In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate those interactions. The case studies show different ways that adaptive governance may be triggered, facilitated, or constrained by ecological and/or legal processes. The resilience assessments indicate that complex interactions among the governance and ecosystem components of these systems can produce different trajectories, which include patterns of (a) development and stabilization, (b) cycles of crisis and recovery, which includes lurches in adaptation and learning, and (3) periods of innovation, novelty, and transformation. Exploration of cross scale (Panarchy) interactions among levels and sectors of government and society illustrate that they may constrain development trajectories, but may also provide stability during crisis or innovation at smaller scales; create crises, but may also facilitate recovery; and constrain system transformation, but may also provide windows of opportunity in which transformation, and the resources to accomplish it, may occur. The framework is the starting point for our exploration of how law might play a role in enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt to climate change.

This PhD thesis provides an analysis of how an adaptive governance approach can be applied to address existing and emerging challenges in global governance with a focus on marine, wild-capture fisheries. All the papers share a coupled social-ecological framing while providing diverse but complementary perspectives. Paper I provides a lens through which it is possible understand the types of interactions that link social and ecological components of fisheries systems at the global scale. The key result of this paper was the development of a marine social-ecological framework to guide future modelling and scenario analysis. Paper II describes the process of emergence and spread of new ideas in marine governance using Marine Spatial Planning as an illustrative case study. The study shows how governance innovations may contribute to resolving the mismatches between the scale of ecological processes and the scale of governance of ecosystems. A key finding of the paper is the identification and explanation of the mechanisms by which informal networks of actors are able to influence the emergence and spread of new governance forms from the local to the global scale. Paper III focuses on governance of ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction. The key finding from this paper is the urgent need for existing and emerging governance institutions to build capacity for responding to the challenges facing governance of marine fisheries. These challenges arise from unexpected shifts in markets, technology and society. Paper IV develops a set of four imaginative but plausible ‘radical’ futures for global fisheries drawing on trends compiled from a diverse evidence base. The four resulting narratives aim to act as lenses for engaging debate and deeper reflection on how non-linear changes in technology and society might radically shift the operating context and core assumptions of fisheries governance in the future. These papers make a novel contribution to Sustainability Science through their focus on 1) the conditions for, and mechanisms of emergence of diverse and divergent governance forms, 2) the role of agency in complex actor settings, 3) the need for governance institutions to not only deal with, but also be able to anticipate surprise, and 4) the development of scenarios of marine social-ecological futures using a creative and rigorous narrative approach. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Social-ecological systems research is interventionist by nature. As a subset of sustainability science, social-ecological systems research aims to generate knowledge and introduce concepts that will bring about transformation. Yet scientific concepts diverge in innumerable ways when they are put to work in the world. Why are concepts used in quite different ways to the intended purpose? Why do some appear to fail and others succeed? What do the answers to these questions tell us about the nature of science-society engagement, and what implications do they have for social-ecological systems research and sustainability science? This thesis addresses these questions from an interpretive perspective, focusing on the meanings that shape human actions. In particular, the thesis examines how meaning, interpretation and experience shape the enactment of four action-oriented sustainability concepts: adaptive management, biosphere reserves, biodiversity corridors and planetary boundaries/reconnecting to the biosphere. In so doing, the thesis provides in-depth empirical applications of three interpretive traditions – hermeneutic, discursive and dialogical – that together articulate a broadly interpretive approach to studying social-ecological complexity. In the hermeneutic tradition, Paper I presents a ‘rich narrative’ case study of a single practitioner tasked with enacting adaptive management in an Australian land management agency, and Paper II provides a qualitative multi-case study of learning among 177 participants in 11 UNESCO biosphere reserves. In the discursive tradition, Paper III uses Q-method to explore interpretations of ‘successful’ biodiversity corridors among 20 practitioners, scientists and community representatives in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. In the dialogical tradition, Paper IV reworks conventional understandings of knowledge-action relationships by using three concepts from contemporary practice theory – ‘actionable understanding,’ ‘ongoing business’ and the ‘eternally unfolding present’ – to explore the enactment of adaptive management in an Australian national park. Paper V explores ideas of human-environment connection in the concepts planetary boundaries and reconnecting to the biosphere, and develops an ‘embodied connection’ where human-environment relations emerge through interactivity between mind, body and environment over time. Overall, the thesis extends the frontiers of social-ecological systems research by highlighting the meanings that shape social-ecological complexity; by contributing theories and methods that treat social-ecological change as a relational and holistic process; and by providing entry points to address knowledge, politics and power. The thesis contributes to sustainability science more broadly by introducing novel understandings of knowledge-action relationships; by providing advice on how to make sustainability interventions more useful and effective; by introducing tools that can improve co-production and outcome assessment in the global research platform Future Earth; and by helping to generate robust forms of justification for transdisciplinary knowledge production. The interventionist, actionable nature of social-ecological systems research means that interpretive approaches are an essential complement to existing structural, institutional and behavioural perspectives. Interpretive research can help build a scientifically robust, normatively committed and critically reflexive sustainability science. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Rural people in the Sahel derive multiple benefits from local ecosystem services on a daily basis. At the same time, a large proportion of the population lives in multidimensional poverty. The global sustainability challenge is thus manifested in its one extreme here, with a strong need to improve human well-being without degrading the landscapes that people depend on. To address this challenge, knowledge on how local people interact with their landscapes, and how this changes over time, must be improved. An ecosystem services approach, focusing on benefits to people from ecosystem processes, is useful in this context. However, methods for assessing ecosystem services that include local knowledge while addressing a scale relevant for development interventions are lacking. In this thesis, such methods are developed to study Sahelian landscapes through an ecosystem services lens. The thesis is focused on village landscapes and is based on in-depth fieldwork in six villages in northern Burkina Faso. In these villages, participatory methods were used to identify social-ecological patches (landscape units that correspond with local descriptions of landscapes, characterized by a combination of land use, land cover and topography), the provisioning ecosystem services generated in each social-ecological patch, and the benefits from ecosystem services to livelihoods (Paper I). In Paper II, change in cover of social-ecological patches mapped on aerial photographs and satellite images from the period 1952-2016 was combined with population data and focus group discussions to evaluate change in generation of ecosystem services over time. In Paper III, up-scaling of the village scale assessment to provincial scale was done through the development of a classification method to identify social-ecological patches on medium-resolution satellite images. Paper IV addresses the whole Sudano-Sahelian climate zone of West Africa, to analyze woody vegetation as a key component for ecosystem services generation in the landscape. It is based on a systematic review of which provisioning and regulating ecosystem services are documented from trees and shrubs on agricultural lands in the region. Social-ecological patches and associated sets of ecosystem services are very similar in all studied villages across the two regions. Most social-ecological patches generate multiple ecosystem services with multiple benefits, illustrating a multifunctional landscape (Paper I). The social-ecological patches and ecosystem services are confirmed at province level in both regions, and the dominant social-ecological patches can be mapped with high accuracy on medium-resolution satellite images (Paper III). The potential generation of cultivated crops has more or less kept up with population growth in the villages, while the potential for other ecosystem services, particularly firewood, has decreased per capita (Paper II). Trees and shrubs contribute with multiple ecosystem services, but their landscape effects, especially on regulating ecosystem services, must be better studied (Paper IV). The thesis provides new insights about the complex and multi-functional landscapes of rural Sahel, nuancing dominating narratives on environmental change in the region. It also provides new methods that include local knowledge in ecosystem services assessments, which can be up-scaled to scales relevant for development interventions, and used to analyze changes in ecosystem services over time. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p><p> </p>

Bioeconomy strategies in high income societies focus at replacing finite, fossil resources by renewable, biological resources to reconcile macro-economic concerns with climate constraints. However, the current bioeconomy is associated with critical levels of environmental degradation. As a potential increase in biological resource use may further threaten the capacity of ecosystems to fulfil human needs, it remains unclear whether bioeconomy transitions in high income countries are sustainable. In order to fill a gap in bioeconomy sustainability assessments, we apply an ontological lens of coupled social-ecological systems to explore critical mechanisms in relation to bioeconomy activities in the global resource system. This contributes to a social-ecological systems (SES)-based understanding of sustainability from a high income country perspective: the capacity of humans to satisfy their needs with strategies that reduce current levels of pressures and impacts on ecosystems. Building on this notion of agency, we develop a framework prototype that captures the systemic relation between individual human needs and collective social outcomes on the one hand (microlevel) and social-ecological impacts in the global resource system on the other hand (macro-level). The BIO-SES framework emphasizes the role of responsible consumption (for physical health), responsible production (to reduce stressors on the environment), and the role of autonomy and selforganisation (to protect the reproduction capacity of social-ecological systems). In particular, the BIO-SES framework can support (1) individual and collective agency in high income country contexts to reduce global resource use and related ecosystem impacts with a bioeconomy strategy, (2) aligning social outcomes, monitoring efforts and governance structures with place-based efforts to achieve the SDGs, as well as (3), advancing the evidence base and social-ecological theory on responsible bioeconomy transitions in the limited biosphere.

In this thesis, I view the global Fashion System in terms of hybridity, with the intention of developing a theoretical understanding of a sustainable fashion system. I explore a perpetuated micro-scale activity – getting dressed each day – as a driver of the fashion system. Thereby aiming to help in redefining and clarifying the dynamics of fashion as a complex social-ecological system, to inform of risks and opportunities towards sustainable fashion. This project has two strands; Firstly, a theoretical understanding of fashion as a social-ecological system emphasizing social and abstract representations. Secondly, an action-oriented research approach for understanding how the frameworks applied in a science-business collaborative project relate to sustainable fashion and how that affects their work. For this, I draw on Critical Realism as meta-theory, where the real world consists of both material and non-material stratified layers.  Dividing the fashion system in four stratified layers; physical, material interaction, socio-economic and culture, allows the bridging of theory and practice. I argue that three concepts hybridity, modernity and fashion are essential for visioning a future sustainable fashion system and that key social-ecological resilience theories are limited for weaving them together. I found that transformations towards sustainable fashion cannot be reduced to merely socio-technical solutions, as individual’s everyday perpetuated activity of getting dressed is linked to global negative environmental impacts. In the science-business collaborative project, key challenges were identified: inadequate amount of time, and absence of knowledge regarding the fashion industry and fashion theory as well as absence of critical reflections. Finally, I found that the concepts of affordances provide a useful link between human, ‘things’ and the abstract entities created through the value chains of the fashion system. Thus, I propose that affordances could be developed as a tool linking sustainability science, design studies and economic business models, enhancing knowledge in science-business collaborations.

Nature and humans are intrinsic parts of the same system, called a social-ecological system (SES), wherein freshwater ecosystems form one of the important bases of the survival of all life. Human activities, such as land use and overconsumption, impact on freshwater systems; and freshwater systems also impact on the urban systems through which they flow. Changes in one part of the system, be it human or ecological, will impact on the other. If a freshwater ecosystem’s resilience is negatively affected and fails to retain its functional integrity, it will increase the vulnerability of the SES. Disregarding this connection can have a significant impact on the quality of an urban system. Throughout its history since 1855, the City of Tshwane SES has moved through different eras of change, which have altered the quality of the connection between the Apies River and the urban infrastructure through which it flows. These eras have been identified as: a) First era (1855–1909) Apies River as a natural system; b) Second era (1910–1970) Apies River becoming a hidden, polluted and disconnected freshwater system; and c) Third era (1971–2016), the era of attempts at beautification and to regenerate the Apies River freshwater system. The main goal of this study is to understand how changes in the connection between the built infrastructure in the City of Tshwane and the Apies River have affected the resilience of the Apies River’s system as an integral part of the Tshwane SES. The study achieved this by identifying the different changes, the drivers of change, and the effects that these changes have had on the resilience of the Apies River. This was carried out using the method of a historical narrative. It was concluded that the Apies River gained specific resilience but lost its general resilience and therefore its adaptive capacity. The main drivers behind the loss of general resilience of the Apies River system were: a) the lack of a local government structure to supply proper infrastructure and service delivery to the people of Pretoria, followed by an inflexible and largely unresponsive local government system lacking tightness of feedback and therefore not detecting the signals of crossing a threshold in time; and b) a lack of ecological awareness or the necessary understanding of how freshwater ecosystems function, in order to integrate natural freshwater ecosystems as a functional part of the urban infrastructure. / Dissertation (ML (Arch))--University of Pretoria, 2015. / National Research Foundation (NRF) supported this study as part of the program: Resiliency Strategies for Aspirational African Cities, through the research Grant no. 78649. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and cannot necessarily be attributed to the NRF. / Architecture / ML (Arch) / Unrestricted

Climate change impacts have been shown to increase the social, economic and ecological vulnerabilities of poor groups in coastal communities of Asian countries. Mangunharjo village in Semarang city, Indonesia, has been identified as vulnerable to sea level rise, coastal erosion, tidal inundation and flooding, and the well-being of residents is threatened due to loss of livelihoods. In order to secure their future, the community has to enhance its resilience to climate change impacts, however, additional factors are undermining thepotential of a resilient and prosperous village. As resilience theory carried out in practice could negatively affect already marginalized people if trade-offs are not identified, a complementing theory is needed. This study develops a novel joint framework of resilience theory and environmental justice for analyzing the potential of enhancin gthe community’s resilience. It also explores what is needed for the village in order to increase its resilience. The framework revealed to be successful in identifying root problems and highlighted deficiencies in current resilience strategies. Moreover, the incorporation of environmental justice broadened the perspective of what could weaken the resilience ofthe village. Hence, an environmental justice perspective complements resilience theory as it identifies potential trade-offs and analyzes whose resilience is enhanced. The framework is argued to be a useful tool to secure resilience of a social-ecological system of various scales, however, further research is needed onthe optimal linkages of the two theories.

Achieving sustainable development to meet the needs of current and future generations is currently on top of the global agenda, both in scientific research as well as global politics. However, achieving sustainable development is still a grand challenge, not least because it is embedded in the context of global change that affects most resource use systems worldwide in multiple ways. Even though many approaches to sustainable management do consider the connection between human activity and environmental dynamics, the role of human behavior as a main driver of system dynamics in coupled human and natural systems is often only poorly addressed. In this thesis, we aim to contribute to an improved understanding under which conditions human resource use decisions lead to sustainable outcomes, with regard to global change. For this, we will take the perspective of human decision-making and its social, ecological and economic consequences in two different resource use contexts, namely a) pastoralism in drylands and b) disaster risk management with respect to floods. We explicitly consider individual human decision-making as driver of social-ecological system dynamics, investigate the feedbacks between system components, as well as the impact of global change on resource use. To analyze such complex system dynamics, simulation models have proven to be helpful analysis tools. Particularly agent-based modeling represents a flexible and powerful analysis tool, as it allows us to model the decisions and interactions of individual agents at the micro level, while at the same time observing the outcome of their behavior on a system level. Within three case studies, we develop agent-based simulation models that capture the dynamics and feedbacks of the social-ecological system under consideration in a spatially explicit way. The first study analyzes the performance of disaster management organizations under change. In the second study, we aim to detect the drivers for polarization in a pastoral system in Morocco. The last study investigates behavioral change of pastoralist households and its impact on social, ecological and economic outcome measures. By analyzing a range of scenarios in each study, we determine both the long-term impact of different decision regimes on the state of the social-ecological system as well as the dimensions of change that have the most profound impact on the system dynamics and the sustainability of resource use. Main results that could be obtained from the modeling experiments include the identification of key resources that have a high influence on the long-term system dynamics. We are also able to show that under the influence of global change, access to certain resources gains in importance, as resources can act as buffer mechanisms to mitigate the adverse effects of global change. Through the operationalization of behavioral theories in model rules and the explicit representation of heterogeneous agent decision making, we could determine under which conditions a more refined representation of human decision making matters, and when a change in behavioral strategies leads to different social-ecological outcomes. Furthermore, all three modeling studies demonstrate the usefulness of stylized agent-based models to gain insights into complex systems. Overall, this thesis contributes to social-ecological systems research by developing appropriate simulation models to address the problem of sustainable resource use under global change.

This dissertation investigates environmental degradation of a wetland ecosystem in the northeast Peruvian Amazon: the palm swamps, or aguajales, mostly located in the region of Loreto, Peru. This ecosystem is dominated by the dioecious palm species Mauritia flexuosa, locally known as aguaje. Female aguaje palms produce a valuable fruit which is widely consumed in the region, and especially in the capital city Iquitos. The most common method of harvesting this fruit is to chop the female palms. Concern is growing over environmental degradation that results from this practice, such as high carbon emissions released from the peat soils upon which most aguajales grow. This dissertation investigates environmental degradation of the palm swamps from multiple scales. Using a mixed-methods analysis, this dissertation asks: 1) What is the magnitude and distribution of palm swamp degradation, and what is the contribution of this process to carbon emissions? 2) What is the relative influence of physical and social underlying drivers explaining the spatial distribution of palm swamp ecosystems with different palm swamp densities? 3) How do underlying social-ecological/political-ecological driving forces occurring at different scales influence the sustainable use and conservation of palm swamp ecosystems? Degradation is mapped at the regional scale using remote sensing techniques over two periods of time: 1990-2007 and 2007-2018. Underlying drivers of degradation are investigated at the regional and district levels using spatially explicit statistical models. Finally, qualitative data acquired in the field is used to investigate why some communities successfully manage their palm swamps while others do not. This dissertation produces the first regional map of palm swamp degradation and first temporal analysis of how degradation has changed over three decades. It is the first study to analyze both physical and socioeconomic drivers of degradation and the first study to analyze how physical drivers change over time. It contributes to the literature of land change science by demonstrating a method of testing socioeconomic data at an aggregated scale against degradation data derived from remote sensing. Finally, this study provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of the aguaje social-ecological system, demonstrating that the choice of some communities to chop palms for harvest is not one made of ignorance, but rather is a logical option in marginalized communities where the aguaje fruit cannot provide a sufficient contribution to a community’s material needs. This work contributes to the literature of critical conservation by demonstrating cases of conservation success that were achieved without coercive state power. / Accompanied by 1 PDF file: chap1.pdf