General AC concepts Flashcards
How does adaptive capacity differ in social and ecological systems?
Armitage (2005)
Ecological:
- AC dependent on slow moving components of the system that create stability domains. Maintenance of slow vars within the system will ensure adaptation
- key requirements: ecological memory and legacies, genetic/ spp/ ecosystem diversity, ecosystem heterogeneity
Socio-institutional
- AC depends on individuals and institutions learning through uncertainty. Org and inst innovation is necessary to build capacity.
- key requirements: learning from mistakes, collaboration and power sharing, institutional diversity
So: in ecological systems the focus is on maintaining the integrity of slow variables that provide stable domains within which faster variables (like disturbance) can generate innovation and novelty; in social systems the emphasis is on the ability of social actors to generate innovations and remain flexible and respond to change despite social and institutional stability.
What are dimensions (components and subcomponents) of SES adaptive capacity per Folke et al. (2003)?
Dimensions of AC by component from Folke et al. 2003:
- Learning to live with uncertainty and change
- learn from crises
- expect the unexpected
- evoke disturbance - Nurture diversity for reorganization and renewal
- nurture ecological memorty
- sustain social memory
- enhance social-ecological memory - Combine different types of knowledge for learning
- combine experiental and experimental knowledge
- integrate knowledge of structure and function
- incorporate process knowledge into institutions
- encourage complementarity of knowledge systems - Create opportunities for self-organization
- recognize relationship between diversity and disturbance
- deal with cross-scale dynamics
- match scales of ecosystems and governance
- account for external drivers
What exogenous and endogenous factors influence AC in CBNRM (Armitage, 2005)?
Selected Operational Issues:
Technical:
- trained personnel with necessary skills
- data mgmt, standardization, sharing
Financial:
- sufficient funds to support CBNRM
- stability, consistency of funds
- control over resources and funds (internal, external)
Social:
- awareness and understanding about CBNRM among resource users
- existence of local concern, civil society, for commons
Institutional:
- clearly defined roles and responsibilities
- institutional conflict
- enabling legislation to support CBNRM
- organizational accountability
Political:
- leadership within orgs
- motivation of decision-makers
- external leadership, political support for CBNRM
- continuity of political support
Selected Strategic Issues
Power:
- Power asymmetries among resource users in relation to property rights, inst/org access and influence
- Implications for rule creation, adjudication, enforcement, distribution of rights and benefits
Scale:
- scale mismatch among resources and users
- cross-scale effects of political and economic factors
- changes in livelihood strategies and systems (e.g. subsistence to commodity)
Knowledge
- control and ownership of knowledge
- use and misuse of different knowledge frameworks
- challenges of bridging knowledge systems
Community
- differences within communities (ethnicity, class, religion)
- mistrust, misinformation, misconceptions, etc. in heterogeneous communities and their impacts
Culture
- consistency or inconsistency of norms, values, worldviews of resource users and interests across scales
What is adaptation?
The decision making process and the set of actions undertaken to maintain the capacity to deal with current or future predicted change to SES without undergoing significant changes in function, structural identity, or feedbacks of that system while maintaining the option to develop (Nelson, Adger and Brown 2007)
- to environmental change: an adjustment in ecological, social or economic systems in response to observed or expected changes in env stimuli and their effects and impacts in order to alleviate adverse impacts of change
- Adaptedness = a state in which a system is effective in relating with the environment and meets the normative goals of stakeholders; never permanent, context dependent
Survey methods:
Who to reference?
General order of events
Relevant stats
Dillman Method most often cited
- Decide on sampling strategy
- pilot test survey for validity
- send surveys to participant list
- revise participant list if necessary, resend
- ## conduct non-response bias analysis (ID percentage of non-respondents and conduct phone survey to see if their responses significantly differ (P values and effect sizes)
Studies linking CBNRM to AC and similar concepts
Wagner and F-G 2008: CBCRM and social capital
- survey of 8 groups in CO measuring for dimensions of social capital (trust, rules and reciprocity, values and beliefs, communication qual/quant)
- found increases in all four domains for each group, though to differing degrees
What is social learning?
Core concepts?
Social learning is a term that can be applied to processes that 1) change or alter the understanding of the individual taking part in the process; 2) change the understanding of the larger social unit taking part in the process (e.g. community of practice or some other grouping of individuals); and 3) enable social interactions within a network through which learning occurs (original, based on Reed et al., 2010)
Core concepts:
- integration of knowledge
- system orientation (connecting people to environment)
- interaction over time (process)
- reflection and reflexivity
- multi-loop learning
What is resilience?
The capacity of the system to absorb a spectrum of shocks or perturbation and still retain and further develop the same fundamental structure, functioning, and feedbacks
What is adaptive capacity in the resilience context?
What are some proposed determinants of AC?
The ability of actors or groups in a system to respond to, create, and shape system variability and change through learning and an ability to experiment and foster innovative solutions in complex social and ecological circumstances. It is an emergent outcome of multiple and highly contextual operational and strategic socio-institutional attributes that influence collective action.
Characteristics:
- sensitive to scale, varies by context, not equally distributed, often latent (i.e. unknown until after a stress has made it manifest)
- related to coping, resilience, vulnerability
Determinants of AC in resilience context:
- diversity (economic, knowledge, ecological…)
- social learning, reflexivity
- experimentation and innovation
- effective governance via selection, communication, and implementation of appropriate solutions (actions)
Core Concepts:
- Capitals (especially social capital)
- Networks of social capital
- Collective action
- Leadership
What is adaptive management?
Management as experimentation.
A systematic process for treating management interventions as experiments to improve management policies and practices. Active AM uses mgmt interventions designed to compare selected policies/practices by testing hypotheses about the system being measured. It draws on theories of social and institutional learning to inductively identify system components and outcomes.
What is adaptive co-management?
What are its core concepts?
An interdisciplinary approach to resolving multi-scale environment-society dilemmas that explicitly links learning (experiential and experimental) and collaboration to facilitate effective governance (i.e. the public and private interactions undertaken to resolve societal challenges, and the institutions and principles which mediate those interactions) (Armitage et al. 2009)
Core concepts:
- pluralism, cross-scale linkage
- communication, negotiation
- transactive decision-making among diverse participants
- shared commitment, joint action
- dynamic learning through experimentation
What is multi-loop learning?
- single loop learning: learning about the consequences of specific action
- double loop learning: learning about the assumptions underlying our actions
- triple loop learning: learning that challenges the values and norms that underpin our assumptions and actions
What is social capital?
Core concepts?
Wagner & Fernandez-Gimenez (2008): “Broadly defined, social capital is relationships of trust norms of reciprocity, and networks among individuals that can be drawn upon for individual or collective benefit.” (324)
Social Capital theory addresses the question of how individuals and groups improve their collective welfare (both materially and broader wellbeing) through utilization of relationships with other individuals or groups. It also addresses how these social relations manifest in terms of outcomes for society. how social relations affect outcomes in society. Critiques include that the theory conflates cause and effect, particularly when applied to economic performance, education attainment, or patterns of regional economic growth. Another interesting critique relates to the theory’s framework, which draws ostensibly on non-instrumental elements of society into a source of economic ‘capital.’ (Adger, 2003)
Core concepts:
- Networks: participation in formal and informal groups; bonding and bridging ties
- shared values/ understanding
- social norms
- trust/ reciprocity
What are Ostrom’s 8 Design Principles for common pool resource problems?
The design principles essentially pose a set of theorems for explaining the conditions under which collective action solutions to common pool resource problems can be maintained (via trust and reciprocity)
1) Clearly defined boundaries: this includes the resource system as well as the resource users with rights to access and harvest the resource.
2) Congruence between a) rules of appropriation (related to timing of harvest, limits on take, and so forth), rules of provision (like the collection of dues in an HOA for maintenance/upkeep of common walk/driveway), AND the local conditions
3) Collective-choice arrangements: resource users affected by the appropriation and provision rules are able to access decision-making processes for modifying those rules
4) Monitoring: those that are tasked with auditing the biophysical condition resource should be in some way accountable to other members of the ownership group, or be member of that group themselves
5) Graduated Sanctions: appropriators who violate rules-in-use are subjected to sanctions, the severity of which depend on the seriousness of the breach, and these sanctions should be imposed by other users or officials that are accountable to the user group. (taken together, 4 and 5 constitute a major difference between CPR systems and others– the internal monitoring and sanctioning, i.e. not relying directly on an external authority to monitor and enforce. Compliance with the rules emanates from others also complying– so no one feels like a sucker)
6. Conflict Resolution: the user group (and associated officials) have access to mechanisms for resolving disagreements among users or between users and users and officials that are timely, low-cost, and local
7. Minimal recognition of rights to organize: external government authorities respect or do not challenge the rights of the user group to develop and implement its own institutions; they also recognize the tenure rights held by the users over the resource
8. Nested enterprises:”Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises” (101)
What is a social-ecological system?
systems of interacting components (cultural, political, social, economic, ecological, technical, etc.). Ecological and social components interact at multiple levels, with external processes influencing slow variables, and these slow variables influencing fast variables. People respond to system changes through institutional mechanisms, which create feedbacks affecting ecological and social components of the system.
