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Nudging service providers and assessing service trade-offs to reduce the social inefficiencies of payments for ecosystem services schemes

Socially inefficient payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes result when adverse shifts in the provisioning of other ecosystem services (ES) or overpayment to service providers occur. To address these inefficiencies, a holistic evaluation of trade-offs between services should be conducted in parallel with determining land owners' service provisioning preferences. Recent evidence also suggests that nudging stakeholders' preferences could be a useful policy design tool to address global change challenges. Forest owners' landscape management preferences were nudged to determine the impact on the social efficiency of PES schemes for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation in Finland. ES indicators for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, and the albedo effect were included with traditional provisioning services (i.e. timber) and bioenergy to assess the consequent intra-service trade-offs. Synergies in provisioning of regulating services were identified, but were found to be more efficient when the management objective is for biodiversity conservation rather than climate change regulation. Nudging led to marginal gains in service provisioning above the baseline management and above neutral owner preferences, and increased aggregate service provisioning. This demonstrates the importance of considering intra-service trade-offs and that nudging could be an important tool for designing efficient PES schemes. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Fit in the Body: Matching Embodied Cognition with Social-Ecological Systems

Analysis of fit has focused on the macrolevel fit between social institutions and ecosystems, and bypassed the microlevel fit between individual cognition and its socio-material environment. I argue that the conceptualizations we develop about social-ecological systems and our position in them should be understood as ways for a fundamentally cognitive organism to adapt to particular social and ecological situations. Since at issue is our survival as a species, we need to better understand the structure and dynamics of fit between human cognition and its social-ecological environment. I suggest that the embodied cognition perspective opens up possibilities for "nudging" evolution through the conceptual integration of the cognitively attractive but ecologically unrealistic neoclassical economics, and the cognitively less attractive but ecologically more realistic adaptive cycle theory (panarchy). The result is a conceptually integrated model, the Roller Coaster Blend, which expresses in metaphorical terms why competitive individuals are better off cooperating than competing with each other in the face of absolute resource limits. The blend enables the reframing of messages about the limits of the social-ecological system in terms of growth rather than degrowth. This is cognitively appealing, as upward growth fires in our minds the neural connections of "more," "control", and "happy." The blend's potential for nudging behavior arises from its autopoietic characteristic: it can be both an account of the social-ecological system as an emergent structure that is capable of renewing itself, and a cognitive attractor of individuals whose recruitment reinforces the integrity of the social-ecological system

Kirje, joka nostatti myrskyn : esipuhe tutkijoiden metsäjulkilausumalle

nonPeerReviewe

The art of the cognitive war to save the planet

Major and urgent behavioral change is required to address the unprecedented environmental challenges facing civilization on Earth. Individuals striving to free themselves from the biophysical constraints of life with material gain only strengthen their collective dependence on natural life support systems. Human belief networks from ancient to modern times are studied to point out factors of success and failure rooted in the mental representations of the dilemma in human-environment interaction. The analysis provides cognitive grounds for a major revision of climate change communication and highlights the need for technology-oriented policy programs with a clearly focused message on saving our civilization.Human-environment interaction Belief systems Environmental strategy Climate change communication Cognitive studies

Addressing the temporal fit of institutions: the regulation of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in Europe

The concept of temporal fit between biophysical systems and institutions has lately received great attention by scholars interested in environmental governance. Although we agree that the concept of temporal fit is a valuable approach for highlighting the temporal challenges of governance systems, we argue that the concept is currently lacking precision with regard to temporal complexity. We build on Barbara Adam's work on "timescapes" to offer a more nuanced account of temporal fit and misfit. We illustrate the analytical usefulness of our approach by examining the regulation of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) within European Union's Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), a case with amplified temporal challenges. We suggest that, when addressing temporal fit, two points require greater attention. First, similar to time, temporal misfits are complex. In REACH the temporal misfit is linked to four temporal features, time frame, sequence, tempo, and timing, contributing to the insufficiency of EDC regulation. Second, the temporal features are interlinked and feed back into each other, which strengthens the temporal misfit further. In conclusion, we propose that environmental impact assessment could be used as a tool to circumvent the regulatory paralysis of EDC regulation in Europe

The policy operations room : Analyzing path-dependent decision-making in wicked socio-ecological disruptions

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The AuthorsThe magnitude and speed of change in complex human-environmental systems pose a systemic dilemma for societies. Human-induced environmental changes have pushed Earth's socio-ecological systems into an era of chronic, complex, and rapid disruptions, which call for quick intuitive decisions and effective implementation. Yet the complexity, interconnectedness and long lead times of the problems would require thoughtful and time-consuming weighing of evidence by a broad range of experts. To address the dilemma, we develop a framework, the Policy Operations Room (POR), for simultaneous practice and analysis of decision-making that prevents decisions made under time pressure from leading to unwanted socio-ecological disruptions decades ahead. The POR framework is based on earlier research on control rooms of critical infrastructures and simulation exercises of emergency response, and preliminary data from our first experiments with PORs. It immerses the policymakers in a simulated “time machine” that combines the real-time reliability management of control rooms with the long-term planning for crisis avoidance and preparedness. The POR framework can contribute significantly to novel styles of decision-making by policymakers, engineers, and corporate strategists responsible for developing urgent, forward-looking, and evidence-based policies to cope with the coming challenges of human-environmental interaction.Peer reviewe