While systemic leverage points have been identified as a powerful approach for planning and assessing policies and interventions for sustainability transformations, few studies have explored how leverage points interact and how this affects the desired change. In this study, we explored how the interlinkages between leverage points enable or constrain adaptive capacity to climate change of food system actors. We found 24 interlinkages when drawing on results from semi-structured interviews and a participatory visual art method used in focus groups in a case study in the Northern Region of Ghana. Nine interlinkages were identified as barriers to the adaptive capacity of the communities and actors of the local food system. For example, when studying the interlinkages between the place-specific leverage point of agricultural extension services and the generic leverage point of gender equality, we found that women have less access to agricultural extension services compared with men. Fifteen interlinkages were presented as enabling adaptive capacity; for example, women’s savings groups had many enabling interlinkages with gender equality such as creating unity and empowering the members. We argue that interlinkages between a set of leverage points (1) play a pivotal role in enabling or hindering the leverage points, (2) may instigate a chain of leverage and (3) may affect the system including the related leverage points in a deep or shallow way.

This chapter reflects on the lessons learned from an iterative participatory modelling process applied to socio-environmental management in a semi-arid protected area in northern Nicaragua. The aim of the study was to understand vulnerability and support local stakeholders in adapting to socio-economic, environmental and policy pressures. The chapter reports on the genesis and the approach developed. The authors collaboratively co-created with stakeholders a set of conceptual models that identify key issues and make explicit local perceptions on the functioning of a complex social-ecological landscape. They coupled computer models to explore the implications of farmers’ choices of land use and management expressed in a range of ecological and socio-economic indicators. Through ‘playing with modelling’ workshops they communicated back simulations’ results to discuss the current and potential future states of the local silvopastoral system. The authors reflect on the relevance of social learning processes and substantive outcomes in contexts with incomplete knowledge, and discuss the challenge of linking different knowledge systems together in order to assist decision-making, promote local interactions, and strengthen local agency and ownership of learning processes.

Water resources are among the fundamental resources that are the most threatened worldwide by various pressures. This study applied the Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework as an innovative tool to better understand the dynamic interlinkages between the different sources of multiple stressors on aquatic ecosystems in Burkina Faso. The triangulation of evidences from interviews, literature reviews, and strategic simulations shows that several human impacts as well as climate change and its effects (such as the decrease of the water level, and the increase of the surface water temperature) are detrimental to fish productivity, abundance, and average size. Furthermore, the ongoing demographic and nutritional transition is driving cumulative pressures on water and fish resources. In this context, the development of aquaculture could offer alternative livelihoods and help fish stocks in natural ecosystems to recover, thereby reducing fishermen’s vulnerability and easing overfishing pressures. Further, the empowerment of the actors and their participation to reinforce fisheries regulation are required to escape the current “regeneration trap” and to achieve a sustainable management of aquatic ecosystems in Burkina Faso.

Human pressures and loss of natural fish habitats led to a decline in fish populations in terms of abundances, biodiversity, and average size in sub-Sahelian Burkina Faso. Little knowledge exists about fish assemblages regarding their composition, their habitat preferences, or their sensitivity to or tolerance of human pressures. This research provides the first data-driven basis for sustainably managing fish and associated aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Surveys in four different regions sampled 18,000 specimens from 69 species during the dry season. Fish communities, available abiotic habitat conditions, habitat use, and human pressures were assessed and analyzed. Fish communities cluster into four distinct types, each dominated by either Cichlidae, Clariidae, Cyprinidae, or Alestidae and accompanied by specific other families and genera of fish. Habitat preferences of four key species (Labeo coubie, Bagrus bajad, Chelaethiops bibie, and Lates niloticus) were linked to ecological habitat conditions. Results show that physical parameters influence fish community composition and abundances and, when indexed according to pressure type, are linked to responses in fish metrics. Relative abundance either dropped (Mormyridae) or increased (Cichlidae, Cyprinidae) with rising pressure intensity, and some sentinel taxa (Auchenoglanis, Hydrocynus) were only found in low-pressure sites. The outcomes of this study provide basic knowledge of habitat availability, habitat use by fish, species associations, and human pressures and therefore provide the basis for effective conservation and management of fish populations.

Understanding and managing rivers demands much more than it did in the past. For centuries conventional engineering and economics oversimplified the challenge with assumptions of stability and stationarity (Milly et al. 2007). Despite vast increases in technical capacity, current management strategies cannot provide durable solutions to crises like more intense and frequent floods and droughts (Gleick 2004; Pahl-Wostl 2007; Huntjens et al. 2011; World Water Development Report 2009). Efforts to address intensifying trends of such crises revealed that our perspectives must expand along at least two dimensions. First, we must broaden our vision horizontally with perspectives from across society. No single lens can reveal all the causes and possible cures for such problems. Management should become more inclusive and integrate multiple perspectives from academic disciplines with the shifting expectations from society. Our vision must extend out beyond engineering and economics and even the natural sciences to include insights from the social sciences and bridge the disciplines (interdisciplinary). This expanding perspective now sees riverine communities as

The growing complexity and interdependence of water management processes requires the involvement of multiple stakeholders in water governance. Multi-party collaboration is increasingly vital at both the strategy development and implementation levels. Multi-party collaboration involves a process of joint decision-making among key stakeholders in a problem domain directed towards the future of that domain. However, the common goal is not present from the beginning; rather, the common goal emerges during the process of collaboration. Unfortunately, when the conflicting interests of different actors are at stake, the large majority of environmental multi-party efforts often do not reliably deliver sustainable improvements to policy and/or practice. One of the reasons for this, which has been long established by many case studies, is that social learning with a focus on relational practices is missing. The purpose of this paper is to present the design and initial results of a pilot study that utilized a game-based approach to explore the effects of relational practices on the effectiveness of water governance. This paper verifies the methods used by addressing the following question: are game mechanisms, protocols for facilitation and observation, the recording of decisions and results, and participant surveys adequate to reliably test hypotheses about behavioral decisions related to water governance? We used the "Lords of the Valley" (LOV) game, which focuses on the local-level management of a hypothetical river valley involving many stakeholders. We used an observation protocol to collect data on the quality of relational practices and compared this data with the quantitative outcomes achieved by participants in the game. In this pilot study, we ran the game three times with different groups of participants, and here we provide the outcomes within the context of verifying and improving the methods.

AbstractThis book is dedicated to those interested in the natural and social sciences and elements of governance that will support the sustainable management of rivers and aquatic ecosystems. Since elements of nature and society interact to determine the integrity and trajectory of these systems, they are referred to hereafter as social-ecological systems (SESs). This introduction opens the door to these topics in four steps. It begins by explaining why a book dedicated to river management and science is needed at this point. In the second part, it outlines the history of some of the major developments that challenge the integrity of SESs worldwide. In the third part, it describes several of the principal tools used to study as well as manage SES. Tools to measure the degree of degradation of an SES include indicators of biological integrity, ecosystem health, and resilience. Tools to assess and manage the trajectory of an SES include the DPSIR and adaptive management. The introduction closes by outlining the structure of the book through the progression of its chapters.

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD; European Commission 2000) introduced a new focus in river management by putting the protection and restoration of the aquatic environment as a key issue on the water policy agenda. This expanded emphasis on restoration activities reflects global efforts to make river management more sustainable by better integrating policy and science to harmonize engineering, ecological, and social concerns in governing river basins. Over the last 20–30 years, several management frameworks such as Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM) or adaptive management (AM) have been developed in a series of separate, parallel experiments to achieve these goals. While specific details may vary, most of these management lineages converged on broadly common ways to sustainably manage natural resources and human activities in river basins in an integrated, interdisciplinary approach. The need to put restoration and conservation activities in a social context is increasingly considered mandatory in recent management programs (see Chap. 16 ).

At 156,000 km2 the Tisza river is one of the largest tributaries of the Danube river. Historically, almost the entire Tisza river basin (TRB) was under one administration (the Austro-Hungarian Empire), but management has become far more complex after World War I, when the basin was split among five newly formed countries (Hungary, (Czecho)-Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania and Serbia). The river exhibits extreme dynamics due to its particular geomorphology: a very short, steep fall from the Carpathian mountains suddenly turns into the very flat lowland expanse of the Hungarian Great Plain. The arc-like shape of mountains around the basin amplifies the flood peak by causing stormwater received from the tributaries to converge on the main river channel in near unison. The resulting impoundment of high water in the main bed backs water up into the tributaries, threatening the neighbouring floodplain communities. The mountains receive 3–4 times the amount of precipitation that falls on the plains (2000 vs. 600 mm/year). These combined factors make the Tisza naturally “flashy,” with flow rates varying by a factor of 50 or more, accompanied by sudden (in 24–36 h) and extreme (up to 12 m) rises in river stage (Lóczy 2010).

In a world of increasing interconnections in global trade as well as rapid change in climate and land cover, the accelerating introduction and spread of invasive species is a critical concern due to associated negative social and ecological impacts, both real and perceived. Much of the societal response to invasive species to date has been associated with negative economic consequences of invasions. This response has shaped a war-like approach to addressing invasions, one with an agenda of eradications and intense ecological restoration efforts towards prior or more desirable ecological regimes. This trajectory often ignores the concept of ecological resilience and associated approaches of resilience-based governance. We argue that the relationship between ecological resilience and invasive species has been understudied to the detriment of attempts to govern invasions, and that most management actions fail, primarily because they do not incorporate adaptive, learning-based approaches. Invasive species can decrease resilience by reducing the biodiversity that underpins ecological functions and processes, making ecosystems more prone to regime shifts. However, invasions do not always result in a shift to an alternative regime; invasions can also increase resilience by introducing novelty, replacing lost ecological functions or adding redundancy that strengthens already existing structures and processes in an ecosystem. This paper examines the potential impacts of species invasions on the resilience of ecosystems and suggests that resilience-based approaches can inform policy by linking the governance of biological invasions to the negotiation of tradeoffs between ecosystem services.

Scenario development methods get to grips with taking a long-term view on complex issues such as climate change through involvement of stakeholders. Many of the recent (global) scenario exercises have been structured according to a Story-and-Simulation approach. Although elaborately studied, conceptual and practical issues remain in linking qualitative stories and quantitative models. In this paper, we show how stakeholders can directly estimate model parameter values using a three-step approach called Fuzzy Set Theory. We focus on the effect of multiple iterations between stories and models. Results show that we were successful in quickly delivering stakeholder-based quantification of key model parameters, with full consistency between linguistic terms used in stories and numeric values. Yet, values changed strongly from one iteration to the next. A minimum of two and preferably at least three iterations is needed to harmonise stories and models. We conclude that the application of Fuzzy Set Theory enabled a highly valuable, structured and reproducible process to increase consistency between stories and models, but that future work is needed to show its true potential, particularly related to the effect of iterations. Additionally, the number of tools that need to be applied in a short period of time to execute a Story-And-Simulation approach introduces drawbacks that need to be studied. However, an approach such as Story-And-Simulation is indispensable and effective in marrying the perspectives of scientists and other stakeholders when studying complex systems and complex problems.

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice in most tropical regions of the world and has the potential to provide for human livelihoods while hosting substantial biodiversity. Little is known about the resilience of shifting cultivation to increasing agricultural demands on the landscape or to unexpected disturbances. To investigate these issues, we develop a simple social-ecological model and implement it with literature-derived ecological parameters for six shifting cultivation landscapes from three continents. Analyzing the model with the tools of dynamical systems analysis, we show that such landscapes exhibit two stable states, one characterized by high forest cover and agricultural productivity, and another with much lower values of these traits. For some combinations of agricultural pressure and ecological parameters both of these states can potentially exist, and the actual state of the forest depends critically on its historic state. In many cases, the landscapes' 'ecological resilience', or amount of forest that could be destroyed without shifting out of the forested stability domain, declined substantially at lower levels of agricultural pressure than would lead to maximum productivity. A measure of 'engineering resilience', the recovery time from standardized disturbances, was independent of ecological resilience. These findings suggest that maximization of short-term agricultural output may have counterproductive impacts on the long-term productivity of shifting cultivation landscapes and the persistence of forested areas.

Bots, P. W. G., M. Schlüter, and J. Sendzimir. 2015. A framework for analyzing, comparing, and diagnosing social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 20(4):18.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08051-200418

Contributing Authors and Commentators: Barben Daniel, Cont in Marco, Cut ura Marij a, Domany Bruno, Dorondel St efan, Egner Heike, Gaj ski Goran, Garcia-Sant os Glenda, Gueorguiev Tzvetel in, Hart l Mart ina, Hein Thomas, Hudecz Ferenc, Ivan Oana, Jelen Igor, Jungmeier Michael, Kopl iku Bresena, Laci Sabri, Lenhardt Mirj ana, Tamáska Mát é David, Mihalca Andrei, Miho Aleko, Papp Leila, Pet rovic Ana, Pont Didier, Pop Ana-Maria, Popova Jul iana, Sandu Crist ina, Sendzimir Jan, Šmid Hribar Mat ej a, St oica Georget a, St öglehner Gernot , Tabakovic Momir, Terzic Aleksandra, Torkar Gregor, Žlender Vita, Zoj er Hans

No Access8.2.3 Joint research and scientific exchange for higher educationGabriele Slezak, Adama Oueda, Philippe Cecchi, Gustave B. Kabre, Otto Moog, Raymond Ouedraogo, Florian Peloschek, Léon G. Blaise Savadogo, Stefan Schmutz, Jan Sendzimir, Patrice Toe, Herwig Waidbacher, Andreas H. MelcherGabriele Slezak, Adama Oueda, Philippe Cecchi, Gustave B. Kabre, Otto Moog, Raymond Ouedraogo, Florian Peloschek, Léon G. Blaise Savadogo, Stefan Schmutz, Jan Sendzimir, Patrice Toe, Herwig Waidbacher, Andreas H. Melcherhttps://doi.org/10.7767/9783205201731-058SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous chapter Next chapter FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book cover ISBN: 978-3-205-79690-9 eISBN: 978-3-205-20173-1HistoryPublished online:August 2018 PDF download

No Access8.2.2 A transdisciplinary approach to the integration of people, fisheries, socio-economic factors and higher educationRaymond Ouedraogo, Moumini Savadogo, Colette Kabore, Gustave B. Kabre, Adama Oueda, Aimé J. Nianogo, Florian Peloschek, Jan Sendzimir, Gabriele Slezak, Patrice Toe, Henri Zerbo, Andreas H. MelcherRaymond Ouedraogo, Moumini Savadogo, Colette Kabore, Gustave B. Kabre, Adama Oueda, Aimé J. Nianogo, Florian Peloschek, Jan Sendzimir, Gabriele Slezak, Patrice Toe, Henri Zerbo, Andreas H. Melcherhttps://doi.org/10.7767/9783205201731-057SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous chapter Next chapter FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book cover ISBN: 978-3-205-79690-9 eISBN: 978-3-205-20173-1HistoryPublished online:August 2018 PDF download