This dissertation aims to advance understanding of the social and ecological dynamics that transform riparian forests and the human and non-human communities that depend on riparian resources. The four articles that comprise this dissertation examine the causes and consequences of social-ecological transformations in the riparian zone of the transboundary San Pedro River watershed, located in the Sonoran Desert borderlands of southern Arizona, USA and northern Sonora, Mexico. The research utilizes an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach that combines interviews with key informants (including natural resource managers, ranchers, local residents, and political figures), archival research and historical document review, spatial analysis and synthesis of binational datasets, and land use classification and change detection at the watershed scale using methods from remote sensing and geographical information systems.This research is motivated by two objectives. First, I aim to examine how shifts in social and ecological systems have transformed riparian spaces in the transboundary San Pedro River watershed. Second, I intend to assess the consequences of these riparian transformations for the human and ecological communities who depend on riparian resources for survival. Based on these two overarching objectives, there are three interrelated research questions that drive the research and analysis presented in the four chapters of this dissertation: 1) How are social-ecological processes at the watershed scale affecting access to water resources in the riparian zone?; 2) How are shifting relations of access to water and riparian-zone resources influencing and differentiating levels of exposure to hazards over space and across time?; and 3) Following a disturbance event, how are capacity to respond and recover from disturbance and expectations of accountability shifting over space and across time? The findings of this research suggest three broad results. First, social processes of accumulation of land and water resources by the state and industry are creating uneven spatial and temporal experiences of water security and insecurity by shifting the amount, timing, and quality of water resources available and who can physically access the riparian zone to derive benefits from riparian resources. Specifically, the three social processes of resource accumulation that I examine are privatization, expropriation, and conservation. Second, transformations in social-ecological system (SES) dynamics and access to riparian resources differentially impact the production of water insecurity (water quality and water quantity) both between and within communities and economic sectors that depend on riparian resources. Third, the ability for local communities and small-scale agricultural producers to cope with increasing water insecurity and respond to disturbance events is decreasing due to three interrelated causes. The first is limited access of local communities to the wealth and adaptive assets produced from natural resource extraction in the region. The second is the shift at the state and community level toward increasing individuation of responsibility for ensuring livelihood security. And the third is a culture of evasion of accountability to remediate ecological degradation within the transnational mining industry.

The paper studies 7 new entrant smallholders on the Italian agricultural sector to begin to understand how such a grassroots movement may challenge the status-quo vis-à-vis the Italian Food-system. Additionally, the study conducts a public questionnaire survey in an attempt to gauge attitudes toward a changing food-system in Italy. Using Critical Theory to highlight the trend of critical-consumer to critical-producer, and transition movement theory to assess the real regime-change ability of such movements, this paper finds that new entrant smallholders in Italy are playing a potentially significant role in moving the sector into more sustainable territory. Current certified organic agriculture is increasingly dominated by larger farms, and excludes new entrant smallholders, this is to the detriment of sustainable agriculture goals, by identifying the barriers to such stakeholders, in addition to recognising their strengthens - namely the commitment to triple bottom line sustainability - new entrant smallholders have a significant role to play in making organic agriculture truly a mechanism by which true sustainable agriculture can be achieved.

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>

The extensive alteration of global ecosystems, especially the changes caused by globalized and industrialized economic development activities over the last fifty years, have urged for a better understanding of the human-in-nature management system. Bangladesh, a densely populated developing country, is witnessing rapid environmental degradation while passing through different phases of industrial growth. Leather, one of the oldest industries in this country, provides a very positive picture in the country’s national economy and at the same time produces severe ecological and social crisis in a mutually reinforcing way. At first sight, it seems to fit the SES concept of social ecological trap. The previous scientific studies on ‘Hazaribagh’ leather processing unit in Bangladesh have investigated social, economic, ecological and stakeholder’s perspectives but did not address the pathway that has shaped the present situation. The objective of this case study was therefore to explore the reasons why change of this ‘Hazaribagh system’ has been impeded for so long and if the social-ecological trap concept could help to clarify the reasons for the chronic delay of the relocation of ‘Hazaribagh’ leather processing unit. This study has observed, through a historical investigation that a path dependent social ecological trap situation is persisting in the ‘Hazaribagh system’ where the economic opportunity is playing the role as a juncture between the phases of the process; and power mechanism and the disconnected SES has influenced and strengthened the claim. This study has also addressed some other underlying substantial social issues, which are influencing the process and might contribute to outline further research, and consequently provide insight to escape from the trap situation.

Awareness of profound ecological, economical and social crises interacting globally at various scales has brought up the notion of the necessity of a fundamental change, which has driven studies on sustainable change in diverse fields of knowledge. Resilience scholars have approached the issue through a systemic lens that integrates social and ecological phenomena, but scientists from the social “wing” have pointed out the need of adopting a structure agency approach. This study present an analysis of the contribution of researchers to the process of deliberate social-ecological transformation through the analytical lens provided by Archer’s Morphogenetic Approach, which was operationalized by means of the Social-Ecological Action Situation tool, whose purpose is tracking processes of emergence. This study revisited a well-established case of social-ecological transformation, the benthic fisheries governance change in Chile between 1980 and 1997. I found that researcher’s basic transformatory strategic agency was finding the way to personal and vested interests, otherwise engaging in activities such as dissemination of knowledge and advising policy processes carries costs. Researchers main contributions were producing knowledge relevant to different cultural systems as it enabled further structural change, disseminating and endorsing ideas and conducting policy pilots. The Morhogenetic Approach depicted the process of transformation as a sequence of short-life emergent outcomes driven by agency that resulted into a long-life emergent outcome that modified a structural re-arrangement. The combined theoretical-methodological approach is a promising frame to study social-ecological transformations as it managed to explain emergence of phenomena such as policy innovation, interaction between ideational and structural change, relation of interest and power, and it grasped interaction between simultaneous processes.

The proposal has been put forward that ecological economics seek to become substantive economics (Gerber and Scheidel 2018). This raises important issues about the content and direction of ecological economics. The division of economics into either substantive or formal derives from the work of Karl Polanyi. In developing his ideas Polanyi employed a definition from Menger and combined this with Tönnies theory of historical evolution. In this paper I explore why the resulting substantive vs. formal dichotomy is problematic. In particular the article exposes the way in which trying to impose this dichotomy on history of economic thought and epistemology leads to further false dichotomies. Besides Polanyi, the positions of other important thinkers informing social ecological economics (SEE) are discussed including Neurath, Kapp and Georgescu-Roegen. The aim is to clarify the future direction of ecological economics and the role, in that future, of ideas raised under the topic of substantive economics. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

<div>Cognitive agent architectures embed social learning algorithms and normative frameworks for adopting others’ influenced goals. However, there exists inefficiency in providing continuous, situational decision-making to emerge social, altruistic norms. The thesis reconstructs social-ecological learning mechanisms to functionally and efficiently internalize situational cooperation. By orienting agents to be self-aware of their three-dimensional vectors, i.e., physical, emotional and intellectual in graphical representations, this thesis hypothesizes the parsimonious, action-predictive four emotions that not only link perceptions, action, and cognition by events but also the emotional continuity functional to social-ecological rationality of agents in continuum. Twelve Meridian system is employed to conceptualize the equalizing, complementary, heuristic orientation (ECHO) model. ECHO simulates “naturalistic” cooperation to model embodied, social-ecological orientations by self-organizing emotions to emerge functional social network formations. ECHO delineates the soma links to perceptions, namely Twelve Meridian channels as “direct pipes” that initiates and conduct emotions and consciousness of three dimensional agenthood: physical, emotional, and intellectual desires. ECHO reconstructs emotions as entities to induce systemic, self-organized rule of delegation by integrating agents’ percepts and actuations. By modeling constitutional emotions and consciousness of eight entities, emotions within entities as “individualized emotional processors,” are constructing and integrating purposeful social, altruistic events for the efficacy of situated agents.<br></div>

At the Rio Conference in 1992, the sustainable development agenda promised a new era for natural resource management, where the wellbeing of human society would be enhanced through a more sustainable use of natural resources. Several decades on, economic growth continues unabated at the expense of natural capital – as evidenced by natural resource depletion, biodiversity loss, climate change and further environmental issues. Why is this happening and what can be done about it? This research examines what socio-economic and governance factors affect sustainability in complex coupled social-ecological systems. Furthermore, it analyses the role of power relations and imbalances between economic and conservation forces with regard to sustainable development. The original contribution to knowledge of this thesis is based on one conceptual and two empirical (Agent-Based) models. These explore, through several case-studies, the potential of different future scenarios in fostering synergies and win-win contexts of ecosystem services and socio-economic indicators. Overall, the research showed the complex and interconnected relationship between the economy and natural systems, and between economic and conservation forces, in coupled social-ecological systems. Addressing complex sustainability issues requires the use of integrative, holistic and interdisciplinary approaches, in addition to considering the particular socio-economic, cultural, political and environmental contexts of the social-ecological system being analysed. The models demonstrated that the current economic system requires an ever-increasing use of natural resources, and that the economy does not protect the natural capital on which it depends. This is based on a disjunction of the economic and conservation elements upon which the sustainable development paradigm is founded. Furthermore, several socio-economic and governance factors appeared to be key for diminishing sustainability in coupled social-ecological systems; namely, the type of economic and production systems, the particular use of monetary debt, technological development, and weak conservation forces (both top-down and bottom-up). However, results also showed alternative scenarios where these same factors could be redirected to enhance social-ecological sustainability. This dual role supports the argument that the current economic system is not inherently (i.e. by definition, per se) unsustainable. Rather, the specific use of economic mechanisms and behaviour of economic entities, as well as their decisions and relationships with the environment, show a tendency to increase unsustainability. Hence, short- and medium-term sustainability can be enhanced by developing mechanisms that start shifting capitalist forces to support environmental conservation; here, the role of Payments for Ecosystem Services will be essential. Enhancing long-term sustainability, however, may require a further paradigm change – where economic and production systems integrate, and fully account for, externalities and the value of natural capital, thus human society is embedded within the wider, and more important, natural environmental system.

In Portland Jamaica, smallholding farmers are facing major challenges in terms of economic uncertainty and climate change. This study is analyzing a project which aims at increasing farmers ability to adapt to climate change. The objective of the project is to introduce the pineapple variety MD2 for smallholder farmers in Portland Jamaica. The main objective of this study is to investigate which aspects of the project that could increase or decrease buffering capability in the context of social-ecological resilience. The study is conducted during a minor field study during eight weeks in Portland, Jamaica. Data was collected through observation on farms together with semi-structured interviews with farmers and initiators of the project. The results have been analyzed through the theory of social-ecological resilience (Danhofer et al, 2011). Even though there are many aspects which could influence buffering capability, the study outlines some aspects of the implementation of the pineapple variety MD2 that could increase or decrease farmers buffering capability. Aspects which could increase buffering capability are; generating an alternative income and providing and introducing beneficial farming practices which could limit soil erosion on hillside land. Aspects which are threatening to decrease farmers buffering capability are; lack of knowledge and previous experience of the crop variety, usage of chemical means of control and lack of inputs of organic material.

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.