Med tanke på att mer än hälften av jordens befolkning numera lever i städer och trenden fortsätter stiga, blir det allt viktigare att skapa resilienta städer. Städer som är resilienta är mer motståndskraftiga och mindre känsliga mot störningar. För att rikta fokus mot kommunal planering har inriktning gjorts mot begreppet social-ekologisk resiliens. En stad som är social-ekologiskt resilient kan främja ekosystemtjänster långsiktigt i de störningar urbana miljöer kan utsättas för. Ekosystemtjänster är beroende av biologisk mångfald och för att inte göra avkall på biologisk mångfald är det viktigt att markanvändningen planeras väl. I studiens teoretiska referensram beskrivs därför sex strategier som kan användas inom kommunal planering för att främja social-ekologisk resiliens. Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka hur kommunalt planeringsarbete ser ut för social-ekologisk resiliens i dagsläget samt vilka likheter och skillnader som finns kopplat till experters utlåtanden och studiens teoretiska referensram. Målet är att redogöra för denna skillnad och hur det skiljer sig för att synliggöra vad som behöver förbättras på kommunal nivå för att främja social-ekologisk resiliens. Metoden för att ta reda på det var i form av kvalitativa intervjuer av experter samt kommunala planerare från tre av Sveriges största kommuner: Stockholm, Göteborg och Uppsala. Till de kommunala intervjuerna gjordes även en kompletterande innehållsanalys av de tre kommunernas översiktsplaner för att ge ytterligare information där den var bristande i resultatet av intervjuerna. En jämförelse gjordes sedan mellan social-ekologisk resiliens enligt experternas utlåtande, teoretiska referensramen och kommunal planering.  Resultatet visar att kunskap om begreppet social-ekologisk resiliens saknas bland de studerade kommunerna. Alla kommuners planering strävar efter att arbeta för vad Folke (2006) definierar som social-ekologisk resiliens utan att göra det medvetet. Det finns kopplingar till begreppet inom dessa kommuners planering, men används inte aktivt att sträva efter i planeringen. Däremot arbetar samtliga av kommunerna indirekt med strategier för social-ekologisk resiliens med prioritering av de kortsiktiga, rekreativa och hälsofrämjande kvaliteterna för människan. Med grund i den bristande kunskapen och den indirekta planeringen för social-ekologisk resiliens dras slutsats i att den viktigaste av strategierna är att bredda deltagandet och främja lärandet för att öka kunskap och förståelse kring varför diverse beslut tas. Tvärsektionellt arbete kan bidra till att rätt kunskap finns när motsägande intressen ställs mot varandra vid beslutsfattande. / Given that more than half of the world's population now lives in cities and the trend continues to rise, it is becoming increasingly important to create resilient cities. Cities that are resilient are more resistant and less sensitive to disturbance. In order to limit the scope of the study to municipal planning, the focus has been centered on the concept of social-ecological resilience. A city that is social-ecological resilient can promote ecosystem services in the long run in the urban environment despite the disruptions that it can be exposed to. Ecosystem services are dependent on biodiversity, and in order not to compromise biodiversity, it is important that land use is well planned. The study's theoretical framework, therefore, describes six strategies that can be used in municipal planning to promote social-ecological resilience. The purpose of the study is to investigate how the theoretical framework and the interpretations of experts differ from the municipal planning and analyze similarities and differences between them. The aim is to account for these differences in order to show what needs to be improved at the municipal level to promote socio-ecological resilience. The methods consisted of qualitative interviews with experts on the subject area and municipal planners from three of Sweden's largest municipalities: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Uppsala. A content analysis was also made on municipal plans to supplement the interviews. Finally, a comparison was made between social-ecological resilience through the experts’ points of view, the theoretical framework and municipal planning. The results show that knowledge of the concept of social-ecological resilience is lacking among the municipalities studied. The planning of all municipalities strives unconsciously to work for what Folke (2006) defines as social-ecological resilience. Although there are links to the concept within municipal planning, it is not used actively towards planning. On the other hand, all municipalities examined in the study indirectly work with strategies for social-ecological resilience, with priority given to the short-term, recreational and health-promoting qualities for humans. The study concludes that the most important of the strategies for social-ecological resilience is to broaden participation and promote learning, in order to spread more knowledge and understanding about why various decisions are made. Internal interaction between departments can also lead to the availability of right knowledge when conflicting interests are set against each other in decision-making.

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No description available.

There is an increasing concern for the impact of humans on the environment. Traditionally, ecological models consider human influence as a constant or linearly varying parameter, whereas socioeconomic models and frameworks tend to oversimplify the ecological system. But tackling complex environmental challenges faced by our societies requires interdisciplinary approaches due to the intricate feedbacks between the socioeconomic and ecological systems involved. Thus, models of social-ecological systems couple an ecological system with a socioeconomic system to investigate their interaction in the integrated dynamical system. We define this coupling formally and apply the social-ecological approach to three ecological cases. Indeed, we focus on eutrophication in shallow freshwater lakes, which is a well-known system showing bistability between a clear water state and a turbid polluted state. We also study a model accounting for an aquifer (water stock) and a model accounting for a biotic population exhibiting bistability through an Allee effect. The socioeconomic dynamics is driven by the incentive that agents feel to act in a desirable or undesirable way. This incentive can be represented by a difference in utility, or in payoff, between two strategies that each agent can adopt: agents can cooperate and act in an environment-friendly way, or they can defect and act in an ecologically undesirable way. The agents' motivation includes such factors as the economic cost of their choice, the concern they feel for the environment and conformism to the collective attitude of the human group. Thus, the incentive to cooperate responds to the state of the ecological system and to the agents' collective opinion, and this response can be linear, nonlinear and monotonic, or non-monotonic. When investigating the mathematical form of this response, we find that monotonic non-linear responses may result in additional equilibria, cycles and basins of attraction compared to the linear case. Non-monotonic responses, such as resignation effects, may produce much more complicated nullclines such as a closed nullcline and weaken our ability to anticipate the dynamics of a social-ecological system. Regarding the modelling of the socioeconomic subsystem, the replicator dynamics and the logit best-response dynamics are widely used mathematical formulations from evolutionary game theory. There seems to be little awareness about the impact of choosing one or the other. The replicator dynamics assumes that the socioeconomic subsystem is stationary when all agents adopt the same behaviour, whereas the best-response dynamics assumes that this situation is not stationary. The replicator dynamics has formal game theoretical foundations, whereas best-response dynamics comes from psychology. Recent experiments found that the best-response dynamics explains empirical data better. We find that the two dynamics can produce a different number of equilibria as well as differences in their stability. The replicator dynamics is a limit case of the logit best-response dynamics when agents have an infinite rationality. We show that even generic social-ecological models can show multistability. In many cases, multistability allows for counterintuitive equilibria to emerge, where ecological desirability and socioeconomic desirability are not correlated. This makes generic management recommendations difficult to find and several policies with and without socioeconomic impact should be considered. Even in cases where there is a unique equilibrium, it can lose stability and give rise to sustained oscillations. We can interpret these oscillations in a way similar to the cycles found in classical predator-prey systems. In the lake pollution social-ecological model for instance, the agents' defection increases the lake pollution, which makes agents feel concerned and convince the majority to cooperate. Then, the ecological concern decreases because the lake is not polluted and the incentive to cooperate plummets, so that it becomes more advantageous for the agents to defect again. We show that the oscillations obtained when using the replicator dynamics tend to produce a make-or-break dynamics, where a random perturbation could shift the system to either full cooperation or full defection depending on its timing along the cycle. Management measures may shift the location of the social-ecological system at equilibrium, but also make attractors appear or disappear in the phase plane or change the resilience of stable steady states. The resilience of equilibria relates to basins of attraction and is especially important in the face of potential regime shifts. Sources of uncertainty that should be taken into account for the management of social-ecological systems include multistability and the possibility of counterintuitive equilibria, the wide range of possible policy measures with or without socioeconomic interventions, and the behaviour of human collectives involved, which may be described by different dynamics. Yet, uncertainty coming from the collective behaviour of agents is mitigated if they do not give up or rely on the other agents' efforts, which allows modelling to better inform decision makers.

<p>The thesis analyses relationships between ecological and social systems in the context of coastal ecosystems. It examines human impacts from resource extraction and addresses management and governance behind resource exploitation. The main premises are that a lack of ecological knowledge leads to poor ecosystem management and that the dichotomy between social and natural systems is an artificial one. The thesis illustrates the importance of basing resource management on the ecological conditions of the resource and its ecosystem. It also demonstrates the necessity of accounting for the human dimension in ecosystem management and the challenges of organising human actions for sustainable use of ecosystem services in the face of economic incentives that push users towards short-term extraction.</p><p>Many Caribbean coral reefs have undergone a shift from coral to macroalgal domination. An experiment on Glovers Reef Atoll in Belize manually cleared patch reefs in a no-take zone and a fished zone (Papers I and II). The study hypothesised that overfishing has reduced herbivorous fish populations that control macroalgae growth. Overall, management had no significant effect on fish abundance and the impacts of the algal reduction were short-lived. This illustrated that the benefits of setting aside marine reserves in impacted environments should not be taken for granted. </p><p>Papers III and IV studied the development of the lobster and conch fisheries in Belize, and the shrimp farming industry in Thailand respectively. These studies found that environmental feedback can be masked to give the impression of resource abundance through sequential exploitation. In both cases inadequate property rights contributed to this unsustainable resource use. </p><p>The final paper (V) compared the responses to changes in the resource by the lobster fisheries in Belize and Maine in terms of institutions, organisations and their role in management. In contrast to Maine’s, the Belize system seems to lack social mechanisms for responding effectively to environmental feedback. The results illustrate the importance of organisational and institutional diversity that incorporate ecological knowledge, respond to ecosystem feedback and provide a social context for learning from and adapting to change.</p>

The concept of biodiversity – the phenotypic and genotypic variation among organisms – is central to conservation biology. There is growing recognition that biodiversity does not exist in isolation, but rather is intrinsically and evolutionarily linked to cultural diversity and indigenous knowledge systems. In Canada, caribou (Rangifer tarandus) occupy a central place in the livelihoods and identities of indigenous people and display substantial variation across their distribution. However, quantifying caribou intraspecific variation has proven challenging. Interdisciplinary approaches are necessary to produce effective species characterizations and conservation strategies that acknowledge the interdependent relationships between people and nature in complex social-ecological systems. In this dissertation I use multiple disciplinary traditions to develop comprehensive and united representations of caribou variation through an exploration of population genetics, phylogenetics, traditional knowledge, language, and visual approaches in the Sahtú region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. First, I examine caribou variation through analysis of population genetics and the relationships Dene and Métis people establish with animals within bioculturally diverse systems. Next, I focus on how the Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles have shaped the current patterns of caribou phylogeographic lineage diversification. Finally, I explore how art can be used to facilitate cross-cultural collaboration and externalize the unique heterogeneity of biocultural diversity. The results demonstrate a broad scale understanding of the distribution, spatial organization, and the degree of differentiation of caribou populations in the region. I found evidence for caribou population differentiation that corresponds to the caribou types recognized by Dene people: tǫdzı “boreal woodland caribou,” ɂekwę́ “barren-ground caribou,” and shúhta ɂepę́ “mountain caribou.” Phylogenetic results reveal that in their northern margin the boreal ecotype of woodland caribou evolved independently from the northern Beringian lineage in contrast with southern boreal caribou which belong to the sub-Laurentide refugia lineage. In addition, I demonstrate how art can be used improve communication, participation, and knowledge production among interdisciplinary research collaborations and across language and knowledge systems. A collaborative process of research that facilitates łeghágots'enetę “learning together” has the potential to produce sustainable conservation solutions, develop efficient and effective wildlife management policies, and ensure caribou remain an important part of the landscape. / February 2017

Svenskarnas matkonsumtion är inte hållbar utifrån ett klimatperspektiv. För en mer hållbar konsumtion krävs en minskning av animaliska livsmedel. Tidigare studier visar att det är möjligt att äta klimatsmart och fortfarande nå upp till näringsrekommendationerna. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilken klimatpåverkan och näringsinnehåll studenters matvanor har och skillnader mellan olika kosthållningar och kön. Studien har genomförts utifrån en kvantitativ ansats med en tvärsnittsdesign genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. Urvalet bestod av 21 högskolestudenter, elva män och tio kvinnor med en fördelning på sju deltagare inom varje kosthållning. Metoden som använts är retrospektiva 24-timmarsintervjuer för att få en bild av en grupps matvanor. Resultatet visar att lunch är den måltidsform med högst klimatpåverkan och näringsinnehåll. Lunch har närmare tre gånger så hög klimatpåverkan jämfört med frukost. Allätare har högst klimatpåverkan och proteinintag, medan veganer har högre kolhydrats- och energiintag samt lägst klimatpåverkan. Vegetarianer och veganer har högst intag av vitamin C. Mäns måltider bidrar med högst klimatpåverkan och de har högst intag av protein, energi och kolhydrater, medan kvinnor har ett högre intag av vitamin C. Det teoretiska perspektivet som användes för att diskutera resultatet är social-ekologiska modellen. / The food consumption of Swedish people is not sustainable from a climate perspective. For more sustainable consumption it requires a reduction of meat and dairy products. Previous studies show that it is possible to eat climate smart but still reach nutrition recommendations. The aim of this study is to investigate the students´ eating habits, nutritional content, impact on the climate, and study if there are differences between diets and between men and women. The study is based on quantitative approach with a cross sectional study through semi-structured interviews. The used method is retrospective 24-hour recall interviews to get at picture of the groups eating habits. The participants comprised of 21 students from Mälardalen University, eleven men and ten women with a distribution of seven participants in each diet. The result shows that lunch is the meal with the highest climate impact and nutritional content and that lunch has almost three times higher climate impact compared to breakfast. Individuals who eat both meat and dairy have the highest climate impact and protein intake, while vegans have the lowest climate impact and highest carbohydrate and energy intake. Vegetarians and vegans have the highest intake of vitamin C. Mens´ meals have the highest climate impact and nutritional content of protein, energy and carbohydrate, while women have a higher intake of vitamin C. The social ecological model is the theoretical perspective used to discuss the result.

Die Doktorarbeit untersucht, wie sich Mensch-Umwelt-Interaktionen am Beispiel von Abholzung und Landnutzungsänderungen im Amazonas analysieren und modellieren lassen. Die Abholzung tropischer Wälder bedroht die Stabilität artenreicher Ökosysteme, lokaler Wettergeschehen und des globalen Klimas. Drei Hauptteile erforschen das Thema mit Konzepten der theoretischen Physik und Netzwerktheorie. Der erste Teil gibt einen kritischen Überblick über Modellansätze, die Entscheidungen und menschliches Verhalten beschreiben. Agentenbasierte Netzwerkmodelle ergeben sich als vielversprechender Ansatz um sozial-ökologische Systeme zu modellieren. Der zweite Teil identifiziert Muster in satellitengestützten Landbedeckungsdaten im brasilianischen Amazonas. Basierend auf der Theorie der Markov-Ketten werden Übergangsraten zwischen verschiedenen Typen von Landbedeckung berechnet und Übergangsmatrizen für Teilgebiete mit Clusteralgorithmen verglichen. Angrenzende Teilgebiete weisen ähnliche Übergänge auf. Die identifizierten Cluster decken sich mit Erkenntnissen aus Feldstudien. Auf Grundlage der geschätzten Übergangsrate ergeben sich Projektionen für die Entwicklung der Landbedeckungsanteile. Der dritte Teil entwickelt ein agentenbasiertes Modell um zu untersuchen, unter welchen Bedingungen die Intensivierung der Viehhaltung im Amazonas die Abholzung reduzieren kann. Das Modell kombiniert ökologische, ökonomische und soziale Prozesse und modelliert Landnutzungsstrategien mit Heuristiken. Die Modellanalyse zeigt, dass eine Intensivierung die Abholzung nur dann verringert, wenn der lokale Viehmarkt saturiert. Unter anderen ökonomischen Bedingungen kann Intensivierung die Abholzung erhöhen. Die Arbeit demonstriert, dass eine Kombination von Methoden aus der Theorie komplexer Systeme mit sozialwissenschaftlichen Theorien zu einem besseren Verständnis der emergenten Dynamik sozial-ökologischer Systeme führen kann – eine Grundvoraussetzung, um solche Systeme nachhaltig zu bewirtschaften. / This thesis investigates how to model and analyze human-nature interactions using the example of deforestation and land-use change in the Brazilian Amazon. Deforestation of tropical forests threatens the stability of species-rich ecosystems, local weather patterns, and global climate. The three main parts of the thesis study different aspects of this topic using concepts from theoretical physics and network theory. The first part reviews modeling approaches to human decision making and behavior. From the review, networked agent-based models emerge as promising tools to capture the dynamics of social-ecological systems such as the land system. The second part of the thesis combines Markov-chain and cluster analyses to detect patterns in satellite-derived land-cover maps of the Brazilian Amazon. I compute transition rates between different land-cover types and apply clustering algorithms to find spatial patterns. The analysis shows that neighboring subregions undergo similar transitions and identifies clusters corresponding to findings from field surveys. Markov-chain models, parameterized with the transition rates, are used to compute land-cover projections. In the third part, I develop an agent-based model to investigate under which conditions the intensification of cattle ranching can reduce deforestation in the Amazon. The model captures stylized environmental, economic, as well as social processes, and uses heuristic decision theory to represent different land management strategies. A detailed analysis reveals that fast intensification can only lower deforestation rates if local cattle markets saturate. Under other economic conditions intensification may increase deforestation. The contributions of this thesis demonstrate that combining modeling tools from complexity science with social-science theories allow better understanding the emergent dynamics of social-ecological systems, which is a prerequisite for their sustainable management.

The thesis analyses relationships between ecological and social systems in the context of coastal ecosystems. It examines human impacts from resource extraction and addresses management and governance behind resource exploitation. The main premises are that a lack of ecological knowledge leads to poor ecosystem management and that the dichotomy between social and natural systems is an artificial one. The thesis illustrates the importance of basing resource management on the ecological conditions of the resource and its ecosystem. It also demonstrates the necessity of accounting for the human dimension in ecosystem management and the challenges of organising human actions for sustainable use of ecosystem services in the face of economic incentives that push users towards short-term extraction. Many Caribbean coral reefs have undergone a shift from coral to macroalgal domination. An experiment on Glovers Reef Atoll in Belize manually cleared patch reefs in a no-take zone and a fished zone (Papers I and II). The study hypothesised that overfishing has reduced herbivorous fish populations that control macroalgae growth. Overall, management had no significant effect on fish abundance and the impacts of the algal reduction were short-lived. This illustrated that the benefits of setting aside marine reserves in impacted environments should not be taken for granted. Papers III and IV studied the development of the lobster and conch fisheries in Belize, and the shrimp farming industry in Thailand respectively. These studies found that environmental feedback can be masked to give the impression of resource abundance through sequential exploitation. In both cases inadequate property rights contributed to this unsustainable resource use. The final paper (V) compared the responses to changes in the resource by the lobster fisheries in Belize and Maine in terms of institutions, organisations and their role in management. In contrast to Maine’s, the Belize system seems to lack social mechanisms for responding effectively to environmental feedback. The results illustrate the importance of organisational and institutional diversity that incorporate ecological knowledge, respond to ecosystem feedback and provide a social context for learning from and adapting to change.

從共用資源理論觀點暨公共選擇角度而言，原住民部落資源與傳統領域土地乃一「封閉式共用資源」，若由原住民部落團體共有並自主經營管理，社群內部將可能透過個體的合作，創造共同利益，發揮傳統生態知識、善用在地組織，避免原住民地權流失，並進一步達到資源永續發展的目的。但由於受限於「經濟人」與「國家理性主義」之假設，且忽視了人與自然資源會相互影響、相互限制的事實，人們常引用Hardin（1968）的「共用地悲劇」，指出共用資源必將陷於過度使用的危險之中，最終肇致環境的退化。 為釐清此議題，本研究以新竹縣尖石鄉後山兩個具有共用資源自主治理個案的泰雅族部落為例，選取現今既有的「部落地景」、「河川魚群」、「森林產物」等三種形式之共用資源進行觀察；在時間上則以這些資源在保育目的下被部落共同維持開始，到被賦予促進部落經濟期待後的發展為主要的範圍。以新制度經濟學為理論基礎，藉由實證調查和比較，並經「組織中的個人制度選擇」、「社會中的共管組織」以及「社會生態系統」等三個層面的分析，討論有哪些因素影響個人遵守集體的正式與非正式規範？群體如何制定符合當地條件的共用資源治理規範，並維持組織的長期存續？而社會與自然生態之間的互動關係又是如何形成？冀以探討影響「以部落為基礎的自然資源自主治理」之內外部因素及其互動關係，俾提供後續共用資源管理制度設計思考的基礎。 / From the perspective of “common pool resources” (CPR) theory and public choices, the tribal resources of aboriginals and traditional territories are a “closed-access” type of common pool resources. If aboriginal tribes manage the CPR in a self-governing way, the communities may be able to, through the cooperation of individuals within, create collective interests, leverage traditional knowledge regarding the ecosystem, utilize local organizations in order to avoid the lapse of aboriginal land, and achieve the sustainable development of resources. However, people are limited to the hypotheses of “homo economicus” and “raison d’état” along with an overlook of the fact that mutual influences and restrictions lie between humans and natural resources. They often quote the essay “Tragedy of the Commons” by Hardin (1968), according to which common resources are under the constant threat of overuse that will eventually degrade the environment. To establish clarity on this issue, this paper uses an Atayal county with two CPR self-governing cases to observe three types of common pool resources currently seen today: tribe landscape, river fish and forest produce. The time horizon starts at the time point when these resources were placed under tribal management for conservation purposes, and ends at the time point when these resources are expected to prompt economic development. This paper conducts empirical investigations and comparisons based on the theoretical foundations of new institutional economics, and analyzes three aspects of these issues: choice of personal systems within an organization, collective management organizations in a society, and Social-Ecological Systems (SESs). This paper discusses the factors that affect how individuals conform to social norms, formal and informal. How a public choice is made to design the rules which are proper to local CPR situation and maintains the organization long-term sustainability? How do the interactions between society and the natural ecosystem come into being? By exploring the internal and external factors of self-governance of natural resources by tribes and the resulting interactions, this paper aims to provide a foundation for subsequent studies in the design of the management systems for common resources.