it has on different land users, and differences in capacity to combat encroachment. These findings highlight the need for state-funded management interventions to support clearing of trees in encroached areas, particularly in communal areas.
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| 4. |
- Luvuno, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Woody Encroachment as a Social-Ecological Regime Shift
- 2018
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI AG. - 2071-1050. ; 10:7
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- African savannas are increasingly affected by woody encroachment, an increase in the density of woody plants. Woody encroachment often occurs unexpectedly, is difficult to reverse, and has significant economic, cultural and ecological implications. The process of woody encroachment represents a so-called regime shift that results from feedback loops that link vegetation and variables such as fire, grazing and water availability. Much of the work on woody encroachment has focused on the direct drivers of the process, such as the role of fire or grazing in inhibiting or promoting encroachment. However, little work has been done on how ecological changes may provide feedback to affect some of the underlying social processes driving woody encroachment. In this paper, we build on the ecological literature on encroachment to present a qualitative systems analysis of woody encroachment as a social-ecological regime shift. Our analysis highlights the underlying indirect role of human population growth, and we distinguish the key social-ecological processes underlying woody encroachment in arid versus mesic African savannas. The analysis we present helps synthesize the impacts of encroachment, the drivers and feedbacks that play a key role and identify potential social and ecological leverage points to prevent or reverse the woody encroachment process.
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| 5. |
- Rocha, Juan C., 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Panarchy : ripples of a boundary concept
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 27:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How do social-ecological systems change over time? In 2002 C. S. Holling and colleagues proposed the concept of panarchy, which presented social-ecological systems as an interacting set of adaptive cycles, each produced by the dynamic tensions between novelty and efficiency at multiple scales. Initially introduced as a conceptual framework and set of metaphors, panarchy has gained the attention of scholars across many disciplines, and its ideas continue to inspire further conceptual developments. Almost 20 years after this concept was introduced, we reviewed how it has been used, tested, extended, and revised, through the combination of qualitative methods and machine learning. Document analysis was used to code panarchy features common to the scientific literature (N = 42), a qualitative analysis that was complemented with topic modeling of 2177 documents. We found that the adaptive cycle is the feature of panarchy that has attracted the most attention. Challenges remain in empirically grounding the metaphor, but recent theoretical and empirical work offer some avenues for future research.
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