http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/rss/ The twenty most current aticles published. en Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:14:17 EDT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RA Publishing Systems 2.0.0 managing_editor@ecologyandsociety.org pmorrill@ecologyandsociety.org http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art26/ Interactions between distant places are increasingly widespread and influential, often leading to unexpected outcomes with profound implications for sustainability. Numerous sustainability studies have been conducted within a particular place with little attention to the impacts of distant interactions on sustainability in multiple places. Although distant forces have been studied, they are usually treated as exogenous variables and feedbacks have rarely been considered. To understand and integrate various distant interactions better, we propose an integrated framework based on telecoupling, an umbrella concept that refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. The concept of telecoupling is a logical extension of research on coupled human and natural systems, in which interactions occur within particular geographic locations. The telecoupling framework contains five major interrelated components, i.e., coupled human and natural systems, flows, agents, causes, and effects. We illustrate the framework using two examples of distant interactions associated with trade of agricultural commodities and invasive species, highlight the implications of the framework, and discuss research needs and approaches to move research on telecouplings forward. The framework can help to analyze system components and their interrelationships, identify research gaps, detect hidden costs and untapped benefits, provide a useful means to incorporate feedbacks as well as trade-offs and synergies across multiple systems (sending, receiving, and spillover systems), and improve the understanding of distant interactions and the effectiveness of policies for socioeconomic and environmental sustainability from local to global levels. Synthesis Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:27:19 EDTLiu, J., Hull, V., Batistella, M., DeFries, R., Dietz, T., Fu, F., Hertel, T. W., Izaurralde, R., Lambin, E. F., Li, S., Martinelli, L. A., McConnell, W. J., Moran, E. F., Naylor, R., Ouyang, Z., Polenske, K. R., Reenberg, A., De Miranda Rocha, G., Simmons, C. S., Verburg, P. H., Vitousek, P. M., Zhang, F., Zhu, C. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art25/ We explore the links between Cyprus?s colonial past, divided present, and current water scarcity. With reference to the concept of fit, we tackle the question of whether we can observe fit in settings where institutions for collective action work differently than we would expect. We perform a secondary analysis of interview materials on Cyprus's water conflicts, extracting arguments for and against different solutions to water scarcity. Two perspectives on fit emerge: ?island fit?, which supports island-wide institutions; and ?patronage fit?, which embodies institutions that link Cypriots to their respective patrons Turkey and Greece. The analysis reveals a preference for island-wide institutional arrangements. However, rather than resting on biophysical considerations, such preference is linked to the feeling of unity of the two communities inhabiting Cyprus. We therefore observe institutions that face a trade-off between fitting to social groupings and fitting to biophysical circumstances. Research Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:37:02 EDTZikos, D., Roggero, M. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art24/ Efforts to implement collaborative adaptive management (CAM) often suffer from challenges, such as an unwillingness of managers to share power, unresolved conflicts between stakeholders, and lack of capacity among stakeholders. Some aspects considered essential to CAM, e.g., trust and stakeholder capacity, may be more usefully viewed as goals for intermediate strategies rather than a set of initial conditions. From this perspective, intermediate steps that focus on social learning and building experience could overcome commonly cited barriers to CAM. An exploration of Springs Basin Working Groups, organized around major clusters of freshwater springs in north Florida, provides a case study of how these intermediate steps enable participants to become more reasonable and engaged. This strategy may be easily implemented by agencies beginning a CAM process. Research Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:20:00 EDTMonroe, M. C., Plate, R., Oxarart, A. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art23/ When the availability of a vital resource varies between times of overabundance and extreme scarcity, management regimes must manifest flexibility and authority to adapt while maintaining legitimacy. Unfortunately, the need for adaptability often conflicts with the desire for certainty in legal and regulatory regimes, and laws that fail to account for variability often result in conflict when the inevitable disturbance occurs. Additional keys to resilience are collaboration among physical scientists, political actors, local leaders, and other stakeholders, and, when the commons is shared among sovereign states, collaboration between and among institutions with authority to act at different scales or with respect to different aspects of an ecological system. At the scale of transboundary river basins, where treaties govern water utilization, particular treaty mechanisms can reduce conflict potential by fostering collaboration and accounting for change. One necessary element is a mechanism for coordination and collaboration at the scale of the basin. This could be satisfied by mechanisms ranging from informal networks to the establishment of an international commission to jointly manage water, but a mechanism for collaboration at the basin scale alone does not ensure sound water management. To better guide resource management, study of applied resilience theory has revealed a number of management practices that are integral for adaptive governance. Here, we describe key resilience principles for treaty design and adaptive governance and then apply the principles to a case study of one transboundary basin where the need and willingness to manage collaboratively and iteratively is high?the Okavango River Basin of southwest Africa. This descriptive and applied approach should be particularly instructive for treaty negotiators, transboundary resource managers, and should aid program developers. Research Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:19:20 EDTGreen, O. O., Cosens, B. A., Garmestani, A. S. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art22/ Increasingly, coordination mechanisms are being created at the United Nations (UN) level to enhance system-wide synergies; however, there is relatively little scientific research on these bodies. Against this background, we compare the mandates, structures, and outputs of three UN coordination mechanisms, the UN Environment Management Group, UN-Energy, and UN-Water, to understand what features enhance their ability to coordinate. We conclude that there are three key design elements that possibly enhance the ability of such mechanisms to coordinate. However, although coordination mechanisms are the easiest to set up, because they create the least political upheaval and are relatively cheap, these very characteristics hinder their ability to actually steer the bodies in their sector in such a way that synergy is optimized, duplications and contradictions are reduced, and a common strategy is adopted. Such coordination bodies can contribute to agenda setting, knowledge sharing, providing a discussion forum, and bringing together stakeholders and experts. Research Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:09:53 EDTSchubert, S., Gupta, J. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art21/ Many papers in the recent literature on participatory approaches emphasize the need to take better account of the complexity of the social contexts in which they are conducted. Without attention to power asymmetries, there is a risk that the most powerful stakeholders will have greater influence on the outcomes of the participatory process than marginalized stakeholders. However, very few authors address the question of how to deal with such power asymmetries. This question puts designers of participatory processes in a dilemma. On the one hand, if they claim a neutral posture, they are accused of being naively manipulated by the most powerful stakeholders and of increasing initial power asymmetries; but, on the other hand, if they adopt a nonneutral posture and decide to empower some particular stakeholders, their legitimacy to do so is questioned. We test a particular posture to overcome this dilemma: that is, a ?critical companion? posture, which strategically deals with power asymmetries to avoid increasing initial power asymmetries, and which suggests that designers should make explicit their assumptions and objectives regarding the social context so that local stakeholders can choose to accept them as legitimate or to reject them. Legitimacy is seen as the product of a coconstruction process between the designers and the participants. This posture was tested in the context of a participatory process conducted in northern Thailand to address a conflict between the creation of a national park and two local communities. While we show that this posture makes it possible for designers to be both strategic and legitimate at the same time, it also raises new questions and new dilemmas. Can we, and should we, really make all our assumptions explicit? How can we deal with stakeholders who refuse to engage in any form of dialog? We conclude that there is no ?right? posture to adopt, but that designers need to be more reflexive about their own postures. Research Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:54:12 EDTBarnaud, C., Van Paassen, A. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art20/ Forest degradation is broadly defined as a reduction in the capacity of a forest to produce ecosystem services such as carbon storage and wood products as a result of anthropogenic and environmental changes. The main causes of degradation include unsustainable logging, agriculture, invasive species, fire, fuelwood gathering, and livestock grazing. Forest degradation is widespread and has become an important consideration in global policy processes that deal with biodiversity, climate change, and forest management. There is, however, no generally recognized way to identify a degraded forest because perceptions of forest degradation vary depending on the cause, the particular goods or services of interest, and the temporal and spatial scales considered. Here, we suggest that there are types of forest degradation that produce a continuum of decline in provision of ecosystem services, from those in primary forests through various forms of managed forests to deforestation. Forest degradation must be measured against a desired baseline condition, and the types of degradation can be represented using five criteria that relate to the drivers of degradation, loss of ecosystem services and sustainable management, including: productivity, biodiversity, unusual disturbances, protective functions, and carbon storage. These criteria are not meant to be equivalent and some might be considered more important than others, depending on the local forest management objectives. We propose a minimum subset of seven indicators for the five criteria that should be assessed to determine forest degradation under a sustainable ecosystem management regime. The indicators can be remotely sensed (although improving calibration requires ground work) and aggregated from stand to management unit or landscape levels and ultimately to sub-national and national scales. Synthesis Thu, 30 May 2013 10:06:56 EDTThompson, I. D., Guariguata, M. R., Okabe, K., Bahamondez, C., Nasi, R., Heymell, V., Sabogal, C. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art19/ We analyze the potential for socioeconomically sustainable peatland use by investigating conflicting interests, revealing trade-offs that people are willing to accept, and studying whether opinions are dependent on socioeconomic and demographic factors. Opinions toward five forms of peatland use and seven peatland ecosystem services were surveyed in Northern Ostrobothnia in northern Finland in 2011. Choice experiment (CE) was used to reveal trade-offs in land use preferences, and groups of respondents were identified using the latent class model (LCM). We identified three classes of respondents in which environmentalists showed a high preference toward the cessation of peat production and increase of peatland restoration, the production-oriented class preferred an increase in timber and peat production areas, and the current use supporters agreed on the present land use policy. However, all respondent classes agreed on the increase of nature protection and the present level of timber production and disagreed on the cessation of restoration. The CE revealed that environmentally minded people who are likely to consider the indirect use values and existence values important are less willing to make trade-offs between ecosystem services than those who emphasize direct use values. Because peatland restoration occurs in commercially unproductive peatlands, it improves both the direct use and existence values without reducing provisioning services of peatlands. Therefore, restoration is commonly accepted by the public, in contrast to management options that involve clear trade-offs between ecosystem services. We conclude that the understanding of preferences and trade-offs can enhance sustainable land use planning. It may be unrealistic, however, to expect a solution that all interest groups would completely accept. Research Wed, 29 May 2013 10:33:44 EDTTolvanen, A., Juutinen, A., Svento, R. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art18/ Education is often considered a means for enhancing adaptive capacity, based on the consideration that formal education is likely to improve the ability of individuals to evaluate risks and respond to warning information. We explore the relation between the level and nature of education and enhanced ability to respond to tropical cyclone risk. We make a distinction between formal school-based education and nonformal education in the form of traditional knowledge of environmental precursors and conditions that may be associated with tropical cyclone occurrence. We evaluate two possible routes through which education could lead to enhanced ability to respond to tropical cyclone risk; first, education, both formal and nonformal, may lead to a better ability to access, understand, and interpret warning information and hence lead to an appropriate response to the warning; and second, formal education may be associated with greater income levels and socioeconomic status and thus with greater resources for evacuating in response to cyclone warning. We find that the hypotheses regarding the link between formal education and adaptive capacity are actually not well supported by empirical data. On the other hand nonformal education in the form of traditional knowledge for predicting cyclones based on environmental precursors emerged as a significant determinant of the ability to understand and interpret warning information and provides a strong case for preserving and promoting a hazard-specific traditional knowledge base along with formal education. Research Tue, 21 May 2013 08:50:04 EDTSharma, U., Patwardhan, A., Patt, A. G. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art17/ Using a simple stages model of the policy process, we explore the politics of ecological restoration using an array of examples drawn across sector, different size and scale, and from different countries. A policy analysis perspective reveals how, at both the program and project levels, ecological restoration operates within a complex and dynamic interplay between technical decision making, ideologies, and interest politics. Viewed through the stages model, restoration policy involves negotiating nature across stages in the policy making process, including agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. The stages model is a useful heuristic devise; however, this linear model assumes that policy makers approach the issue rationally. In practice, ecological restoration policy takes place in the context of different distributions of power between the various public and private actors involved at the different stages of restoration policy making. This allows us to reiterate the point that ecological restoration is best seen not only as a technical task but as a social and political project. Insight Thu, 16 May 2013 06:28:10 EDTBaker, S., Eckerberg, K. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art16/ The extent to which education provides protection in the face of a large-scale natural disaster is investigated. Using longitudinal population-representative survey data collected in two provinces on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, before and after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we examine changes in a broad array of indicators of well-being of adults. Focusing on adults who were living, before the tsunami, in areas that were subsequently severely damaged by the tsunami, better educated males were more likely to survive the tsunami, but education is not predictive of survival among females. Education is not associated with levels of post-traumatic stress among survivors 1 year after the tsunami, or with the likelihood of being displaced. Where education does appear to play a role is with respect to coping with the disaster over the longer term. The better educated were far less likely than others to live in a camp or other temporary housing, moving, instead, to private homes, staying with family or friends, or renting a new home. The better educated were more able to minimize dips in spending levels following the tsunami, relative to the cuts made by those with little education. Five years after the tsunami, the better educated were in better psycho-social health than those with less education. In sum, education is associated with higher levels of resilience over the longer term. Research Thu, 16 May 2013 06:23:56 EDTFrankenberg, E., Sikoki, B., Sumantri, C., Suriastini, W., Thomas, D. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art15/ Pastoralists? knowledge of adaptive rangeland management in Iran has long been only selectively analyzed and documented. This study attempts to rectify that by outlining the indigenous ecological knowledge of the pastoralists of Nariyan village in the Taleghan region of northern Iran, and by evaluating the influence of such knowledge on rangeland management. Local herd owners operate according to traditional herding practices; their knowledge of rangeland plants and principles of sustainable rangeland management is indigenous and is based on centuries of experience and observation. Their in-depth knowledge covers the medicinal properties of various local plant species and the palatability of the most salient forage species in terms of sustaining the sheep and goats that are their livelihood. This study investigates some of the traditional strategies of rangeland management used in the Taleghan region, the rationale and timing of livestock rotation in the rangelands, local landscape classification, and local know-how in animal husbandry, all of which are indispensable in contributing to the pastoralists? survival and maintenance of the local environment. Research Wed, 15 May 2013 19:09:07 EDTGhorbani, M., Azarnivand, H., Mehrabi, A., Jafari, M., Nayebi, H., Seeland, K. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art14/ Increasing attention to formal recognition of indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs) as part of national and/or global protected area systems is generating novel encounters between the customary institutions through which indigenous peoples and local communities manage these traditional estates and the bureaucratic institutions of protected area management planning. Although management plans are widely considered to be important to effective management of protected areas, little guidance has been available about how their form and content can effectively reflect the distinctive socio-cultural and political characteristics of ICCAs. This gap has been particularly apparent in Australia where a trend to rapidly increased formal engagement of indigenous people in environmental management resulted, by 2012, in 50 indigenous groups voluntarily declaring their intent to manage all or part of their estates for conservation in perpetuity, as an indigenous protected area (IPA). Development and adoption of a management plan is central to the process through which the Australian Government recognizes these voluntary declarations and invests resources in IPA management. We identified four types of innovations, apparent in some recent IPA plans, which reflect the distinctive socio-cultural and political characteristics of ICCAs and support indigenous people as the primary decision makers and drivers of knowledge integration in IPAs. These are (1) a focus on customary institutions in governance; (2) strategic planning approaches that respond to interlinkages of stewardship between people, place, plants, and animals; (3) planning frameworks that bridge scales by considering values and issues across the whole of an indigenous people’s territory; and (4) varied communication modes appropriate to varied audiences, including an emphasis on visual and spatial modes. Further research is warranted into how governance and management of IPAs, and the plans that support these processes, can best engender adaptive management and diverse strong partnerships while managing the risk of partners eroding local control. Research Wed, 15 May 2013 12:17:12 EDTDavies, J., Hill, R., Walsh, F. J., Sandford, M., Smyth, D., Holmes, M. C. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art13/ Applied research in complex integrated settings should be recognized as an endeavor that requires transdisciplinary and multisectoral stakeholder interactions. The problems faced in society are quite complex, requiring participation and knowledge from diverse aspects of society, including different disciplines (academia), communities, civil society, and government. Successful applied research relies on nurturing these key stakeholder relationships and interactions. This paper explores the key challenges of stakeholder interaction in applied research in three disciplines in the South African context, based on literature and the experience of authors in their disciplines. The three disciplines include information and communication technology for development, town and regional planning, and natural resource management. We attempt to also compare and contrast these challenges across the disciplines, to identify any commonalities and differences. After considering the mutual challenges and adaptive solutions to address these challenges in the different disciplines, we identify that all three areas in relation to stakeholder interaction appear to exhibit characteristics of complex systems, hence motivating to view applied research as a complex system. In this sense, complexity theory may provide a common language between the different disciplines examining transdisciplinary stakeholder interaction in applied research from a shared perspective. Research Mon, 13 May 2013 19:06:18 EDTPade-Khene, C., Luton, R., Jordaan, T., Hildbrand, S., Gerwel Proches, C., Sitshaluza, A., Dominy, J., Ntshinga, W., Moloto, N. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art12/ The term "commons" refers to collectively exploited resources and their systems of usage; a synonymous term is common pool resources. Fisheries are typical common pool resources and also one of the most conspicuous examples of unsustainable use of natural resources. We examine one of the few globally important fisheries that is held to be sustainable, the Peruvian anchovy fishery, and considers the extent to which the institutional characteristics of the fishery conform to design principles that are considered prerequisites for long-term, successful, community-based common pool resources. Results showed that greater conformity to the principles was found in the sustainable phase of the fishery, compared to its unsustainable phase. For this case study, the conditions that supported the transition towards sustainability were: clearly defined resource boundaries, monitoring of rule enforcement, and conflict resolution mechanisms among users and management authorities. On the other hand, clearly defined user boundaries, collective choice arrangements, and nested enterprises were not required to achieve sustainability. The study concludes that the design principles are a valuable tool for analysis and understanding of large-scale common pool resource systems. At the same time it suggests that the application of the principles to a wider range of systems can generate new insights into what is required for successful management of common pool resources. Research Mon, 13 May 2013 13:31:30 EDTArias Schreiber, M., Halliday, A. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art11/ Research Mon, 13 May 2013 12:14:45 EDTArmitage, D. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art10/ Considering the challenges and threats currently facing water management and the exacerbation of uncertainty by climate change, the need for flexible yet robust and legitimate environmental regulation is evident. The European Union took a novel approach toward sustainable water resource management with the passage of the EU Water Framework Directive in 2000. The Directive promotes sustainable water use through long-term protection of available water resources, progressively reduces discharges of hazardous substances in ground and surface waters, and mitigates the effects of floods and droughts. The lofty goal of achieving good status of all waters requires strong adaptive capacity, given the large amounts of uncertainty in water management. Striking the right balance between flexibility in local implementation and robust and enforceable standards is essential to promoting adaptive capacity in water governance, yet achieving these goals simultaneously poses unique difficulty. Applied resilience science reveals a conceptual framework for analyzing the adaptive capacity of governance structures that includes multiple overlapping levels of control or coordination, information flow horizontally and vertically, meaningful public participation, local capacity building, authority to respond to changed circumstances, and robust monitoring, system feedback, and enforcement. Analyzing the Directive through the lens of resilience science, we highlight key elements of modern European water management and their contribution to the resilience of the system and conclude that the potential lack of enforcement and adequate feedback of monitoring results does not promote managing for resilience. However, the scale-appropriate governance aspects of the EU approach promotes adaptive capacity by enabling vertical and horizontal information flow, building local capacity, and delegating control at multiple relevant scales. Research Fri, 10 May 2013 12:42:14 EDTGreen, O. O., Garmestani, A. S., Van Rijswick, H. F. M. W., Keessen, A. M. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art9/ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+) is a performance-based payment mechanism currently being debated in international and national environmental policy and planning forums. As the mechanism is based on conditionality, payments must reflect land stewards? level of compliance with carbon-efficient management practices. However, lack of clarity in land governance and carbon rights could undermine REDD+ implementation. Strategies are needed to avoid perverse incentives resulting from the commoditization of forest carbon stocks and, importantly, to identify and secure the rights of legitimate recipients of future REDD+ payments. We propose a landscape-level approach to address potential conflicts related to carbon tenure and REDD+ benefit sharing. We explore various land-tenure scenarios and their implications for carbon ownership in the context of a research site in northern Laos. Our case study shows that a combination of relevant scientific tools, knowledge, and participatory approaches can help avoid the marginalization of rural communities during the REDD+ process. The findings demonstrate that participatory land-use planning is an important step in ensuring that local communities are engaged in negotiating REDD+ schemes and that such negotiations are transparent. Local participation and agreements on land-use plans could provide a sound basis for developing efficient measurement, reporting, and verification systems for REDD+. Research Mon, 06 May 2013 12:12:17 EDTBourgoin, J., Castella, J., Hett, C., Lestrelin, G., Heinimann, A. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art8/ Globalization, the process by which local social-ecological systems (SESs) are becoming linked in a global network, presents policy scientists and practitioners with unique and difficult challenges. Although local SESs can be extremely complex, when they become more tightly linked in the global system, complexity increases very rapidly as multi-scale and multi-level processes become more important. Here, we argue that addressing these multi-scale and multi-level challenges requires a collection of theories and models. We suggest that the conceptual domains of sustainability, resilience, and robustness provide a sufficiently rich collection of theories and models, but overlapping definitions and confusion about how these conceptual domains articulate with one another reduces their utility. We attempt to eliminate this confusion and illustrate how sustainability, resilience, and robustness can be used in tandem to address the multi-scale and multi-level challenges associated with global change. Research Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:15:30 EDTAnderies, J. M., Folke, C., Walker, B., Ostrom, E. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss2/art7/ The Bear River is driven by a highly variable, snow-driven montane ecosystem and flows through a drought-prone arid region of the western United States. It traverses three states, is diverted to store water in an ecologically unique natural lake, Bear Lake, and empties into the Great Salt Lake at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge (BRMBR). People in the Bear River Basin have come to anticipate droughts, building a legal, institutional, and engineered infrastructure to adapt to the watershed?s hydrologic realities and historical legacies. Their ways of understanding linked vulnerabilities has led to what might appear as paradoxical outcomes: farmers with the most legally secure water rights are the most vulnerable to severe drought; managers at the federal Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge engage in wetland farming and make unlikely political alliances; and, increased agricultural irrigation efficiency in the Bear River Basin actually threatens the water supply of some wetlands. The rationality of locality is the key to understanding how people in the Bear River Basin have increased their adaptive capacity to droughts by recognizing their interdependencies. As the effects of climate change unfold, understanding social-ecological system linkages will be important for guiding future adaptations and enhancing resilience in ways that appropriately integrate localized ecosystem capacity and human needs. Insight Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:41:47 EDTWelsh, L. W., Endter-Wada, J., Downard, R., Kettenring, K. M.