Learning about social-ecological trade-offs

PublishedThis is the final version of the article. Available from Resilience Alliance via the DOI in this record.Trade-offs are manifestations of the complex dynamics in interdependent social-ecological systems. Addressing trade-offs involves challenges of perception due to the dynamics of interdependence. We outline the challenges associated with addressing trade-offs and analyze knowledge coproduction as a practice that may contribute to tackling trade-offs in social-ecological systems. We discuss this through a case study in coastal Kenya in which an iterative knowledge coproduction process was facilitated to reveal social-ecological trade-offs in the face of ecological and socioeconomic change. Representatives of communities, government, and NGOs attended two integrative workshops in which methods derived from systems thinking, dialogue, participatory modeling, and scenarios were applied to encourage participants to engage and evaluate trade-offs. Based on process observation and interviews with participants and scientists, our analysis suggests that this process lead to increased appreciation of interdependences and the way in which trade-offs emerge from complex dynamics of interdependent factors. The process seemed to provoke a reflection of knowledge assumptions and narratives, and management goals for the social-ecological system. We also discuss how stakeholders link these insights to their practices.The primary and secondary stakeholders of the Nyali Beach fishery in focus groups and workshops is gratefully acknowledged. Arthur Tuda, Sheila Heymans, Allister McGregor, and Raphaël Mathevet advised on the design of the project. This paper is a result of the project "Participatory Modelling Frameworks to Understand Well-being Trade-offs in Coastal Ecosystem Services" (P-mowtick) funded by the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) program (ref number: NE/I00324X/1) and received further support from K. Brown's ESRC Professorial Fellowship (RES-051-27-0263). The ESPA program is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Diego Galafassi also acknowledges the support of the Strategic Research Program EkoKlim at Stockholm University through the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS)

Restoring our senses, restoring the Earth : fostering imaginative capacities through the arts for envisioning climate transformations

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Humanity has never lived in a world of global average temperature above two degrees of current levels. Moving towards such High-End Climate Change (HECC) futures presents fundamental challenges to current governance structures and involves the need to confront high uncertainties, non-linear dynamics and multiple irreversibilities in global social-ecological systems. In order to face HECC, imaginative practices able to support multiple ways of learning about and experiencing the future are necessary. In this article we analysed a set of arts-based activities conducted within the five-year EU-funded project IMPRESSIONS aimed at identifying transformative strategies to high-end climate change. The exploratory artistic activities were carried out alongside a science-led participatory integrated assessment process with stakeholders from the Iberian Peninsula. Our arts-based approach combined a range of performative, visual and reflexive practices with the ambition to reach out to more-than-rational but also practical elements of HECC futures. Our study suggests that the arts-based approach helped to bring out new ways of seeing, feeling and interpreting the world which may support the development of individual and collective sensibilities needed to address HECC

'Raising the temperature' : the arts on a warming planet

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552The search for decisive actions to remain below 1.5 °C of global temperature rise will require profound cultural transformations. Yet our knowledge of how to promote and bring about such deep transformative changes in the minds and behaviours of individuals and societies is still limited. As climate change unravels and the planet becomes increasingly connected, societies will need to articulate a shared purpose that is both engaging and respectful of cultural diversity. Thus, there is a growing need to 'raise the temperature' of integration between multiple ways of knowing climate change. We have reviewed a range of literatures and synthesized them in order to draw out the perceived role of the arts in fostering climate transformations. Our analysis of climate-related art projects and initiatives shows increased engagement in recent years, particularly with the narrative, visual and performing arts. The arts are moving beyond raising awareness and entering the terrain of interdisciplinarity and knowledge co-creation. We conclude that climate-arts can contribute positively in fostering the imagination and emotional predisposition for the development and implementation of the transformations necessary to address the 1.5 °C challenge

Transformative spaces in the making: key lessons from nine cases in the Global South

Creating a just and sustainable planet will require not only small changes, but also systemic transformations in how humans relate to the planet and to each other, i.e., social–ecological transformations. We suggest there is a need for collaborative environments where experimentation with new configurations of social–ecological systems can occur, and we refer to these as transformative spaces. In this paper, we seek a better understanding of how to design and enable the creation of transformative spaces in a development context. We analyse nine case studies from a previous special issue on Designing Transformative Spaces that aimed to collect examples of cutting-edge action-oriented research on transformations from the Global South. The analysis showed five design phases as being essential: Problem Definition Phase; Operationalisation Phase; Tactical Phase; Outcome Phase; and Reflection Phase. From this synthesis, we distilled five key messages that should be considered when designing research, including: (a) there are ethical dilemmas associated with creating a transformative space in a system; (b) it is important to assess the readiness of the system for change before engaging in it; (c) there is a need to balance between ‘safe’ and ‘safe-enough’ spaces for transformation; (d) convening a transformative space requires an assemblage of diverse methodological frameworks and tools; and (e) transformative spaces can act as a starting point for institutionalising transformative change. Many researchers are now engaging in transdisciplinary transformations research, and are finding themselves at the knowledge–action interface contributing to transformative space-making. We hope that by analysing experiences from across different geographies we can contribute towards better understanding of how to navigate the processes needed for the urgent global transformations that are being called for to create a more equitable and sustainable planet Earth

Stories in social-ecological knowledge cocreation

Transformations in social-ecological systems to overturn poverty and ecosystem degradation require approaches to knowledge synthesis that are inclusive and open to creative innovation. We draw on interviews with participants and in-depth process observation of an iterative knowledge cocreation process in Kenya and Mozambique that brought together scientists, community representatives, government representatives, and practitioners who had expertise or experience in poverty and/or coastal natural resource use and management. We analyze the communicative spaces opened by techniques of system diagrams and future scenarios, and provide a rich account of the emergent process of developing a "shared conceptual repertoire" as a basis for effective communication and knowledge synthesis. Our results highlight the difficulties of challenging dominant narratives and the creative potential that exists in reflecting on their underpinning assumptions. In our analysis, stories and lived experiences emerged as key means shaping the construction of shared concepts and ideas. We conclude by outlining the implications of designing knowledge cocreation processes that support the task of devising systemic interventions that are robust for a range of future scenarios. This includes embracing the role of stories in generating shared meanings and opening up spaces for exploration of knowledge assumptions that are embedded in intervention narratives

Participatory pathways to the sustainable development goals : inviting divergent perspectives through a cross-scale systems approach

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The data that support the findings of this study are available in the Supplementary data.The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include social and ecological goals for humanity. Navigating towards reaching the goals requires the systematic inclusion of perspectives from a diversity of voices. Yet, the development of global sustainability pathways often lacks perspectives from the Global South. To help fill this gap, this paper introduces a participatory approach for visioning and exploring sustainable futures - the Three Horizons for the Sustainable Development Goals (3H4SDG). 3H4SDG facilitates explorations of (a) systemic pathways to reach the SDGs in an integrated way, and (b) highlights convergences and divergences between the pathways. We illustrate the application of 3H4SDG in a facilitated dialogue bringing together participants from four sub-regions of Africa: West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa. The dialogue focused on food and agricultural systems transformations. The case study results incorporate a set of convergences and divergences in relation to the future of urbanization, population growth, consumption, and the role of agriculture in the African economy. These were subsequently compared with the perspectives in global sustainability pathways, including the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The study illustrates that participatory approaches that are systemic and highlight divergent perspectives represent a promising way to link local aspirations with global goals.Formas, a Swedish government research council for sustainable development and European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2515-7620am2024Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural DevelopmentNon

INTER-MUNICIPAL COLLABORATION AND SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SCALES MISMATCHES : A NETWORK ANALYSIS OF URBAN STOCKHOLM REGION

In the study of social-ecological systems, matching scales of social and ecologicalprocesses is regarded as a key factor for the effectiveness of institutions in governanceof natural resources. Urban regions are heterogeneous systems often more prone tosocial-ecological scales mismatches. The landscape in Stockholm County presentshigh levels of ecological connectivity through large contiguous green areas extendingfrom city core outwards – i.e. green wedges. These areas are commonly intersected bymunicipal boundaries. In this context, inter-municipal collaboration is deemed as acornerstone to avoid fragmentation of regional green structure and to alignmanagement scales in the face of urban development and change. I use the networkperspective to investigate how collaborative efforts between Stockholm Countymunicipalities are used as a strategy to deal with scale mismatches. Inter-municipalcollaborations vary in degree, from informal exchange of information to jointplanning and may occur under a range of “management themes”. I investigate thegeneral characteristics and relationship between collaboration networks of parks,forest and water management. I explore the role of different municipalities in thesenetworks and assess patterns of collaborations among municipalities sharing greenwedges and municipal borders. Informal collaborations, in the form of exchange ofinformation, are a major component of these networks. Municipal borders are not theonly determinant of collaborative efforts. Social-ecological mismatches with potentialimplication to the maintenance of regional ecological processes have been identified.I discuss these findings in the light of a theoretical model of network governance thatcombines ecological scales and social network structure at multiple scales

The Transformative Imagination : Re-imagining the world towards sustainability

A central task for sustainability science in the Anthropocene is to offer guidance on alternative pathways of change. Even though this search and implementation of pathways towards sustainability is likely to require profound social-ecological transformations, little is yet known about the individual and collective capacities needed to support such transformations. This thesis explores the connection between human imagination and sustainability transformations, and introduces the notion of the transformative imagination to support methodological innovation in sustainability sciences, and practices aiming to support transformations towards sustainability. The transformative imagination is suggested to support fundamentally new ways of seeing, feeling, encountering and envisioning the world. The thesis takes a transdisciplinary action-research approach and studies how specific participatory practices, including the arts, may foster the transformative imagination as a means to more skilfully respond to, anticipate and shape social-ecological trajectories in the Anthropocene. The four included papers, each explores how practices may support particular features of the imagination as a transformative capacity. Paper I analyses a case in coastal Kenya where participatory modelling and future scenarios are applied to foster imagination of dynamics of interdependences and trade-offs within the context of poverty alleviation and ecosystems change. Paper II explores system diagrams and scenarios as practices for the development of social-ecological narratives that may support robust interventions in coastal Kenya and Mozambique. Paper III implements, and studies how an art-based approach based on performances, visual methods and an art installation, could support transformative visions of the Iberian Peninsula in the context of extreme climate change. Paper IV is a literature review of the potential contributions of the arts to transformations, in the context of climate change. These papers focus on different features of imagination, which under certain circumstances may progressively develop into societal transformative capacities with the potential to re-structure current social-ecological realities. Overall, this thesis is a step towards forging new kinds of reflexive, imaginative and deliberative practices that can support the emergence of local arrangements of a sustainable world where life can carry on.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Submitted.</p

Challenges for an Integrated Water Resource Management in the Merguellil basin (Tunisia)

La risorsa acqua in zone semi-aride è sottoposta a un'estrema variabilità climatica nello spazio e nel tempo. La gestione della risorsa acqua è quindi soggetta a un insieme di sfide quando i vincoli naturali vengono uniti agli effetti indotti da attività umana come per esempio l'aumento dello sfruttamento dell'acqua di sottosuolo, cambiamento dell'uso del suolo e presenza di infrastruttura mista. Si spera che il cambiamento climatico e l'attività risultanti dallo sviluppo economico, a corto termine aumentino la pressione su un sistema ormai sensibile. Se pianificato e gestito correttamente, lo stoccaggio dell'acqua, nelle sue varie forme, funge come un meccanismo di controllo della variabilità climatica e può potenziare la capacità adattiva. Lo uadi Merguellil è un corso d'acqua a carattere non perenne al centro della Tunisia, più specificamente a est della città di Kairouan. Il Merguellil drena la pioggia sulla dorsale Tunisina insieme al uadi Zeroud e Nebhana, ed è tra i principali fiumi che scorre sulla piana di Kairouan. Lo stoccaggio dell'acqua nel bacino assume diverse forme come i laghi collinari, i terrazzi, acqua di sottosuolo e una diga. Alcune delle opzioni per lo stoccaggio dell'acqua sono state costruite per preservare la risorsa acqua, mantenere la popolazione rurale e mantenere l'equità tra le zone a monte ed a valle ma solitamente non è mai stata fatta un'analisi comprensiva dei "trade-offs" coinvolti in tali sviluppi. Anche se la ricerca è sviluppata in questa zona, finora nessuna analisi ha cercato di combinare le dinamiche del sistema idrologico con scenari gestionali. L'analisi di scenari gestionali consente ai decisori di valutare delle alternative di pianificazione e può incrementare positivamente la loro abilità di creare delle politiche che si basino sulle necessità fisiche ma anche sociali di un particolare sistema. Questo lavoro è un primo passo verso un Sistema di Gestione Integrata della Risorsa Idrica (inglese: IWMR) capace di mettere in prospettiva strategie future su diverse scale. L'uso di uno strumento metodologico illustra le sfide associate nell'affrontare questo compito. In questo caso, un modello WEAP (Water Evaluation and Planning System) è stato sviluppato in collaborazione con partners Tunisini in modo da integrare le conoscenze su processi fisici e valutare diverse tendenze come l'aumento dell'irrigazione o il cambio di alcuni aspetti climatici. Lo strumento ora è disponibile ai ricercatori locali dove potrà essere sviluppato ulteriormente a fine di indirizzare domande più specifiche. Questo lavoro focalizza lo stoccaggio dell'acqua per poter evidenziare le interazioni dinamiche tra le diverse opzioni di stoccaggio nella zona di studio e valutare i "trade-offs" tra di esse. I risultati iniziali dimostrati in questo lavoro sono: - Se lo sfruttamento degli acquiferi fosse ristretto ai livelli delle loro ricarica, la domanda d'acqua dei diversi utilizzatori non sarebbe soddisfatta al 25% dei livelli di consumo attuale. - La tendenza di incremento dell'agricoltura di irrigazione crea un impatto più accentuato nelle risorse di sottosuolo di quello creato da un'ipotetica riduzione della piovosità all'85% - L'aumento del numero di laghi collinari riduce la quantità d'acqua che arriva a valle, allo stesso tempo aumenta la quantità d'acqua "persa" per evaporazione