1. |
- Biggs, Reinette, et al.
(författare)
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Navigating the Back Loop : Fostering Social Innovation and Transformation in Ecosystem Management
- 2010
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 15:2, s. 9-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Addressing the environmental challenges of the 21st century requires substantial changes to the way modern society views and manages ecosystems. In particular, many authors contend that fundamental transformation of the largely sectoral, expert-centered ecosystem-management institutions of modern, Western societies is needed. There is increasing agreement that more adaptive, integrated, collaborative ecosystem-management approaches, interlinked at multiple scales, would improve society's ability to sustainably manage complex social-ecological systems. Therefore, understanding processes of transformation, and factors that may enable transformation in ecosystem management, has become an active research area. We explore ecosystem-management transformations using a social-innovation framework. Based on three local-level case studies of transformation in freshwater management, we provide a pilot assessment of factors that may promote the emergence and adoption of integrated, collaborative ecosystem-management approaches. Our analysis suggests that ongoing environmental degradation, increasing environmental awareness, and shifting societal values are creating fertile ground for the emergence and adoption of new approaches to ecosystem management. Based on the case studies we examined, we suggest that initiatives that foster environmental awareness and attachment to local ecosystems, develop capacity for social entrepreneurship in the environmental arena, promote dialogue between key stakeholders, and provide institutional support to new institutions may facilitate the emergence of integrated, collaborative ecosystem-management approaches.
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2. |
- Carpenter, Stephen R., et al.
(författare)
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Dancing on the volcano : social exploration in times of discontent
- 2019
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 24:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Radical recent developments such as Brexit, the rise of extreme nationalism, the gilets jaunes, polarizing leaders, the Arab Spring, and fundamentalist movements are indications of societal discontent with the status quo. Other societal phenomena such as gender fluidity, veganism, and bartering are also associated with a perceived need to change. The context is the Anthropocene, a humandominated biosphere challenging the resilience of a livable planet. Such a broad set of developments may be interpreted in the light of new insights from theory of complex systems about what happens as resilience of the current pathway (societal organization as we know it) decreases. Rising fluctuations characterize a phase of uncertainty and exploration, potentially leading into a transition of the system toward a new pathway. We reflect on global changes that may contribute to social destabilization such as rising wealth concentration and environmental degradation and ask how responses may be understood from social-psychological forces such as the need for group identity and managing the terror of mortality. The emerging image is that of a society engaged in multifaceted experimentation. Maintaining such experimentation may help inspire novel pathways to desirable futures, but there is a risk of societies becoming trapped in backward-looking narratives that threaten long-term sustainable outcomes.
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3. |
- Carpenter, Stephen R., et al.
(författare)
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Resilience : Accounting for the Noncomputable
- 2009
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 14:1, s. 13-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plans to solve complex environmental problems should always consider the role of surprise. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to emphasize known computable aspects of a problem while neglecting aspects that are unknown and failing to ask questions about them. The tendency to ignore the noncomputable can be countered by considering a wide range of perspectives, encouraging transparency with regard to conflicting viewpoints, stimulating a diversity of models, and managing for the emergence of new syntheses that reorganize fragmentary knowledge.
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4. |
- Folke, Carl, et al.
(författare)
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Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 50:4, s. 834-869
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity has become the major force in shaping the future of the Earth system as a whole; and the scale and pace of the human dimension have caused climate change, rapid loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities, and loss of resilience to deal with uncertainty and surprise. Taken together, human actions are challenging the biosphere foundation for a prosperous development of civilizations. The Anthropocene reality-of rising system-wide turbulence-calls for transformative change towards sustainable futures. Emerging technologies, social innovations, broader shifts in cultural repertoires, as well as a diverse portfolio of active stewardship of human actions in support of a resilient biosphere are highlighted as essential parts of such transformations.
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5. |
- Galaz, Victor, et al.
(författare)
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Global Governance Dimensions of Globally Networked Risks : The State of the Art in Social Science Research
- 2017
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Ingår i: Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy. - : Wiley. - 1944-4079. ; 8:1, s. 4-27
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global risks are now increasingly being perceived as networked, and likely to result in large-scale, propagating failures and crises that transgress national boundaries and societal sectors. These so called globally networked risks pose fundamental challenges to global governance institutions. A growing literature explores the nature of these globally networked or systemic risks. While this research has taught us much about the anatomy of these risks, it has consistently failed to integrate insights from the wider social sciences. This is problematic since the prescriptions that result from these efforts flow from naive assumptions about the way real-world state and non-state actors behave in the international arena. This leaves serious gaps in our understanding of whether networked environmental risks at all can be governed. The following essay brings together decades of research by different disciplines in the social sciences, and identifies five multi-disciplinary key insights that can inform global approaches to governing these. These insights include the influence of international institutions; the dynamics and effect of international norms and legal mechanisms; the need for international institutions to cope with transboundary and cross-sectoral crises; the role of innovation as a strategy to handle unpredictable global risks; and the necessity to address legitimacy issues.
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6. |
- Luederitz, Christopher, et al.
(författare)
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Learning through Evaluation: A Tentative Evaluative Scheme for Sustainability Transition Experiments
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - 0959-6526. ; 169, s. 61-76
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Transitions towards sustainability are urgently needed to address the interconnected challenges of economic development, ecological integrity, and social justice, from local to global scales. Around the world, collaborative science-society initiatives are forming to conduct experiments in support of sustainability transitions. Such experiments, if carefully designed, provide significant learning opportunities for making progress on transition efforts. Yet, there is no broadly applicable evaluative scheme available to capture this critical information across a large number of cases, and to guide the design of transition experiments. To address this gap, the article develops such a scheme, in a tentative form, drawing on evaluative research and sustainability transitions scholarship, alongside insights from empirical cases. We critically discuss the scheme's key features of being generic, comprehensive, operational, and formative. Furthermore, we invite scholars and practitioners to apply, reflect and further develop the proposed tentative scheme – making evaluation and experiments objects of learning.
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7. |
- Moore, Michele-Lee, et al.
(författare)
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Navigating emergence and system reflexivity as key transformative capacities : experiences from a Global Fellowship program
- 2018
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 23:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The distinction between adaptive and transformative capacities is still not well understood, and in this study we aimed to build a transformative learning space to strengthen transformative capacities. We proposed that two capacities will be essential to transformation: the capacity to navigate emergence and cross-scale systems reflexivity. We outline our efforts to design and deliver a Global Fellowship program in social innovation, intended to strengthen these two capacities among practitioners already engaged in socially innovative work. Results indicated that the concepts, frameworks, and experiences introduced through the Fellowship led to four key insights about these capacities. Firstly, individual Fellows and their organizations were able to see some complex system dynamics that were previously invisible, which in turn, allowed Fellows to see the distribution of resources and agency across the system in new ways. Secondly, engaging with diversity is essential in social innovation and transformative change processes, and system reflexivity aided in doing this. Additionally, Fellows indicated they were able to identify different kinds of opportunities and the generative potential that can lie within social-ecological systems. Lastly, the findings demonstrate the challenging nature of crossing scales and how a transformative space, such as a Fellowship, helps to practice the experience of contestation, unpredictability, and the uncontrollable dynamics of transformation and social innovation.
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8. |
- Olsson, Per, et al.
(författare)
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The concept of the Anthropocene as a game-changer : a new context for social innovation and transformations to sustainability
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 22:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- After tracing the antecedents of the concept and considering its intersection in social innovation research, we put forward the argument that the Anthropocene concept points to three areas of thought that are strategically imperative and must be accelerated if social innovation theory and practice is to prove transformative and respond to the challenges associated with the Anthropocene. First, we contend that the current debate on social innovation for sustainability lacks a deeper focus on human-environmental interactions and the related feedbacks, which will be necessary to understand and achieve large-scale change and transformations to global sustainability. Many innovations focus on only the social or the ecological, and we believe a more integrated approach will be needed moving forward. Second, social innovation research must confront the path-dependencies embedded within systems, and we propose that the act of "bricolage," which recombines existing elements in novel ways, will be essential, rather than single variable solutions, which currently dominate social innovation discussions. Finally, we put forward the idea that confronting the cross-scalar nature of the Anthropocene requires revisiting both the scope and temporal nature of social innovations that are most typically focused upon by scholars and funders alike. We believe the concept of the Anthropocene creates new opportunities for social innovation scholars to imagine new possibilities.
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9. |
- Scheffer, Marten, et al.
(författare)
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Dual thinking for scientists
- 2015
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 20:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent studies provide compelling evidence for the idea that creative thinking draws upon two kinds of processes linked to distinct physiological features, and stimulated under different conditions. In short, the fast system-I produces intuition whereas the slow and deliberate system-II produces reasoning. System-I can help see novel solutions and associations instantaneously, but is prone to error. System-II has other biases, but can help checking and modifying the system-I results. Although thinking is the core business of science, the accepted ways of doing our work focus almost entirely on facilitating system-II. We discuss the role of system-I thinking in past scientific breakthroughs, and argue that scientific progress may be catalyzed by creating conditions for such associative intuitive thinking in our academic lives and in education. Unstructured socializing time, education for daring exploration, and cooperation with the arts are among the potential elements. Because such activities may be looked upon as procrastination rather than work, deliberate effort is needed to counteract our systematic bias.
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10. |
- Sumaila, U. Rashid, et al.
(författare)
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WTO must ban harmful fisheries subsidies
- 2021
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 374:6567, s. 544-544
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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11. |
- Westley, Frances R., et al.
(författare)
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Iconic images, symbols, and archetypes : their function in art and science
- 2018
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 23:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The relationship between art and science is one of contrasts and commonalities. We look at one commonality between art and science: the central role of iconic images. We argue that iconic images are the touchstone symbols in both art and science and provide similar functions for both. We propose that these iconic images provoke an openness and a receptivity to our deepest emotional capacities and a connection between those and the dynamics of the broader social-ecological systems in which we operate. Such iconic images may also act as attractors that provoke the emergence of increasing levels of intellectual and aesthetic self-organization, not only at an individual level, but also in terms of larger social, scientific, or artistic fields. Finally, through a combination of this attraction and this connection, iconic images may play a role in transformation.
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12. |
- Westley, Frances, et al.
(författare)
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Tipping toward sustainability : emerging pathways of transformation
- 2011
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 40:7, s. 762-780
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores the links between agency, institutions, and innovation in navigating shifts and large-scale transformations toward global sustainability. Our central question is whether social and technical innovations can reverse the trends that are challenging critical thresholds and creating tipping points in the earth system, and if not, what conditions are necessary to escape the current lock-in. Large-scale transformations in information technology, nano-and biotechnology, and new energy systems have the potential to significantly improve our lives; but if, in framing them, our globalized society fails to consider the capacity of the biosphere, there is a risk that unsustainable development pathways may be reinforced. Current institutional arrangements, including the lack of incentives for the private sector to innovate for sustainability, and the lags inherent in the path dependent nature of innovation, contribute to lock-in, as does our incapacity to easily grasp the interactions implicit in complex problems, referred to here as the ingenuity gap. Nonetheless, promising social and technical innovations with potential to change unsustainable trajectories need to be nurtured and connected to broad institutional resources and responses. In parallel, institutional entrepreneurs can work to reduce the resilience of dominant institutional systems and position viable shadow alternatives and niche regimes.
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13. |
- Österblom, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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A message from magic to science : seeing how the brain can be tricked may strengthen our thinking
- 2015
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 20:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Scientific discoveries rely on creative thinking, and several authors have explored similarities in and differences between creativity in the sciences and that in the arts. Here we explore possible ways in which science can learn from the arts, focusing specifically on experiences derived from the art of magic and on the limitations of human cognition. Generations of stage magicians or illusionists have made sophisticated use of the weaknesses in human systems of perception and interpretation. We highlight three important principles of magic tricks, including: (1) the audience see what it expects, (2) it is blind to all but the focus of attention, and (3) ideas spring predictably from a primed mind. These principles highlight a number of important tendencies, which we argue are shortcomings in the ability of scientists to perceive the world, and which scientists need to be aware of. Consciously addressing these shortcomings may help scientists improve their creativity, and will strengthen their capacity to address complex and global challenges.
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