Amplifying actions for food system transformation: Insights from the Stockholm region

Food is essential to people and is one of the main ways in which people are connected to the world’s ecosystems. However, food systems often cause ecosystem degradation and produce ill-health, which has generated increasing calls to transform food systems to be more sustainable. The Swedish food system is currently undergoing substantial change. A varied set of local actors have created alternative sustainability initiatives that enact new ways of doing, thinking, and organizing. These actors can increase the transformative impact of their initiatives through multiple actions and a variety of amplification processes. We analyzed the actions adopted by 29 food initiatives active in the Stockholm region using information available online. We conducted 11 interviews to better understand the amplification processes of speeding up (i.e., accelerating impact), scaling up (i.e., influencing higher institutional levels), and scaling deep (i.e., changing values and mind-sets). Our results indicated that the initiatives mainly seek to stabilize and grow their impact while changing the awareness, values, and mind-sets of people concerning the food they consume (scaling deep). However, these approaches raise new questions about whether these actions subvert or reinforce current unsustainable and inequitable system dynamics. We suggest there are distinct steps that local and regional governments could take to support these local actors via collaborations with coordinated forms of initiatives, and fostering changes at the municipality level, but these steps require ongoing, adaptive approaches given the highly complex nature of transformative change and the risks of reinforcing current system dynamics

Key features for more successful place-based sustainability research on social-ecological systems: A Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) perspective

Contains fulltext : 166650.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)The emerging discipline of sustainability science is focused explicitly on the dynamic interactions between nature and society and is committed to research that spans multiple scales and can support transitions toward greater sustainability. Because a growing body of place-based social-ecological sustainability research (PBSESR) has emerged in recent decades, there is a growing need to understand better how to maximize the effectiveness of this work. The Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) provides a unique opportunity for synthesizing insights gained from this research community on key features that may contribute to the relative success of PBSESR. We surveyed the leaders of PECS-affiliated projects using a combination of open, closed, and semistructured questions to identify which features of a research project are perceived to contribute to successful research design and implementation. We assessed six types of research features: problem orientation, research team, and contextual, conceptual, methodological, and evaluative features. We examined the desirable and undesirable aspects of each feature, the enabling factors and obstacles associated with project implementation, and asked respondents to assess the performance of their own projects in relation to these features. Responses were obtained from 25 projects working in 42 social-ecological study cases within 25 countries. Factors that contribute to the overall success of PBSESR included: explicitly addressing integrated social-ecological systems; a focus on solution- and transformation-oriented research; adaptation of studies to their local context; trusted, long-term, and frequent engagement with stakeholders and partners; and an early definition of the purpose and scope of research. Factors that hindered the success of PBSESR included: the complexities inherent to social-ecological systems, the imposition of particular epistemologies and methods on the wider research group, the need for long periods of time to initiate and conduct this kind of research, and power asymmetries both within the research team and among stakeholders. In the self-assessment exercise, performance relating to team and context-related features was ranked higher than performance relating to methodological, evaluation, and problem orientation features. We discuss how these insights are relevant for balancing place-based and global perspectives in sustainability science, fostering more rapid progress toward inter- and transdisciplinary integration, redefining and measuring the success of PBSESR, and facing the challenges of academic and research funding institutions. These results highlight the valuable opportunity that the PECS community provides in helping build a community of practice for PBSESR.45 p

Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research

Research practice, funding agencies and global science organizations suggest that research aimed at addressing sustainability challenges is most effective when ‘co-produced’ by academics and non-academics. Co-production promises to address the complex nature of contemporary sustainability challenges better than more traditional scientific approaches. But definitions of knowledge co-production are diverse and often contradictory. We propose a set of four general principles that underlie high-quality knowledge co-production for sustainability research. Using these principles, we offer practical guidance on how to engage in meaningful co-productive practices, and how to evaluate their quality and success

Amplifying actions for food system transformation: Insights from the Stockholm region

Food is essential to people and is one of the main ways in which people are connected to the world’s ecosystems. However, food systems often cause ecosystem degradation and produce ill-health, which has generated increasing calls to transform food systems to be more sustainable. The Swedish food system is currently undergoing substantial change. A varied set of local actors have created alternative sustainability initiatives that enact new ways of doing, thinking, and organizing. These actors can increase the transformative impact of their initiatives through multiple actions and a variety of amplification processes. We analyzed the actions adopted by 29 food initiatives active in the Stockholm region using information available online. We conducted 11 interviews to better understand the amplification processes of speeding up (i.e., accelerating impact), scaling up (i.e., influencing higher institutional levels), and scaling deep (i.e., changing values and mind-sets). Our results indicated that the initiatives mainly seek to stabilize and grow their impact while changing the awareness, values, and mind-sets of people concerning the food they consume (scaling deep). However, these approaches raise new questions about whether these actions subvert or reinforce current unsustainable and inequitable system dynamics. We suggest there are distinct steps that local and regional governments could take to support these local actors via collaborations with coordinated forms of initiatives, and fostering changes at the municipality level, but these steps require ongoing, adaptive approaches given the highly complex nature of transformative change and the risks of reinforcing current system dynamics

Combining fish and benthic communities into multiple regimes reveals complex reef dynamics

Coral reefs worldwide face an uncertain future with many reefs reported to transition from being dominated by corals to macroalgae. However, given the complexity and diversity of the ecosystem, research on how regimes vary spatially and temporally is needed. Reef regimes are most often characterised by their benthic components; however, complex dynamics are associated with losses and gains in both fish and benthic assemblages. To capture this complexity, we synthesised 3,345 surveys from Hawai‘i to define reef regimes in terms of both fish and benthic assemblages. Model-based clustering revealed five distinct regimes that varied ecologically, and were spatially heterogeneous by island, depth and exposure. We identified a regime characteristic of a degraded state with low coral cover and fish biomass, one that had low coral but high fish biomass, as well as three other regimes that varied significantly in their ecology but were previously considered a single coral dominated regime. Analyses of time series data reflected complex system dynamics, with multiple transitions among regimes that were a function of both local and global stressors. Coupling fish and benthic communities into reef regimes to capture complex dynamics holds promise for monitoring reef change and guiding ecosystem-based management of coral reefs. © 2018, The Author(s)