The Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society: an emergent community of practice
- Authors: Biggs, Reinette , Reyers, Belinda , Blanchard, Ryan , Clements, Hayley S , Cockburn, Jessica J , Cumming, Graeme S , Cundill, Georgina , de Vos, Alta , Dziba, Luthando E , Esler, Karen J , Fabricius, Christo , Hamann, Maike , Henriksson, Rebecka , Kotschy, Karen , Lindborg, Regina , Luvuno, Linda , Masterson, Vanessa A , Nel, Jeanne L , O'Farrell, Patrick , Palmer, Carolyn G , Pereira, Laura , Pollard, Sharon , Preiser, Rika , Roux, Dirk J , Scholes, Robert J , Selomane, Odirlwe , Shackleton, Charlie M , Shackleton, Sheona , Sitas, Nadia , Slingsby, Jasper A , Spierenburg, Marja , Tengö, Maria
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/401330 , vital:69726 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2150317"
- Description: Sustainability-focused research networks and communities of practice have emerged as a key response and strategy to build capacity and knowledge to support transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. This paper synthesises insights from the development of a community of practice on social-ecological systems (SES) research in southern Africa over the past decade, linked to the international Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS). This community consists of a network of researchers who carry out place-based SES research in the southern African region. They interact through various cross-cutting working groups and also host a variety of public colloquia and student and practitioner training events. Known as the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), its core objectives are to: (1) derive new approaches and empirical insights on SES dynamics in the southern African context; (2) have a tangible impact by mainstreaming knowledge into policy and practice; and (3) grow the community of practice engaged in SES research and governance, including researchers, students and practitioners. This paper reflects on experiences in building the SAPECS community, with the aim of supporting the development of similar networks elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Global South.
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- Date Issued: 2023
Social-ecological change: insights from the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society
- Authors: Biggs, Reinette , Clements, Hayley S , Cumming, Graeme S , Cundill, Georgina , de Vos, Alta , Hamann, Maike , Luvuno, Linda , Roux, Dirk J , Selomane, Odirlwe , Blanchard, Ryan , Cockburn, Jessica J , Dziba, Luthando E , Esler, Karen J , Fabricius, Christo , Henriksson, Rebecka , Kotschy, Karen , Lindborg, Regina , Masterson, Vanessa A , Nel, Jeanne L , O'Farrell, Patrick , Palmer, Carolyn G , Pereira, Laura , Pollard, Sharon , Preiser, Rika , Scholes, Robert J , Shackleton, Charlie M , Shackleton, Sheona , Sitas, Nadia , Slingsby, Jasper A , Spierenburg, Maria , Tengö, Maria , Reyers, Belinda
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/399817 , vital:69561 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2097478"
- Description: Social-ecological systems (SES) research has emerged as an important area of sustainability science, informing and supporting pressing issues of transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. To date, much SES research has been done in or from the Global North, where the challenges and contexts for supporting sustainability transformations are substantially different from the Global South. This paper synthesises emerging insights on SES dynamics that can inform actions and advance research to support sustainability transformations specifically in the southern African context. The paper draws on work linked to members of the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), a leading SES research network in the region, synthesizing key insights with respect to the five core themes of SAPECS: (i) transdisciplinary and engaged research, (ii) ecosystem services and human well-being, (iii) governance institutions and management practices, (iv) spatial relationships and cross-scale connections, and (v) regime shifts, traps and transformations. For each theme, we focus on insights that are particularly novel, interesting or important in the southern African context, and reflect on key research gaps and emerging frontiers for SES research in the region going forward. Such place-based insights are important for understanding the variation in SES dynamics around the world, and are crucial for informing a context-sensitive global agenda to foster sustainability transformations at local to global scales.
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- Date Issued: 2022
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
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