Securing the production of ecosystem services, essential for human well-being, is a challenging taskthat has both social and ecological dimension. Calls for more adaptive institutional managementarrangements that not only account for the complex and cross-scale nature of ecosystems, but alsothe corresponding social dynamics of actors and institutions that manage those ecosystems haveemerged. Social network analysis is a tool increasingly used to empirically map and analyze suchsocial/institutional dynamics. In this study, social network analysis is used to investigate the socialnetwork of actors engaged in nature conservation in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve “East VätternScarp Landscape”, Sweden. The results reveal a large network of 117 individuals representing 21organizations. The representatives in a collaborative project group perform both structural andfunctional bridging, why the group can be classified as a bridging organization. Members of thebridging organization are well-anchored among the people they represent. Hence, the objectives ofperipheral members are represented in the core, even though the network is highly centralized. Theinstitutional arrangements made visible in this study show many traits of adaptive co-management.Qualitative data on what type of information that flows through the network, and what effect thatthe network structure has on the production if ecosystem services is however lacking. This calls forfurther studies in the area.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-85834 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Heinrup, Malena |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Stockholm Resilience Centre |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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