Ostrom's Social-ecological Systems Research Articles

A meta‐analysis of SES framework case studies: Identifying dyad and triad archetypes

Abstract There is a need to synthesize the vast amount of empirical case study research on social‐ecological systems (SES) to advance theory. Innovative methods are needed to identify patterns of system interactions and outcomes at different levels of abstraction. Many identifiable patterns may only be relevant to small sets of cases, a sector or regional context, and some more broadly. Theory needs to match these levels while still retaining enough details to inform context‐specific governance. Archetype analysis offers concepts and methods for synthesizing and explaining patterns of interactions across cases. At the most basic level, there is a need to identify two and three independent variable groupings (i.e. dyads and triads) as a starting point for archetype identification (i.e. as theoretical building blocks). The causal explanations of dyads and triads are easier to understand than larger models, and once identified, can be used as building blocks to construct or explain larger theoretical models. We analyse the recurrence of independent variable interactions across 71 quantitative SES models generated from qualitative case study research applying Ostrom's SES framework and examine their relationships to specific outcomes (positive or negative, social or ecological). We use hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis and network analysis tools to identify the frequency and recurrence of dyads and triads across models of different sizes and outcome groups. We also measure the novelty of model composition as models get larger. We support our quantitative model findings with illustrative visual and narrative examples in four case study boxes covering deforestation in Indonesia, pollution in the Rhine River, fisheries management in Chile and renewable wind energy management in Belgium. Findings indicate which pairs of two (dyads) and three (triads) variables are most frequently linked to either positive or negative, social or ecological outcomes. We show which pairs account for most of the variation of interactions across all the models (i.e. the optimal suite). Both the most frequent and optimal suite sets are good starting points for assessing how dyads and triads can fulfil the role of explanatory archetype candidates. We further discuss challenges and opportunities for future SES modelling and synthesis research using archetype analysis. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Social and Ecological Impacts of Fire to Coastal Fisheries: A Study of the Kenai River Fishery (Alaska, USA)

AbstractIn a rapidly changing environment where fires are becoming more frequent and severe, scientists and managers need information and tools to enhance understanding of the numerous ways in which fire can affect fisheries. We used Ostrom's social–ecological systems framework to structure the development and refinement of fuzzy cognitive maps with stakeholders across the Kenai River fishery in Alaska, USA. The process yielded a model characterizing the structure and function of the Kenai River fishery. The model was then used to guide interviews with stakeholders focused on the effects of the 2019 Swan Lake Fire. We identified seven direct pathways through which fire can affect the social and ecological components of a coastal fishery. We also used the model to guide a targeted literature review to further explore how fire can affect the components of the Kenai River fishery. This synthesis of information allowed us to develop a more complete understanding of the impacts of fire on the fishery—an understanding informed by input from local stakeholders (via our interviews) and relevant scientific and management literature (via our literature review). Lastly, we used the model to assess the fishery's vulnerability to fire. We discuss how early run Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha constitute a highly vulnerable component of the system and have the greatest potential to impact the fishery as a whole through a chain of negative social and ecological interactions. This final step illustrates how the model can be used to assess the vulnerability of system components to specific threats. The model of the Kenai River fishery provides an empirically grounded and easily understood visual representation of the complex dynamics affecting coastal fisheries. As such, it can be used to structure discussions among managers and stakeholders, organize our understanding of how fire affects fisheries, and assess vulnerabilities to endogenous and exogenous stressors.

The social-ecological system of the Kenai River Fishery (Alaska, USA)

We present a collaboratively developed social-ecological model of the Kenai River Fishery. We developed the model through iterative interviews with stakeholders throughout the Kenai Peninsula using a novel participatory Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping process grounded in Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework. Individual social-ecological models, developed one-on-one with stakeholders, were combined into a single aggregated model representing the system's structure and function. We validated this aggregated model through subsequent interviews with stakeholders and focused literature reviews. The result is a model that can: 1) illustrate the breadth and interconnectedness of the Kenai River Fishery's social-ecological system; 2) be used to facilitate discussions around management of the fishery; and 3) be used to explore the components and interactions that move the system toward or away from sustainability. Using the model, we identify how the nature of salmon (migratory) and their habitat (large and unpredictable) leads to uncertainty about effective management strategies. This uncertainty, in addition to a large and diverse set of resource users, creates conflicting management goals that ultimately limit the governance system in making decisions that might increase the sustainability of the fishery.

A framework for conceptualizing and modeling social-ecological systems for conservation research

As conservation biology has matured, its scope has expanded from a primarily ecological focus to recognition that nearly all conservation problems involve people. At the same time, conservation actions have been increasingly informed by ever more sophisticated quantitative models. These models have focused primarily on ecological and geographic elements of conservation problems, such as mark-recapture methods, predicting species occurrences, and optimizing the placement of protected areas. There are many off-the-shelf ecological models for conservation managers to draw upon, but very few that describe human-nature interactions in a generalizable manner. We address this gap by proposing a minimalistic modeling framework for human-nature interactions, combining well-established ideas in economics and social sciences (grounded in Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework) and accepted ecological models. Our approach begins with a systems breakdown consisting of an ecosystem, resource users, public infrastructure, and infrastructure providers; and interactions between these system elements, which bring together the biophysical context, the relevant attributes of the human society, and the rules (institutions, such as protected areas) currently in use. We briefly review the different disciplinary building blocks that the framework could incorporate and then illustrate our approach with two examples: a detailed analysis of the social-ecological dynamics involved in managing South African protected areas and a more theoretical analysis of a general system. We conclude with further discussion of the urgent need in conservation biology for models that are genuinely designed to capture the complexities of human socioeconomic behavior, rather than the more typical approach of trying to adapt an ecological model or a stochastic process to simulate human agency and decision-making. Our framework offers a relatively simple but highly versatile way of specifying social-ecological models that will help conservation biologists better represent critical linkages between social and ecological processes when modeling social-ecological dynamics.

Can Common Pool Resource Theory Catalyze Stakeholder-Driven Solutions to the Freshwater Salinization Syndrome?

Freshwater salinity is rising across many regions of the United States as well as globally, a phenomenon called the freshwater salinization syndrome (FSS). The FSS mobilizes organic carbon, nutrients, heavy metals, and other contaminants sequestered in soils and freshwater sediments, alters the structures and functions of soils, streams, and riparian ecosystems, threatens drinking water supplies, and undermines progress toward many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There is an urgent need to leverage the current understanding of salinization’s causes and consequences—in partnership with engineers, social scientists, policymakers, and other stakeholders—into locally tailored approaches for balancing our nation’s salt budget. In this feature, we propose that the FSS can be understood as a common pool resource problem and explore Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework as an approach for identifying the conditions under which local actors may work collectively to manage the FSS in the absence of top-down regulatory controls. We adopt as a case study rising sodium concentrations in the Occoquan Reservoir, a critical water supply for up to one million residents in Northern Virginia (USA), to illustrate emerging impacts, underlying causes, possible solutions, and critical research needs.

Human–elephant conflict mitigation as a public good: what determines fence maintenance?

Negative interactions between humans and elephants are known to have serious consequences, resulting in loss of life and deterioration in the quality of life for both species. Reducing human–elephant conflicts (HEC) is essential for elephant conservation as well as social justice. Non-lethal electric fences placed around villages or communities are a widely used intervention to mitigate HEC. Such barriers act as non-excludable and non-subtractable resources—i.e., public goods—that must be maintained collectively by beneficiaries or the State. Despite being fairly effective when well maintained, most such fences in northeast India are poorly maintained. This leads to our central question: why are some fences well maintained and others poorly maintained? We studied 19 such fences using qualitative comparative analysis, Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework, and a grounded theory approach, incorporating qualitative social science tools. We found that, contrary to our hypothesis, the functionality of fences cannot be predicted based on the design of the fence, whether or not the community made cash payments, or ethnic homogeneity or leadership in the village. Instead, we found there are three potential pathways of maintenance: (1) a community maintainer, (2) the community self-organizes, and (3) the Forest Department. Maintenance occurs when there is a congruence between perceived costs and benefits for the entity responsible for fence maintenance. These costs and benefits are diverse, including not just material benefits but intangibles like goodwill, sense of safety, social standing, and a feeling of fairness. We highlight these factors and provide recommendations for practitioners and policy.

From religion to conservation: unfolding 300 years of collective action in a Greek sacred forest

Sacred Natural Sites are integrated-coupled systems with mutual social and natural interactions, and they exist within a variety of local cultures and regions of the world. In Europe and especially in the Mediterranean basin, changing land use patterns and population decline since World War II have had a dramatic impact on the socio-ecological structure and management practices of many of such sites. At the same time, old beliefs and taboos are often neglected due to modernization, rural depopulation, and change in community's structure, norms, and codes. Understanding how social, ecological, and policy processes changed through time becomes thus relevant to identify the main criteria for effective collective action and sustainability of the studied systems. In this paper, we applied Ostrom's social–ecological systems framework to model the main socio-ecological processes acting upon a sacred forest in Epirus (Greece) over a 300 years' period. The multidisciplinary approach included collection of archival and ecological data and ethnographic research (semi-structured interviews). Results indicate that significant changes have occurred in social, economic, political, and institutional terms since the creation of the settlement (17th century). However, the sacred grove has been of major importance to the adjacent local community that acts as its custodian guardian even nowadays. Collective action for the preservation of the forest has been achieved under various governance regimes that transformed through time traditional religious taboos into modern conservation approaches. This analysis revealed that local traditional management practices of commons can serve as successful socio-ecological conservation examples.

Governing trade-offs in ecosystem services and disservices to achieve human-wildlife coexistence.

Sustaining wildlife populations, which provide both ecosystem services and disservices, represents a worldwide conservation challenge. The ecosystem services and Ostrom's social-ecological systems frameworks have been adopted across natural and social sciences to characterize benefits from nature. Despite their generalizability, individually they do not include explicit tools for addressing the sustainable management of many wildlife populations. For instance, Ostrom's framework does not specifically address competing perspectives on wildlife, whereas the ecosystem services framework provides a limited representation of the social and governance context wherein such competing perspectives are embedded. We developed a unified social-ecological framework of ecosystem disservices and services (SEEDS) that advances both frameworks by explicitly acknowledging the importance of competing wildlife perspectives embedded in the social and governance contexts. The SEEDS framework emulates the hierarchical structure of Ostrom's social-ecological systems, but adds subsystems reflecting heterogeneous stakeholder views and experiences of wildlife-based services and disservices. To facilitate operationalizing SEEDS and further broader analyses across human-wildlife systems, we devised a list of variables to describe SEEDS subsystems, such as types and level of services and disservices, cost and benefit sharing, and social participation of stakeholders. Steps to implement SEEDS involve engaging local communities and stakeholders to define the subsystems, analyze interactions and outcomes, and identify leverage points and actions to remedy unwanted outcomes. These steps connect SEEDS with other existing approaches in social-ecological research and can guide analyses across systems or within individual systems to provide new insights and management options for sustainable human-wildlife coexistence.

Assessing the Sustainability of Tourism Systems: A Social–Ecological Approach

Tourism destinations operate as a complex system, consisting of multiple interacting components that are nonlinear, cross-scale, evolving, and interdependent. The purpose of this article is to deconstruct the complex tourism system so that the important components of the system can be identified and critically evaluated. The research was conducted in two popular tourism destination communities in Nepal—Ghandruk and Sauraha—using a systemic and holistic approach called a social–ecological system (SES) framework to analyze the structures, processes, and outcomes of tourism. Data collection involved 45 face-to-face, semistructured interviews and a review of published and unpublished archival documents. This article further expanded Ostrom's SES framework to systematically analyze the sustainability of complex and dynamic tourism systems that would be useful to evaluate destinations' sustainability performance. The findings show that tourism brought mixed, mostly positive and some negative, sociocultural, economic, and ecological outcomes in both communities. Overall, tourism development is progressing towards sustainability in these destinations, though present conditions do not meet the ideal state envisioned by the concept of sustainable tourism. The theoretical, methodological, and policy implications of the SES framework are discussed.

Strengthening post-hoc analysis of community-based fisheries management through the social-ecological systems framework

Community-based fisheries management (CBFM) is held up as one of the most promising approaches for securing sustainable small-scale fisheries. Yet, the complex features that shape CBFM outcomes remain inadequately understood. In part, this stems from the fact that few community-based projects meet the data requirements for formal impact evaluations. Given this context, diagnostic approaches are increasingly seen as a frontier for strengthening CBFM analysis and securing small-scale fisheries sustainability. This study explores the capacity of Elinor Ostrom's social-ecological systems (SES) framework to strengthen post-hoc diagnosis of CBFM. It draws on data from published and grey literature (including field notes, meeting minutes, and project reports) generated throughout an eight-year CBFM project in five Solomon Island villages. Results suggest that successful CBFM outcomes were facilitated by effective information sharing, harvesting rules that merge traditional and contemporary practices, strong leadership, and resource monitoring, while uneven power differentials undermined positive outcomes. The paper argues that the SES framework can add analytical rigour to post-hoc analysis when it used to: 1) engage with temporal dynamics that shape CBFM processes; 2) integrate insights from plural theories, and 3) explore interactions between multiple CBFM outcomes. Ultimately, the paper argues that diagnostic applications of the SES framework can contribute towards conducting more systematic analysis of diverse CBFM data, improving CBRM practices, and realizing more sustainable small-scale fisheries

Factors driving the implementation of fishery reforms

The challenges of common-pool resource harvesting have confronted the world's fisheries for centuries. Efforts to mitigate these challenges have led to an extensive literature on fishery performance under alternative management practices, but relatively little evidence exists on the factors that drive the adoption of these management approaches. In this study, a database describing 67 fishery cooperatives around the world is analyzed to help fill this gap. The analysis is focused on two widely implemented catch share management strategies, Territorial Use Rights Fisheries and Individual Quotas. Our empirical approach and interpretation of results are organized according to Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework. Among the evaluated factors, governance aspects appear to be most important to management adoption, specifically the presence of legal conditions on cooperative existence, and the strength of law and stability of governing institutions. It is postulated that the same factors that favor adoption of specific catch share management strategies would also generally play a positive role in their performance. If this is true, our results highlight the importance of considering both sets of factors when trying to spread the implementation of management tools, and show that enabling conditions associated to existing governance structures deserve great emphasis by those who seek to adopt management strategies like catch shares.

Evaluating an instrument for institutional crafting: How Ostrom's social–ecological systems framework is applied

Institutional crafting requires purposeful communication between features of social and ecological systems. This paper evaluates the application of a specific research tool – Ostrom's social–ecological systems framework (SESF), which seeks to provide a basis for institutional crafting in the context of social–ecological systems (SES). We evaluate the application of the framework to empirical analysis against the background of some of its own ambitions and a set of conventional criteria for evaluating research. We found 20 publications that have applied the SESF. The SESF proved useful in articles that use it for explanation, though they often played down the question of how they selected explanatory variables. Across cases, application of the SESF fared poorly in terms of consistency of use and measurement of categories. Moreover, generalization on an analytical level is similarly compromised by lack of confidence among authors concerning how to apply the set-theoretic principles that underlie the nested structure of the framework. In sum, much work remains in order to realize the ambitions for research that the SESF has laid out and to fully use its associated, path-breaking, interdisciplinary, and policy-relevant innovations. Notwithstanding these critical remarks, recent work in this area seems highly promising, not least for policy practice and institutional crafting.

Understanding protected area resilience: a multi‐scale, social‐ecological approach

Protected areas (PAs) remain central to the conservation of biodiversity. Classical PAs were conceived as areas that would be set aside to maintain a natural state with minimal human influence. However, global environmental change and growing cross-scale anthropogenic influences mean that PAs can no longer be thought of as ecological islands that function independently of the broader social-ecological system in which they are located. For PAs to be resilient (and to contribute to broader social-ecological resilience), they must be able to adapt to changing social and ecological conditions over time in a way that supports the long-term persistence of populations, communities, and ecosystems of conservation concern. We extend Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework to consider the long-term persistence of PAs, as a form of land use embedded in social-ecological systems, with important cross-scale feedbacks. Most notably, we highlight the cross-scale influences and feedbacks on PAs that exist from the local to the global scale, contextualizing PAs within multi-scale social-ecological functional landscapes. Such functional landscapes are integral to understand and manage individual PAs for long-term sustainability. We illustrate our conceptual contribution with three case studies that highlight cross-scale feedbacks and social-ecological interactions in the functioning of PAs and in relation to regional resilience. Our analysis suggests that while ecological, economic, and social processes are often directly relevant to PAs at finer scales, at broader scales, the dominant processes that shape and alter PA resilience are primarily social and economic.

Embracing thresholds for better environmental management

Three decades of study have revealed dozens of examples in which natural systems have crossed biophysical thresholds (‘tipping points’)—nonlinear changes in ecosystem structure and function—as a result of human-induced stressors, dramatically altering ecosystem function and services. Environmental management that avoids such thresholds could prevent severe social, economic and environmental impacts. Here, we review management measures implemented in ecological systems that have thresholds. Using Ostrom's social–ecological systems framework, we analysed key biophysical and institutional factors associated with 51 social–ecological systems and associated management regimes, and related these to management success defined by ecological outcomes. We categorized cases as instances of prospective or retrospective management, based upon whether management aimed to avoid a threshold or to restore systems that have crossed a threshold. We find that smaller systems are more amenable to threshold-based management, that routine monitoring is associated with successful avoidance of thresholds and recovery after thresholds have been crossed, and that success is associated with the explicit threshold-based management. These findings are powerful evidence for the policy relevance of information on ecological thresholds across a wide range of ecosystems.

生态系统服务付费的诊断框架及案例剖析

PDF HTML阅读 XML下载 导出引用 引用提醒 生态系统服务付费的诊断框架及案例剖析 DOI: 10.5846/stxb201304040602 作者: 作者单位: 北京大学 城市与环境学院,北京大学 城市与环境学院,北京大学 城市与环境学院 作者简介: 通讯作者: 中图分类号: 基金项目: 国家自然科学基金（41130534） A diagnostic framework of payments for ecosystem services and associated case studies Author: Affiliation: College of Urban and Environment Sciences,College of Urban and Environment Sciences,College of Urban and Environment Sciences Fund Project: 摘要 | 图/表 | 访问统计 | 参考文献 | 相似文献 | 引证文献 | 资源附件 | 文章评论 摘要:生态系统服务付费目前已成为生态系统服务研究的热点之一。参考Ostrom的社会-生态系统诊断框架，提取并总结影响生态系统服务付费执行效率的变量，建立了适合区域特点的项目绩效评估体系，并以哥斯达黎加（PSA）项目和中国退耕还林工程为例，探讨了该评估体系在生态系统服务付费效率诊断中的适用性。研究表明，依据该评估体系，未来中国在实施生态系统服务付费项目时应注意以下问题：建立生态系统服务付费的市场机制、实施多样化的付费方式；付费标准应考虑区域特征和供给方特征；建立生态系统服务付费项目的第三方监督和绩效评估机制；加强对生态系统服务的监测。 Abstract:The concept of payments for ecosystem services (PES) can be seen as a market-based model that provides ecological protection based on Coasean economics. Focusing on market mechanisms, PES uses certain funding constraints related to the management of ecosystem services in a way that is designed to maximize environmental benefits received from ecosystem management. The factors affecting PES include the potential ecological service providers, the relationship between land use and ecosystem services, the persistence of a PES project, perverse incentive policies, and the spatial positioning of ecological compensation objects. On the other hand, the implementation of PES involves several steps: (1) Determining types of land use change and analyzing the corresponding changes in ecosystem services supply; (2) Selecting a "reference point" as a standard to be used to measure the performance of PES implementation, namely determining incremental changes in land-use types; and (3) determining the amount and type of payment. At the end of 2002, 287 projects had been planned or implemented using payments for ecosystem services globally, which were mainly related to such ecosystem services as the aesthetic values of landscapes, forest carbon sequestration, watershed protection and biodiversity conservation, etc. All of these provide practical examples in theory and methodology of ecosystem services' payment. However, questions remain as to how one can ensure that these programs using PES actually improve the environmental quality while simultaneously providing benefits to local residents; that is to say, how can the established objectives be achieved? These problems have drawn the attention of researchers and practitioners alike. Because the methods used in ecosystem service research are very fragmented, this paper proposes a new diagnostic framework that imitates Ostrom's social-ecological systems. Based on the new diagnostic framework, the factors influencing PES are reorganized into a new system that allows for a more accurate analysis of the effectiveness of PES. The goals are to use an objective method to evaluate PES use, to extract and summarize the variables that affect the efficiency of implementing PES, and to establish a performance assessment system that can be adaptable to any region's characteristics. The assessment system consists of four core variables, i.e. Ecosystem Services, Providers, Buyers and Governance Systems; each core variable consists of a number of secondary variables. Relevance feedback is also conducted between each subsystem. This paper summarizes the variables that affect the efficiency of implementing a payment system for ecosystem services; this process is more intuitive and unambiguous than other research methods, and will be beneficial to policy makers tasked with making management decisions, policy-making and evaluating the efficiency of ecological engineering. The Pago por Servicios Ambientales program in Costa Rica, a successful case of payment for ecosystem services in Central America, is discussed as an example to discuss the framework' applicability to the efficiency assessment of PES programs. After diagnosing and analyzing the Sloping Land Conversion Program in China, some existing problems are pointed out that affect the efficiency of ecological engineering. Then the establishment of market mechanisms is discussed that can be used to establish payments for ecosystem services, together with the management of regional differences in payment. In addition, it is also proposed for the establishment of third party monitoring for ecosystem services payment projects and the use of associated performance evaluation mechanisms, which are all designed to strengthen the monitoring of ecosystem services payment programs.Physical geography, social economics and cultural background create significant differences in how a program of payment for ecosystem services should be established. Appropriate trade-offs need to be considered if a system is created to be adapted to local conditions. These considerations must be properly applied to the assessment system when evaluating the performance of a PES program. When all the variables that affect the efficient execution of a PES program are considered for the first time, some deficiencies are sure to remain; a need will still exist to constantly enrich and perfect the practice. 参考文献 相似文献 引证文献

The social–ecological system framework as a knowledge classificatory system for benthic small-scale fisheries

Ostrom proposed the underpinnings of a framework for the systematic study of the governance of complex social–ecological systems. Here we hypothesize that Ostrom's social–ecological system framework can be useful to build a classification system for small-scale benthic fisheries, regarding their governance processes and outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to knowledge accumulation of benthic fisheries. To tailor the framework, we relied on discussions among experts and a systematic literature review of benthic fisheries from 1980 to 2010. This literature review helped us refine variable definitions and provide readers with illustrative reference papers. We then illustrate the approach and its potential contributions through two studies of the emergence of self-organization in Mexico and Chile. We highlight synthetic lessons from the cases and the overall approach as well as reflect on remaining challenges to the development of a social–ecological system framework as a diagnostic tool for knowledge accumulation and synthesis.