| 1. |
- Barraclough, Alicia D., et al.
(författare)
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Global knowledge-action networks at the frontlines of sustainability : Insights from five decades of science for action in UNESCO's World Network of biosphere reserves
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - 2575-8314. ; 5:5, s. 1430-1444
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 1. Generating actionable knowledge to meet current sustainability challenges re- quires unprecedented collaboration across scales, geographies, cultures and knowledges. Intergovernmental programmes and place -based knowledge- action networks have much potential to mobilize sustainability transformation. Although many research fields have benefited from research networks and comparative sites, the potential of site -based research networks for generating knowledge at the people- nature interface has yet to be fully explored.2. This article presents the World Network of biosphere reserves (WNBR) of UNESCO's Man and Biosphere Programme, intentionally established for generating actionable knowledge through comparative sites envisioned as learning spaces for sustainable development. Drawing on experiences over five decades, and we offer six categories of insights. Our intent is to share the story of this network widely, distil the learnings from the network to enhance its potential to support both knowledge coproduction and collaborative action for sustainability and inform wider efforts to establish place -based sustainability networks aimed at improving human- environment relations through knowledge and action.3. The WNBR has generated insights on the challenges of creating and supporting an international and inter-governmental sustainability network to generate and mobilize place -based interdisciplinary knowledge in the long term. Despite the challenges, site-and place -based research facilitated by this network has been fundamental in creating space for sustainability science, knowledge coproduction and transdisciplinary research at the human- nature interface.4. We share insights on pathways to the implementation of global sustainability agendas through local networks, and the role of research in supporting learning and experimentation in local sites as they work to adapt global sustainability goals. Research in the WNBR has generated deeper understanding on social- ecological complexity and resilience in place -based sustainability initiatives, and how collaborative platforms might facilitate collective action across landscapes. The network continues to offer a fundamental learning space on operationalizing pluralistic approaches to biodiversity conservation, for example, through its focus on biocultural diversity, offering a key opportunity for the implementation of the post -2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.5. We conclude by arguing that WNBR, and similar place -based knowledge- action networks, can support interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research related to human- nature relationships and provide opportunities for comparative research that may yield more explanatory power than individual case studies.
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| 2. |
- Beery, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Disconnection from nature : Expanding our understanding of human–nature relations
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - : Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. - 2575-8314. ; 5:2, s. 470-488
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The human relationship with nature is a topic that has been explored throughout human history. More recently, the idea of connection to nature has merged as an important transdisciplinary field of study. Despite increased scholarly attention to connection to nature, the notion of disconnection from nature remains undertheorized and understudied. In this perspective article, we argue for a more comprehensive understanding of disconnection from nature to strengthen theories of human-nature relationships that goes beyond individual relationships and considers social and collective factors of disconnection, including institutional, socio-cultural and power dimensions. Drawing on case insights, we present the ‘wheel of disconnection’ to illustrate how disconnections from nature manifest across individual or societal meaning-making processes, thereby problematizing existing research that seeks to create dualisms between human positive and negative impacts on the environment in isolation from cultural or political contexts. We do not seek to discount research or important practical efforts to foster an individual's connection to nature by elevating disconnection. Instead, we hope that creating greater awareness and understanding of disconnection will be able to guide opportunities going forward for strengthening a connection to nature along a continuum from the individual to the social. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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| 3. |
- Isacs, Lina, PhD, et al.
(författare)
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What does value pluralism mean in practice? An empirical demonstration from a deliberative valuation
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - : Wiley. - 2575-8314. ; 5:2, s. 384-402
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The intensified call for value pluralism within research on valuation in environmental decision-making responds to the recognition that neoclassical economic approaches to environmental valuation do not sufficiently account for important aspects of human–nature relations. However, few studies have explored how value plurality actually plays out in social deliberative reasoning and decision-making in practice, and these studies have mostly been deductive and quantitative.In his essay ‘Are choices trade-offs?’ Alan Holland (2002) goes to the heart of differences in conceptions of value and rationality between neoclassical and ecological economics. These conceptions differ in terms of whether values are seen as commensurable or incommensurable, whether people's choices amount to willing exchanges of gains and losses between different values and whether unwillingness to trade values off for net gain is irrational.Addressing Holland's question, we present a quasi-experimental study on deliberative valuation of marine issues on the Swedish west coast, where we considered how local citizens and politicians approached values in their reasoning and choice-making. Mixing quantitative and qualitative empirical material, we used an abductive analytical approach, iterating between data and theory to link our observations and interpretations to prevalent understandings of value, valuation and deliberation in the literature.The results demonstrate the relevance of value pluralism for environmental policy by showing the prevalence of preference uncertainty and intrapersonal value conflicts in participants' reasoning and interaction. Value conflicts played out as the inability to achieve multiple transcendental values that participants aspired to, including conflicts between social and environmental goals. Rather than attempting to commensurate different value dimensions, participants sought to avoid moral conflicts, showed emotional anguish when value conflicts came to the fore and tried to bridge conflicting aspirations and experiences through inclusive reason-giving and compromise.Thus, choices were not resolved through rational trade-offs, supporting Holland's claim and challenging the neoclassical trade-off model of choice. Incommensurability appeared as deliberate positions grounded in participants' experiences rather than as irrationality. Legitimately resolving value conflicts thus demands reason-sensitive means for deciding upon the sacrifices to be made and supporting public participation in environmental decision-making in ways that reveal peoples' actual moral considerations.
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| 4. |
- Mikusinski, Grzegorz, et al.
(författare)
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Elucidating human-nature connectedness in three EU countries: A pro-environmental behaviour perspective
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - 2575-8314. ; 5, s. 1577-1591
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 1. Strengthening positive human-nature relationships is seen as a way to more pro-environmental behaviour and leads to a greater environmental sustainability. Therefore, understanding human-nature relationships has attracted increasing attention among researchers. Nature connectedness is a concept developed to measure such relationships. Since nature connectedness is complex and context dependent phenomenon, more research comparing sociocultural and environmental factors within societies in different countries is needed to understand its determinants.2. In this study, we explored how sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics and value orientation of respondents and environmental variables affected nature connectedness across different contexts in the European Union. We used 11 sociodemographic, socioeconomic and personal value factors from the computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) and six environmental variables characterizing the local environments of 1054 respondents as independent variables to explain the nature connectedness of the respondents in Greece, Poland and Sweden. The individual level of nature connectedness (response variable) was expressed by an additive index (NC-index) based on a 5-item scale originating from CAWI. The general additive model was applied to link NC-index to sociodemographic, value orientation and selected environmental variables.3. We found that the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents and their value orientation were substantially more important in explaining the individual level of nature connectedness than environmental variables. The NC-index was positively correlated with the frequency of visits to the natural environment and biospheric values of the respondents, and was higher for women and the most prosperous respondents. Moreover, we observed several country-wise differences in associations between explanatory variables and NC-index. For example, altruistic orientation was positively related to the level of nature connectedness only in Greece, but not in two other countries, and residence during childhood was important to nature connectedness only in Sweden.4. Our findings that some sociodemographic, socioeconomic and value orientation variables affect the level of individual nature connectedness across studied countries are encouraging. They indicate that some universally applied educational actions may elevate the level of nature connectedness. We argue that exploration of nature connectedness from a cross-country perspective may provide significant insights into the environmental debate in national and international contexts.
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| 5. |
- Pecl, Gretta T., et al.
(författare)
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Climate-driven 'species-on-the-move' provide tangible anchors to engage the public on climate change
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2575-8314. ; 5:5, s. 1384-1402
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over recent decades, our understanding of climate change has accelerated greatly, but unfortunately, observable impacts have increased in tandem. Both mitigation and adaptation have not progressed at the level or scale warranted by our collective knowledge on climate change. More effective approaches to engage people on current and future anthropogenic climate change effects are urgently needed. Here, we show how species whose distributions are shifting in response to climate change, that is, ‘species-on-the-move’, present an opportunity to engage people with climate change by linking to human values, and our deep connections with the places in which we live, in a locally relevant yet globally coherent narrative. Species-on-the-move can impact ecosystem structure and function, food security, human health, livelihoods, culture and even the climate itself through feedback to the climate system, presenting a wide variety of potential pathways for people to understand that climate change affects them personally as individuals. Citizen science focussed on documenting changes in biodiversity is one approach to foster a deeper engagement on climate change. However, other possible avenues, which may offer potential to engage people currently unconnected with nature, include arts, games or collaborations with rural agriculture (e.g. new occurrences of pest species) or fisheries organisations (e.g. shifting stocks) or healthcare providers (e.g. changing distributions of disease vectors). Through the importance we place on the aspects of life impacted by the redistribution of species around us, species-on-the-move offer emotional pathways to connect with people on the complex issue of climate change in profound ways that have the potential to engender interest and action on climate change. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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| 6. |
- Tanguay, Louis, et al.
(författare)
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Opportunities for and barriers to anticipatory governance of two lake social–ecological systems in Germany and Canada
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - 2575-8314. ; 5:3, s. 911-928
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change effects are already being felt around the globe, and governance systems need to adapt to this new reality to foster greater resilience in social–ecological systems (SES). Anticipatory governance is a concept proposed for such a purpose. However, its definition remains rather vague in the literature, as is its practical use for decision makers. In this paper, we contribute to filling these two shortcomings.First, we conducted a systematic literature review of the concept and derived the following main criteria: foresight, networked engagement, integration and feedback. Second, we use the identified criteria to analyse two social–ecological systems around lakes in Lower Saxony, Germany and in Quebec, Canada.In both cases, data were generated using a participatory approach (interviews and workshops) with local stakeholders. We examined these data, identifying opportunities and barriers to anticipatory governance. Our findings support, with empirical data for the first time, the claim in the literature that ensemble-ization—the fact that all anticipatory governance criteria must be put forward jointly and not in isolation—is a facilitator for the emergence of anticipation.Furthermore, by highlighting opportunities and barriers to anticipatory governance within two temperate lake SES cases, we illustrate how to understand a given system's limitations with respect to anticipatory governance, as well as how to engage with the concept through concrete, already existing opportunities. The proposed course of actions could help design more anticipatory governance systems to support decision-making processes that could enhance SES resilience.
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| 7. |
- von Essen, Erica, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
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Social licence to cull : Examining scepticism toward lethal wildlife removal in cities
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - : John Wiley and Sons Inc. - 2575-8314. ; 5:4, s. 1353-1363
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The public may sometimes resist orders to cull wildlife, even when these pose a biosecurity threat. Managers and researchers desire to know why this is so.Research overwhelmingly focuses on the role of the species in conditioning resistance but our approach also shows the circumstances, settings, people responsible and methods used that undermine the legitimacy of the cull.We bring these together and use a social licence to operate (SLO) framework to demonstrate how support for wildlife culling in the context of biosecurity may be revoked. In the absence of SLO, resistance to wildlife culling can range from personal unease at seeing a cherished species or a neighbourhood fox being culled, to openly confronting the municipal hunter.By interviewing (n = 32) and following (n = 4) municipal hunter in Swedish cities who cull wildlife individuals or populations deemed to pose a threat to public health, safety or other societal interests, we uncover parameters by which culling wildlife are deemed to be problematic: who performs the culling, when the culling is done, how it is done and where it is done. This leads us to the concept of necroaesthetics: taboo ways of taking animal lives. In a unique perspective, we apprehend two forms of resistance: one that hunters attribute to the public and that of hunters' own unease at performing certain culling interventions. While the public and municipal hunters disagree, they also have similar criteria for opposing culls.We conclude by considering the future of the SLO of culling wildlife for biosecurity, including the subjective nature of its Revocation. This goes toward identifying parameters that make culls likely to produce controversy, hence granting some predictive value for managers in their planning.
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| 8. |
- von Post, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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The Swedish green infrastructure policy as a policy assemblage : What does it do for biodiversity conservation?
- 2023
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Ingår i: People and Nature. - : Wiley. - 2575-8314. ; 5:2, s. 839-851
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly used in policymaking to promote biodiversity and enhance ecosystem services through the protection, creation, restoration and connection of natural and man-made green areas. The EU Commission adopted in 2013, the concept as a strategy. When member states apply the policy, it is translated into specific bureaucratic and political systems, creating different ‘policy assemblages’ of ideas and institutional features. We analyse the Swedish GI policy to draw conclusions about how it has been assembled in one particular member state and what that particular assemblage will imply for biodiversity conservation. In combination with understanding policies as assemblages, we use the ‘What's the problem represented to be’-approach as method. We show that the Swedish GI policy assemblage consists of a mix of policy ideas developed in Sweden and the EU. Despite the current strong focus on biodiversity conservation, the notion of land's multifunctionality, characterizing the EU strategy and the possibility to conserve biodiversity on land used for purposes other than conservation increasingly influence the Swedish policy as it is formed. Although the policy has the potential to mainstream biodiversity conservation measures across different sectors, based on our analysis of current discourse, its implementation will likely promote GI measures less disruptive to existing land use activities, making its capacity to halt biodiversity loss marginal. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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