Greater than the sum of its parts: How to develop collaborative networks to solve complex social issues.

Many contemporary societal challenges are complex, and span different domains of knowledge and expertise. This is especially true for environmental issues where the need for more holistic thinking is strongly articulated. But just bringing a set of diverse actors into a room does not by itself solve complex problems, argues Örjan Bodin. Solutions are often generated by networks that balance a diverse range of actors with active facilitation through a central coordinator

Tearing Out the Income Tax by the (Grass)Roots

Landscapes are increasingly fragmented, and conservation programs have started to look at network approaches for maintaining populations at a larger scale. We present an agent-based model of predator–prey dynamics where the agents (i.e. the individuals of either the predator or prey population) are able to move between different patches in a landscaped network. We then analyze population level and coexistence probability given node-centrality measures that characterize specific patches. We show that both predator and prey species benefit from living in globally well-connected patches (i.e. with high closeness centrality). However, the maximum number of prey species is reached, on average, at lower closeness centrality levels than for predator species. Hence, prey species benefit from constraints imposed on species movement in fragmented landscapes since they can reproduce with a lesser risk of predation, and their need for using anti-predatory strategies decreases.authorCount :

Challenges for environmental governance: policy issue interdependencies might not lead to collaboration

Policy actors address complex environmental problems by engaging in multiple and often interdependent policy issues. Policy issue interdependencies imply that efforts by actors to address separate policy issues can either reinforce (‘win–win’) or counteract (‘trade-off’) each other. Thus, if interdependent issues are managed in isolation instead of being coordinated, the most effective and well-balanced solution to the underlying problem might never be realised. This study asks if reinforcing and counteracting interdependencies have different impacts on perception and collaboration. Our empirical study of collaborative water governance in the Norrström basin, Sweden, shows that policy actors often avoid collaborating when the policy issues exhibit reinforcing interdependencies. Our evidence indicates a perceived infeasibility of acting on reinforcing interdependencies. We also find that actors do not consider counteracting interdependencies (‘trade-offs’) at all when they engage in collaboration. Further, even though actors were aware of counteracting and reinforcing interdependencies, our analyses suggest they might be less aware of the former. These findings illustrate that actors either avoid each other due to policy issue interdependencies or, at best, ignore existing interdependencies when engaging in collaboration. Our study highlights the importance of problem perception in accomplishing integrated solutions to complex environmental problems, and of how understandings of different types of interdependencies shape collaboration in environmental governance

Adapting to Regional Enforcement: Fishing Down the Governance Index

Background: Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a problem for marine resource managers, leading to depletion of fish stocks and negative impacts on marine ecosystems. These problems are particularly evident in regions with weak governance. Countries responsible for sustainable natural resource management in the Southern Ocean have actively worked to reduce IUU fishing in the region over a period of 15 years, leading to a sequence of three distinct peaks of IUU fishing. Methodology/Principal Findings: We reviewed existing public records relating to IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean between 1995–2009 and related this information to the governance capacity of flag states responsible for IUU vessels. IUU operators used a number of methods to adapt to enforcement actions, resulting in reduced risks of detection, apprehension and sanctioning. They changed fishing locations, vessel names and flag states, and ports for offloading IUU catches. There was a significant decrease in the proportion of IUU vessels flagged to CCAMLR countries, and a significant decrease in the average governance index of flag states. Despite a decreasing trend of IUU fishing, further actions are hampered by the regional scope of CCAMLR and the governance capacity of responsible states. Conclusions/Significance: This is the first study of long-term change in the modus operandi of IUU fishing operators, illustrating that IUU operators can adapt to enforcement actions and that such dynamics may lead to new problems elsewhere, where countries have a limited capacity. This outsourcing of problems may have similarities to natural resourc

Untangling the drivers of community cohesion in small-scale fisheries

Sustainable fisheries require strong management and effective governance. However, small-scale fisheries (SFF) often lack formal institutions, leaving management in the hands of local users in the form of various governance approaches (e.g., local, traditional, or co-management). The effectiveness of these approaches inherently relies upon some level of cohesion among resource users to facilitate agreement on common policies and practices regarding common pool fishery resources. Understanding the factors driving the formation and maintenance of community cohesion in SSF is therefore critical if we are to devise more effective participatory governance approaches and encourage and empower decentralized, localized, and community-based resource management approaches. Here, we adopt a social relational network perspective to propose a suite of hypothesized drivers that lead to the establishment of social ties among fishers that build the foundation for community cohesion. We then draw on detailed data from Jamaica’s small-scale fishery to empirically test these drivers by employing a set of nested exponential random graph models (ERGMs) based on specific structural building blocks (i.e., network configurations) theorized to influence the establishment of social ties. Our results demonstrate that multiple drivers are at play, but that collectively, gear-based homophily, geographic proximity, and leadership play particularly important roles. We discuss the extent to which these drivers help explain previous experiences, as well as their implications for future and sustained collective action in SSF in Jamaica and elsewhere

Tracking integrated ecosystem assessments in the ICES network: a social network analysis of the ICES expert groups

The advice the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) provides to its member countries is crucial for the sustainable management of shared marine resources, and the conservation of relevant marine ecosystems. In 2014, ICES made a strategic decision to integrate marine and social sciences in a new type of assessment framework called “integrated ecosystem assessments” (IEA) to deliver advice on societal trade-offs between different policy options. The IEA-focused expert groups formed before and after this period now cover all major ecoregions. To track the progression of IEAs in the ICES network over time, we conducted a social network analysis (SNA) on expert group attendance for the years 2015–2019. The IEA-focused expert groups generally ranked lower in the overall ICES network. Our study shows that some IEA-groups become more connected over time, while others decline. We also evaluated the role of workshops in the ICES network, particularly their role in the development of IEA knowledge. Our study shows that workshops play an important role in ICES network connectivity. The study demonstrates how social network analysis can be used to study an organization such as ICES and determine the effectiveness, or impact, of that organizational function.publishedVersio

Impacts of climate change on global food trade networks

Countries’ reliance on global food trade networks implies that regionally different climate change impacts on crop yields will be transmitted across borders. This redistribution constitutes a significant challenge for climate adaptation planning and may affect how countries engage in cooperative action. This paper investigates the long-term (2070-2099) potential impacts of climate change on global food trade networks of three key crops: wheat, rice and maize. We propose a simple network model to project how climate change impacts on crop yields may be translated into changes in trade. Combining trade and climate impact data, our analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we use network community detection to analyse how the concentration of global production in present-day trade communities may become disrupted with climate change impacts. Second, we study how countries may change their network position following climate change impacts. Third, we study the total climate-induced change in production plus import within trade communities. Results indicate that the stability of food trade network structures compared to today differs between crops, and that countries’ maize trade is least stable under climate change impacts. Results also project that threats to global food security may depend on production change in a few major global producers, and whether trade communities can balance production and import loss in some vulnerable countries. Overall, our model contributes a baseline analysis of cross-border climate impacts on food trade networks

Social-ecological alignment and ecological conditions in coral reefs

Complex social-ecological interactions underpin many environmental problems. To help capture this complexity, we advance an interdisciplinary network modeling framework to identify important relationships between people and nature that can influence environmental conditions. Drawing on comprehensive social and ecological data from five coral reef fishing communities in Kenya; including interviews with 648 fishers, underwater visual census data of reef ecosystem condition, and time-series landings data; we show that positive ecological conditions are associated with ‘social-ecological network closure’ – i.e., fully linked and thus closed network structures between social actors and ecological resources. Our results suggest that when fishers facing common dilemmas form cooperative communication ties with direct resource competitors, they may achieve positive gains in reef fish biomass and functional richness. Our work provides key empirical insight to a growing body of research on social-ecological alignment, and helps to advance an integrative framework that can be applied empirically in different social-ecological contexts

‘Bunkering down’: How one community is tightening social-ecological network structures in the face of global change

Complex networks of relationships among and between people and nature (social-ecological networks) play an important role in sustainability; yet, we have limited empirical understanding of their temporal dynamics. We empirically examine the evolution of a social-ecological network in a common-pool resource system faced with escalating social and environmental change over the past two decades. We first draw on quantitative and qualitative data collected between 2002 and 2018 in a Papua New Guinean reef fishing community to provide contextual evidence regarding the extent of social and environmental change being experienced. We then develop a temporal multilevel exponential random graph model using complete social-ecological network data, collected in 2016 and 2018, to test key hypotheses regarding how fishing households have adapted their social ties in this context of change given their relationships with reef resources (i.e. social-ecological ties). Specifically, we hypothesized that households will increasingly form tight-knit, bonding social and social-ecological network structures (H1 and H3, respectively) with similar others (H2), and that they will seek out resourceful actors with specialized knowledge that can promote learning and spur innovation (H4). Our results depict a community that is largely ‘bunkering down’ and looking inward in response to mounting risk to resource-dependent livelihoods and a breakdown in the collaborative processes that traditionally sustained them. Community members are increasingly choosing to interact with others more like themselves (H2), with friends of friends (H1), and with those connected to interdependent ecological resources (H3)—in other words, they are showing a strong, increasing preference for forming bonding social-ecological network structures and interacting with like-minded, similar others. We did not find strong support for H4. Bonding network structures may decrease the risk associated with unmonitored behaviour and help to build trust, thereby increasing the probability of sustaining cooperation over time. Yet, increasing homophily and bonding ties can stifle innovation, reducing the ability to adapt to changing conditions. It can also lead to clustering, creating fault lines in the network, which can negatively impact the community\u27s ability to mobilize and agree on/enforce social norms, which are key for managing common resources