Linking social capacities and risk communication in Europe: a gap between theory and practice?

Although both improved risk communication and the building of social capacities have been advocated as vital ways to increase societies' resilience towards natural hazards across the world, the literature has rarely examined the ways in which these two concepts may integrate in theory and practice. This paper is an attempt to address this gap in a European context. It begins with a conceptual discussion that unites the literature on risk communication with the literature on social capacity building. We then use the insights from this discussion as a basis to conduct a review of 60 risk communication practices from across Europe. This review indicates a gap between theory and practice because, whilst the literature highlights the importance of integrated and coordinated communication campaigns featuring both a one-way transfer and a two-way dialogue between the public, stakeholders and decision-makers, the majority of the communication practices reviewed here appear to be relatively disparate initiatives that rely on one-way forms of communication. On the basis of these findings, we conclude by making some recommendations for the way in which such practices could be improved in order to be more supportive of social capacities across Europ

Decision support systems in forest management: requirements from a participatory planning perspective

Participatory approaches and computerised tools such as decision support systems (DSS) represent conflicting tendencies in state-of the-art sustainable forest management. As a result, there may be considerable tension between these two developments in practice. The objective of this paper is to explore how participatory approaches and DSS could be brought together to improve planning processes and to explore how DSS could be adapted in their use or combined with other tools to enable successful participatory planning. From a review of the literature, we identified criteria related to successful participatory planning. From these criteria, we selected those a DSS can influence and created a short list of the criteria that could be used to evaluate participatory processes where DSS are applied. The evaluation criteria with particular relevance for DSS that we identified are as follows: fairness, opportunity to influence outcome, quality and selection of information, cost-effectiveness, challenging status quo and fostering creative thinking, structured decision-making process, transparency, and independence and neutrality of process. We also scrutinised existing forest DSS and identified features that may enable DSS to address these criteria. The features of DSS we identified that may support participatory processes are as follows: group decision support, possibilities to include other values than timber production, flexibility of system to include non-traditional forest data and management options, and multi-criteria decision analysis tools. We argue that the DSS to be used should be assessed to clarify, how it can be used in the specific planning situation and how it should be complemented with other available and non-computerised tool

Integrating sense of place in planning and management of multifunctional river landscapes: experiences from five European case studies

River landscapes are complex social-ecological systems with many benefts for people. A common challenge is to integrate social values in river planning and management. In particular, there is a paucity of research on the meaning and signifcance of place in river recreation and how people feel emotionally and spiritually connected to river landscapes. Based on fve European case studies, this study compares diferent methods and approaches for mapping sense of place in river landscapes and subsequently addresses the question of how these studies can inform participatory processes. The case studies are set in diverse geographical, institutional and policy contexts, including the planning and evaluation of river restoration projects in Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and Spain and the monitoring of the efects of newly constructed river dams in the Netherlands. This comparative study is a frst step in understanding the breadth of analytical and spatial approaches that can be used to assess sense of place in river landscapes and their implications for resilient river landscape planning and management

How previous experiences shape actors' current perspectives in integrated natural resource management

Previous experiences play a multifaceted role in shaping current perspectives in integrated natural resource management. We used qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey to study the similarities and differences in terms of the links between the diverse actors' previous experiences and their current perspectives on the various issues to be resolved in a real-world integrated watershed management project.We found that the quantity and quality of experiences in past projects including water management, participation and politics are dissimilarly linked to the information, mental models and beliefs of perspectives regarding present issues. More experienced actors generally have broader perspectives than less experienced actors. Less experienced actors are particularly curious about approaches to water management.Actors with more experience in water management are more focused on ecological issues due to positive experience. Actors with more experience in participation are more sceptical about constructive solutions due to negative experience. Actors with more experience in politics emphasise the importance of agriculture and learning processes due to positive or negative experience. Actors with more negative experience in water management, participation and politics can nevertheless be motivated for participatory processes and integrated natural resource management.We conclude that previous experiences are critical factors that should be considered when designing participatory processes in integrated natural resource management. It could be valuable to include mixed compositions of actors with different types of previous experiences and different aspects of current perspectives to benefit from their complementary strengths

Between fixities and flows : Navigating place attachments in an increasingly mobile world

This paper develops a theoretical argument for how place attachments are forged and become dynamically linked to increasingly common mobility practices. First, we argue that mobilities, rather than negating the importance of place, shift our understanding of place and the habitual ways we relate to and bond with places as distinct from a conception of place attachment premised on fixity and stability. Second, we document how the body of research on place attachment has both reinforced and contested 'sedentaristic' assumptions criticized within the so-called 'mobilities turn' in the social sciences. Third, we present a conceptual framework, built around different modes of interrelation between fixity and flow, as a way to re-theorize, link and balance the various studies of place attachment that have grappled with mobility. Finally, we sketch out the main research implications of this framework for advancing our understanding of place attachment in a mobile world.Peer reviewe

Bridging senses of place and mobilities scholarships to inform social-ecological systems governance:A research agenda

Uncertainty and change are increasingly commonplace as communities respond to impacts of social-ecological change including climate change, and dangerous levels of pollution. Given the extent of these crises, new approaches are needed to support responses. Here we identify challenges and discuss insights that the nexus of Senses of place (SoP) and mobilities research offers in navigating such uncertainty. We conducted a two-round Delphi, followed by a workshop, and collaborative writing process with a global network of researchers with expertise in either or both SoP and mobilities research. Participants identified five challenges at the place-mobility nexus that emerge when a social-ecological system is disrupted. We use the 2022 Odra River fish die-off to exemplify the identified challenges: 1) accounting for power dynamics, inequalities and motility; 2) doing justice to more-than human actors; 3) integrating multiple and sometimes nested spatial scales; 4) considering temporalities of place and mobilities, and 5) embracing multisensoriality. To address these challenges, we recommend drawing on diverse methods and knowledge co-creation processes that combine more-than-human perspectives, multisensoriality, and engage in the dynamic relations between places to understand people-place disruptions in the face of socio-spatial precarity. Addressing such knowledge gaps requires stronger collaboration of mobilities and place researchers.</p

Bridging senses of place and mobilities scholarships to inform social-ecological systems governance:A research agenda

Uncertainty and change are increasingly commonplace as communities respond to impacts of social-ecological change including climate change, and dangerous levels of pollution. Given the extent of these crises, new approaches are needed to support responses. Here we identify challenges and discuss insights that the nexus of Senses of place (SoP) and mobilities research offers in navigating such uncertainty. We conducted a two-round Delphi, followed by a workshop, and collaborative writing process with a global network of researchers with expertise in either or both SoP and mobilities research. Participants identified five challenges at the place-mobility nexus that emerge when a social-ecological system is disrupted. We use the 2022 Odra River fish die-off to exemplify the identified challenges: 1) accounting for power dynamics, inequalities and motility; 2) doing justice to more-than human actors; 3) integrating multiple and sometimes nested spatial scales; 4) considering temporalities of place and mobilities, and 5) embracing multisensoriality. To address these challenges, we recommend drawing on diverse methods and knowledge co-creation processes that combine more-than-human perspectives, multisensoriality, and engage in the dynamic relations between places to understand people-place disruptions in the face of socio-spatial precarity. Addressing such knowledge gaps requires stronger collaboration of mobilities and place researchers.</p

Does Participatory Planning Foster the Transformation Toward More Adaptive Social-Ecological Systems?

The need for social-ecological systems to become more adaptive is widely acknowledged. Social effects generated by participatory planning have been claimed to contribute to this transformation, but little empirical evidence is available that backs up or opposes this notion. We aimed to offer some insights regarding questions as to which social effects are formed in participatory planning processes and at what costs, and to then discuss their contribution to the transformation toward more adaptive social-ecological systems based on empirical evidence. Consequently, we investigated the social effects of participatory planning processes, including the social learning processes leading to them. We conducted semistructured interviews with members of advisory groups involved in river engineering projects in Switzerland. Our results indicate that participatory planning processes can somewhat contribute to maintaining and spreading knowledge and social capital among individuals in a planning group, and this may help them collectively deal with new and complex challenges. However, it is costly in terms of time and patience to build up ecological knowledge, communicative capacities, and trust, with the latter also eroding over time. Overall, we conclude that the contribution of participatory planning via positive social outcomes to the transformation toward adaptive capacity social-ecological systems is smaller than optimists might hope. However, other forms of planning very likely result in no social effects or even the destruction of social capital. Participatory planning, in contrast, can offer the conditions for relational and cognitive learning contributing to the maintenance of social and political capital. Based on our results, we suggest shifting resources from technical to communicative aspects of planning processes and implementations. We recommend that project leaders provide stakeholders with firsthand information about projects, explain rationales and data behind decisions, and clearly communicate that stakeholders do not have decision making competence to support participants in finding their roles in similar participatory planning settings

The Implications of Urbanization for Inhabitants’ Relationship to Their Residential Environment

In the last decades, prosperous regions in Europe have experienced a tremendous rate of urbanization. In spite of considerable research efforts in the last decades, the socio&ndash;psychological implications of urbanization are still poorly understood. This paper aims to systematically determine the influence of urbanization on the relationships between inhabitants and their residential environment including their place attachment, place-satisfaction, civic participation, and proximity behavior. To achieve these goals, standardized cross-sectional questionnaires were administered to random samples (N = 1200 each) of the residential population in four study areas in Switzerland, which represent rural, peri-urban, suburban, and urban stages of urbanization. Statistical analysis revealed that place attachment was mainly influenced by the inhabitants&rsquo; good experiences in the place, their sense of local community, their local social contacts, and the level of urbanization. A structural equation model (SEM) further showed that the degree of urbanization of the setting had a direct negative influence on place attachment, while place attachment appeared to be a key moderator of, and a main driver for, place-satisfaction, civic participation, and proximity behavior. A key to reducing negative impacts of urbanization is therefore to offer optimal opportunities for access to appropriate public place