Exploring and expanding transdisciplinary research for sustainable and just natural resource management
- Authors: Finca, Andiswa , Wolff, Margaret G , Cockburn, Jessica J , de Wet, Christopher J , Bezerra, Joana C , Weaver, Matthew J T , de Vos, Alta , Ralekhetla, Mateboho M , Libala, Notiswa , Mkabile, Qawekazi B , Odume, Oghenekaro N , Palmer, Carolyn G
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/416307 , vital:71337 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11077-240414"
- Description: Transdisciplinarity is gaining acceptance in sustainability science research as an approach to work across disparate types of knowledge and practices in order to tackle complex social-ecological problems. On paper, transdisciplinarity appears to be substantially helpful, but in practice, participants may remain voiceless and disadvantaged. In this paper, we retrospectively investigate four case studies using recent design principles for transdisciplinary research, to explore a deeper understanding of the practical successes and failures of transdisciplinary research engagement. We show that the transdisciplinary way of working is time consuming, challenging, and insists that researchers and participants contribute reflexively. Careful attention to research design and methodology is central. The acceptance that complexity renders knowledge provisional, and complete honesty about the purpose of the research are critical to building relationships between researchers and participants. Gaining an understanding of the values people hold influences the research process and the possible outcomes toward sustainable and just natural resource management. We suggest that in order to enable sustainable and just natural resource management, transdisciplinary research should include values and ethics in the design, implementation, and reporting of projects.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Methods for understanding social-ecological systems: a review of place-based studies
- Authors: de Vos, Alta , Biggs, Reinette , Preiser, Rika
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/415909 , vital:71299 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11236-240416"
- Description: In recent years, social-ecological systems (SES) have emerged as a prominent analytical framing with which to investigate pressing sustainability issues associated with the Anthropocene era. Despite the growth of SES research, the lack of a delineated set of methods commonly contributes to disorientation for those entering into a field where methodological pluralism is the norm. We conduct a review of SES research, focusing particularly on methods used in this field. Our results reflect the rapid growth in SES research relative to other publications in relevant subject areas, and suggest a maturation of the field. Whilst institutions investigating SES have been mostly based in the global north, focal SES has been more globally distributed, although key regions, especially island regions, remain poorly studied. Key problems addressed in the studies related to policy, trade, conservation, adaptation, land use change, water, forests, sustainability, urban problems, and governance and institutions. We identified 311 methods, which we grouped into 27 method categories that can serve as a guide to SES research methods for newcomers to the field. We also performed an exploratory assessment of the ability of these methods to account for key features of SES as complex adaptive systems. We found that methods do better at accounting for the relational and context-dependent nature of SES, and least well with complex causality. Our study highlights the plurality of methods used in SES research, and helps highlight key areas in need of further methodological development.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Nontimber forest products as ecological and biocultural keystone species
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M , Ticktin, Tamara , Cunningham, Anthony B
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/180388 , vital:43359 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10469-230422"
- Description: Nontimber forests products (NTFPs) are the mainstay of rural livelihoods and local economies the world over. As such they are of interest to a wide disciplinary range of researchers and development and government agencies seeking to promote livelihoods, incomes, and ecologically sustainable practices. With the attention on the various human uses of NTFPs, their role and networks in the broader biological communities in which they are located are frequently overlooked. Harvesting of many NTFPs has effects not only at the organism and population scales, but also on co-occurring species, some of which may also be NTFPs. Thus, reduction or loss of one NTFP population or species in a specific area may have cascade effects on other NTFP species, including those used for cultural purposes. We illustrate the little appreciated importance of NTFPs in broader ecological and social systems by assessing and illustrating the importance of NTFP species as ecological or biocultural keystones in providing regulating and supporting ecological services to other species and cultural services to people. We present a number of examples where NTFP species act as keystones in ecological and cultural systems, including food, pollination and dispersal, animal health, nutrients, shelter and protection, and cultural symbolism, most of which have not been considered by NTFP researchers and practitioners. From these examples we distill six propositions regarding NTFPs and discuss the value of recognizing some NTFPs as biocultural keystones to acknowledge and highlight their roles at broader scales.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems
- Authors: Preiser, Rika , Biggs, Reinette , de Vos, Alta , Folke, Carl
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/416410 , vital:71346 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10558-230446"
- Description: The study of social-ecological systems (SES) has been significantly shaped by insights from research on complex adaptive systems (CAS). We offer a brief overview of the conceptual integration of CAS research and its implications for the advancement of SES studies and methods. We propose a conceptual typology of six organizing principles of CAS based on a comparison of leading scholars’ classifications of CAS features and properties. This typology clusters together similar underlying organizing principles of the features and attributes of CAS, and serves as a heuristic framework for identifying methods and approaches that account for the key features of SES. These principles can help identify appropriate methods and approaches for studying SES. We discuss three main implications of studying and engaging with SES as CAS. First, there needs to be a shift in focus when studying the dynamics and interactions in SES, to better capture the nature of the organizing principles that characterize SES behavior. Second, realizing that the nature of the intertwined social-ecological relations is complex has real consequences for how we choose methods and practical approaches for observing and studying SES interactions. Third, engagement with SES as CAS poses normative challenges for problemoriented researchers and practitioners taking on real-world challenges.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Pathogens, disease, and the social-ecological resilience of protected areas
- Authors: de Vos, Alta , Cumming, Graeme S , Cumming, David M , Ament, Judith M , Baum, Julia , Clements, Hayley S , Grewar, John D , Maciejewski, Kristine , Moore, Christine
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/416360 , vital:71341 , xlink:href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07984-210120"
- Description: It is extremely important for biodiversity conservation that protected areas are resilient to a range of potential future perturbations. One of the least studied influences on protected area resilience is that of disease. We argue that wildlife disease (1) is a social-ecological problem that must be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective; (2) has the potential to lead to changes in the identity of protected areas, possibly transforming them; and (3) interacts with conservation both directly (via impacts on wild animals, livestock, and people) and indirectly (via the public, conservation management, and veterinary responses). We use southern African protected areas as a case study to test a framework for exploring the connections between conservation, endemic disease, and socialecological resilience. We first define a set of criteria for the social-ecological identity of protected areas. We then use these criteria to explore the potential impacts of selected diseases (foot-and-mouth disease, anthrax, malaria, rabies, rift valley fever, trypanosomiasis, and canine distemper) on protected area resilience. Although endemic diseases may have a number of direct impacts on both wild animals and domestic animals and people, the indirect pathways by which diseases influence social-ecological resilience also emerge as potentially important. The majority of endemic pathogens found in protected areas do not kill large numbers of wild animals or infect many people, and may even play valuable ecological roles; but occasional disease outbreaks and mortalities can have a large impact on public perceptions and disease management, potentially making protected areas unviable in one or more of their stated aims. Neighboring landowners also have a significant impact on park management decisions. The indirect effects triggered by disease in the human social and economic components of protected areas and surrounding landscapes may ultimately have a greater influence on protected area resilience than the direct ecological perturbations caused by disease.
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- Date Issued: 2016