Browsing by Author "Anderies, John M."

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Aligning Key Concepts for Global Change Policy: Robustness, Resilience, and Sustainability
(2013) Anderies, John M.; Folke, Carl; Walker, Brian; Ostrom, Elinor
"Globalization, the process by which local social-ecological systems (SESs) are becoming linked in a global network, presents policy scientists and practitioners with unique and difficult challenges. Although local SESs can be extremely complex, when they become more tightly linked in the global system, complexity increases very rapidly as multi-scale and multi-level processes become more important. Here, we argue that addressing these multi-scale and multi-level challenges requires a collection of theories and models. We suggest that the conceptual domains of sustainability, resilience, and robustness provide a sufficiently rich collection of theories and models, but overlapping definitions and confusion about how these conceptual domains articulate with one another reduces their utility. We attempt to eliminate this confusion and illustrate how sustainability, resilience, and robustness can be used in tandem to address the multi-scale and multi-level challenges associated with global change."
Aligning Key Concepts for Global Change Policy: Robustness, Resilience, and Sustainability
(2012) Anderies, John M.; Folke, Carl; Ostrom, Elinor; Walker, Brian H.
"Globalization, the process by which local social-ecological systems (SESs) are becoming linked in a global network, presents policy scientists and practitioners with unique and dicult challenges. Although local SESs can be extremely complex, when they become more tightly linked in the global system, complexity spirals as multi-scale and multi-level processes become more important. Here, we argue that addressing these multi-scale and multilevel challenges requires a collection of theories and models. We suggest that the conceptual domains sustainability, resilience, and robustness provide a suciently rich collection of theories and models but overlapping denitions and confusion about how these conceptual domains articulate with one another reduces their utility. Here we attempt to eliminate this confusion and illustrate how sustainability, resilience and robustness can be used in tandem to address the multi-level and multi-scale challenges associated with global change."
Asymmetric Commons Games in the Laboratory and the Field
(2009) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.; Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo
"The emergence of large-scale irrigation systems has puzzled generations of social scientists. Given the challenges of both coordinating activities in a complex network of social interactions and providing public infrastructure, the number of irrigation systems that have evolved without central coordination and have persisted so long is astonishing. Specifically, irrigation systems seem to be vulnerable to selfish rational actors that exploit inherent asymmetries such as simply being the headender or who free ride on the public infrastructure. In this paper we will discuss laboratory and field experiments that address the problem of self-governance in an asymmetric commons dilemma. Laboratory experiments have been performed at Arizona State University, and field experiments have been performed in rural villages in Thailand and Colombia. We formulate an abstract dilemma where participants make both a decision about investment in public infrastructure and how much to extract from the resources generated by that public infrastructure. The impact of inherent asymmetry in irrigation systems on the provision of a public common resource the importance of fairness to generate long term efficiency will be discussed."
Challenges and Opportunities in Coding the Commons: Problems, Procedures, and Potential Solutions in Large-N Comparative Case Studies
(2015) Ratajczyk, Elicia; Ute, Brady; Baggio, Jacopo A.; Barnett, Allain J.; Pèrez-Ibarra, Irene; Rollins, Nathan; Rubiños, Cathy A.; Shin, Hoon C.; Yu, David J.; Aggarwal, Rimjhim; Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.
"On-going efforts to understand the dynamics of coupled social-ecological (or more broadly, coupled infrastructure) systems and common pool resources have led to the generation of numerous datasets based on a large number of case studies. This data has facilitated the identification of important factors and fundamental principles which increase our understanding of such complex systems. However, the data at our disposal are often not easily comparable, have limited scope and scale, and are based on disparate underlying frameworks inhibiting synthesis, meta-analysis, and the validation of findings. Research efforts are further hampered when case inclusion criteria, variable definitions, coding schema, and inter-coder reliability testing are not made explicit in the presentation of research and shared among the research community. This paper first outlines challenges experienced by researchers engaged in a large-scale coding project; then highlights valuable lessons learned in large-scale coding projects; and finally discusses opportunities for further research on comparative case study analysis focusing on social-ecological systems and common pool resources."
Collapse and Reorganization in Social-Ecological Systems: Questions, Some Ideas, and Policy Implications
(2006) Abel, Nick; Cumming, David H. M.; Anderies, John M.
"We tested the explanatory usefulness and policy relevance of Holling's (2001) 'adaptive cycle' theory in exploring processes of 'collapse,' also called 'release,' and recovery in regional socialecological systems (SESs) in Zimbabwe and Australia. We found that the adaptive cycle is useful in recognizing changes in system behavior during the various phases. However, our small sample of cases did not generally show either the sequential passage of stages or the prerelease decline in resilience that adaptive cycle theory implies. In all cases, however, the reasons for releases were apparent with hindsight. On the other hand, our examples mostly supported the proposition that resilience is controlled by slowly changing variables. Although we found the adaptive cycle, and complex system theory in general, to be useful integrating frameworks, disciplinary theories are required to explain causes and effects in specific cases. We used theories linking distribution of political power to institutional change; to investment in natural, human, social, and physical capitals; and to access to financial capital. We explored patterns of change of these capitals before, during, and after release and reorganization. Both the patterns of change and relative importance of the different capitals during reorganization varied widely, but the importation of resources from broader scales was often a key to recovery. We propose that the resilience of most regional or national SESs can be explained in these terms. The capacity to self-organize emerged from our studies as a critical source of resilience. Although rebuilding this capacity at times requires access to external resources, excessive subsidization can reduce the capacity to self-organize. The policy implication is that cross-scale subsidization should end when self-organization becomes apparent, because subsidization can increase the vulnerability of the system as a whole. When the aim is to recover without changing the system fundamentally, the focus should be upon conserving or investing in the elements of capital critical for this. If the current system is not viable, it is necessary to invest in forms of capital that will enable fundamental change. It will also be necessary to stop investing in the capitals that maintained the unviable regime. The political difficulty of doing this is why SESs so often remain maladapted to current conditions and opportunities and eventually reach the point of collapse."
Coordination and Cooperation in Asymmetric Commons Dilemmas
(2008) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.; Joshi, Sanket R.
"In this paper we discuss laboratory experiments that address the problem of self-governance in an asymmetric commons dilemma. Small-scale irrigation systems that provide food for hundreds of millions of people around the world are probable the most common example of such dilemmas. Here, we formulate an abstract dilemma in which subjects make both a decision about investment in the provision of infrastructure associated with the use of a resource and about how much to extract from the common-pool resource made available by this infrastructure. The impact of inherent asymmetry in irrigation systems on the provision of a resource and the impact of communication on the capacity of the group to solve the two-level commons dilemma of cooperation and coordination based on the analysis of the experimental data are discussed."
The Cross-Scale Interplay between Social and Biophysical Context and the Vulnerability of Irrigation-dependent Societies: Archaeology’s Long-term Perspective
(2010) Nelson, Margaret C.; Kintigh, Keith; Abbott, David R.; Anderies, John M.
"What relationships can be understood between resilience and vulnerability in social-ecological systems? In particular, what vulnerabilities are exacerbated or ameliorated by different sets of social practices associated with water management? These questions have been examined primarily through the study of contemporary or recent historic cases. Archaeology extends scientific observation beyond all social memory and can thus illuminate interactions occurring over centuries or millennia. We examined trade-offs of resilience and vulnerability in the changing social, technological, and environmental contexts of three long-term, pre-Hispanic sequences in the U.S. Southwest: the Mimbres area in southwestern New Mexico (AD 650–1450), the Zuni area in northern New Mexico (AD 850–1540), and the Hohokam area in central Arizona (AD 700–1450). In all three arid landscapes, people relied on agricultural systems that depended on physical and social infrastructure that diverted adequate water to agricultural soils. However, investments in infrastructure varied across the cases, as did local environmental conditions. Zuni farming employed a variety of small-scale water control strategies, including centuries of reliance on small runoff agricultural systems; Mimbres fields were primarily watered by small-scale canals feeding floodplain fields; and the Hohokam area had the largest canal system in pre-Hispanic North America. The cases also vary in their historical trajectories: at Zuni, population and resource use remained comparatively stable over centuries, extending into the historic period; in the Mimbres and Hohokam areas, there were major demographic and environmental transformations. Comparisons across these cases thus allow an understanding of factors that promote vulnerability and influence resilience in specific contexts."
Design Principles for Robustness of Institutions in Social-Ecological Systems
(2003) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"What makes social-ecological systems robust? In this paper we look at the institutional configuration that affect the interactions between resource, resource users, public infrastructure providers and public infrastructure. The framework we propose helps us to identify potential vulnerable parts of a social-ecological system to internal disturbances. Especially the tensions between resource users and public infrastructure providers are key in potential robustness of the social-ecological system. Design principles originally developed for robust common-pool resource institutions seem to be a good starting point for the development of design principles for more general social-ecological systems."
The Effect of Information in a Behavioral Irrigation Experiment
(2015) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.; Pérez, Irene; Yu, David J.
"When governing shared resources, the level and quality of information available to resource users on the actions of others and the state of the environment may have a critical effect on the performance of groups. In the work presented here, we nd that lower availability of information does not affect the average performance of the group in terms of their capacity to provide public infrastructure and govern resource use, but it affects the distribution of earnings and the ability to cope with disturbances. We performed behavioral experiments that mimic irrigation dilemmas in which participants need to maintain infrastructure function in order to generate revenue from the use of water. In the experimental design, there is an upstream-downstream asymmetry of access to water that may lead to unequal access to water. We find that inequality of investment in irrigation infrastructure and water appropriation across players is more pronounced in experiments where resource users have limited information about the actions of others. We also find that inequality is linked to the ability of groups to cope with disturbances. Hence a reduced level of information indirectly reduces the adaptive capacity of groups."
The Effect of Infrastructure on Social-Ecological System Dynamics: Provision Thresholds and Asymmetric Access
(2014) Yu, David J.; Qubbaj, Murad R.; Muneepeerakul, Rachata; Anderies, John M.
"For several millennia, humans have created built environments to harness natural processes for their benefit. Today, human-environment interactions are mediated extensively by physical infrastructure in both rural and urban environments. Yet studies of social-ecological systems (SESs) have not paid sufficient attention to how infrastructure influences coupled natural and social processes. This misses an important point: critical infrastructure is often a public good that depends on cooperation of the agents who share it. Using a model of an irrigation system (the most ancient of public infrastructure systems) as a testing ground, we found that two properties of infrastructure, threshold of provision and asymmetric access to benefits, can cause fundamental changes in the long-term dynamics of SESs. We also found some design implications for robust/resilient human-natural-engineered systems that can maintain vital functions in the face of unexpected shocks, something that has been missing in general from the broad literature.Understanding how small scale irrigation SESs may respond to infrastructure changes and globalization-related stresses is relevant for agricultural policy and our results provide some general guidance in this regard."
An Empirical Comparison of Territorial Ownership Models in Hunter-Gatherer Societies
(2014) Freeman, Jacob; Anderies, John M.
"The economic defensibility hypothesis is the workhorse ecological explanation for investment in territorial ownership in archaeology. Yet, the predictions of this model have not been systematically compared with alternative ecological models that also have implications for levels of investment in territorial ownership. We investigate the consistency of the model of economic defensibility relative to a recent model of forager-resource coevolution (the foraging eort model) to explain investment in territorial ownership documented in a large ethnographic database. Each model predicts that population density, the percent of diet obtained from shing and warfare all increase the likelihood that human foragers invest in territorial ownership. Our results are consistent with these predictions. There are two mutually exclusive predictions, however. The model of economic defensibility predicts that as the density and predictability of terrestrial resources increases, hunter-gatherers are more likely to own territories and the foraging eort model predicts the opposite. Our results are consistent with the foraging eort model. Our results suggest that social dilemmas associated with provisioning the public goods of information on the robustness of resources or common defense create situations in which human foragers gain more by cooperating to recognize and defend ownership claims than they lose. Our results have important implications for investigating the coevolution of territorial ownership and the adoption of food production in the archaeological record."
Environmental Variability and Collective Action: Experimental Insights from an Irrigation Game
(2012) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.; Lee, Allen; Wasserman, Hannah
"Studies of collective action in commons dilemmas in social-ecological systems typically focus on scenarios in which actors all share symmetric (or similar) positions in relation to the common-pool resource. Many common social-ecological systems do not meet these criteria, most notably, irrigation systems. Participants in irrigation systems must solve two related collective action problems: 1) the provisioning of physical infrastructure necessary to utilize the resource (water), and 2) the asymmetric common-pool resource dilemma where the relative positions of 'head-enders' and 'tail-enders' generate asymmetric access to the resource itself (water). In times of scarcity, head-enders have an incentive to not share water with tail-enders. Likewise, tail-enders have an incentive to not provide labor to maintain the system if they do not receive water. These interdependent incentives may induce a cooperative outcome under favorable conditions. However, how robust is this system of interdependent incentives in the presence of environmental variability that generates uncertainty about water availability either through variation in the water supply itself or through shocks to infrastructure? This paper reports on results from laboratory experiments designed to address this question."
Explaining Success and Failure in the Commons: The Configural Nature of Ostrom's Institutional Design Principles
(2016) Baggio, Jacopo Alessandro; Barnett, Allain T.; Pèrez-Ibarra, Irene; Brady, Ute; Ratajczyk, Elicia; Rollins, Nathan; Rubiños, Cathy; Shin, Hoon C.; Yu, David J.; Aggarwal, Rimjhim; Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.
"Governing common pool resources (CPR) in the face of disturbances such as globalization and climate change is challenging. The outcome of any CPR governance regime is the influenced by local combinations of social, institutional, and biophysical factors, as well as cross-scale interdependencies. In this study, we take a step towards understanding multiple-causation of CPR outcomes by analyzing 1) the co-occurrence of Destign Principles (DP) by activity (irrigation, fishery and forestry), and 2) the combination(s) of DPs leading to social and ecological success. We analyzed 69 cases pertaining to three different activities: irrigation, fishery, and forestry. We find that the importance of the design principles is dependent upon the natural and hard human made infrastructure (i.e. canals, equipment, vessels etc.). For example, clearly defined social bounduaries are important when the natural infrastructure is highly mobile (i.e. tuna fish), while monitoring is more important when the natural infrastructure is more static (i.e. forests or water contained within an irrigation system). However, we also find that congruence between local conditions and rules and proportionality between investment and extraction are key for CPR success independent from the natural and human hard made infrastructure. We further provide new visualization techniques for co-occurrence patterns and add to qualitative comparative analysis by introducing a reliability metric to deal with a large meta-analysis dataset on secondary data where information is missing or uncertain."
Fifteen Weddings and a Funeral: Case Studies and Resilience- based Management
(2006) Anderies, John M.; Walker, Brian H.; Kinzig, Ann P.
"'Resilience theory' is a systematic methodology for understanding the dynamics of coupled social-ecological systems (SESs). Its ongoing development requires that resilience theory be confronted with case studies to assess its capacity to help understand and develop policy for SESs. This paper synthesizes the findings from several papers in the special feature 'Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems' that do just this. It then highlights key challenges facing resilience as a theory for understanding SESs and provides some avenues for future research."
Framework to Analyze the Robustness of Social-ecological Systems from an Institutional Perspective
(2004) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"What makes social-ecological systems (SESs) robust? In this paper, we look at the institutional configurations that affect the interactions among resources, resource users, public infrastructure providers, and public infrastructures. We propose a framework that helps identify potential vulnerabilities of SESs to disturbances. All the links between components of this framework can fail and thereby reduce the robustness of the system. We posit that the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers is a key variable affecting the robustness of SESs that has frequently been ignored in the past. We illustrate the problems caused by a disruption in this link. We then briefly describe the design principles originally developed for robust common-pool resource institutions, because they appear to be a good starting point for the development of design principles for more general SESs and do include the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers."
Framework to Analyze the Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems from an Institutional Perspective
(2004) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"What makes social-ecological systems robust? In this paper we look at the institutional configurations that affect the interactions among resources, resource users, public infrastructure providers, and public infrastructures. We propose a framework that helps to identify potential vulnerabilities of social-ecological systems to disturbances. All of the linkages among the components of this framework can fail and thereby reduce the robustness of the system. We posit that the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers are a key variable affecting the robustness of social-ecological systems that has frequently been ignored in the past. We illustrate the problems caused by a disruption in this link. We then briefly describe the design principles originally developed for robust common-pool resource institutions since they appear to be a good starting point for the development of design principles for more general social-ecological systems and do include the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers."
Governance and the Capacity to Manage Resilience in Regional Social-Ecological Systems
(2006) Lebel, Louis; Anderies, John M.; Campbell, Bruce; Folke, Carl; Hatfield-Dodds, Steve; Hughes, Terry; Wilson, James
"The sustainability of regional development can be usefully explored through several different lenses. In situations in which uncertainties and change are key features of the ecological landscape and social organization, critical factors for sustainability are resilience, the capacity to cope and adapt, and the conservation of sources of innovation and renewal. However, interventions in social-ecological systems with the aim of altering resilience immediately confront issues of governance. Who decides what should be made resilient to what? For whom is resilience to be managed, and for what purpose? In this paper we draw on the insights from a diverse set of case studies from around the world in which members of the Resilience Alliance have observed or engaged with sustainability problems at regional scales. Our central question is: How do certain attributes of governance function in society to enhance the capacity to manage resilience? Three specific propositions were explored: (1) participation builds trust, and deliberation leads to the shared understanding needed to mobilize and self-organize; (2) polycentric and multilayered institutions improve the fit between knowledge, action, and social-ecological contexts in ways that allow societies to respond more adaptively at appropriate levels; and (3) accountable authorities that also pursue just distributions of benefits and involuntary risks enhance the adaptive capacity of vulnerable groups and society as a whole. Some support was found for parts of all three propositions. In exploring the sustainability of regional social-ecological systems, we are usually faced with a set of ecosystem goods and services that interact with a collection of users with different technologies, interests, and levels of power. In this situation in our roles as analysts, facilitators, change agents, or stakeholders, we not only need to ask: The resilience of what, to what? We must also ask: For whom?"
How Does a Divided Population Respond to Change?
(2015) Qubbaj, Murad R.; Muneepeerakul, Rachata; Aggarwal, Rimjhim; Anderies, John M.
""Most studies on the response of socioeconomic systems to a sudden shift focus on long-term equilibria or end points. Such narrow focus forgoes many valuable insights. Here we examine the transient dynamics of regime shift on a divided population, exemplified by societies divided ideologically, politically, economically, or technologically. Replicator dynamics is used to investigate the complex transient dynamics of the population response. Though simple, our modeling approach exhibits a surprisingly rich and diverse array of dynamics. Our results highlight the critical roles played by diversity in strategies and the magnitude of the shift. Importantly, it allows for a variety of strategies to arise organically as an integral part of the transient dynamics—as opposed to an independent process—of population response to a regime shift, providing a link between the population's past and future diversity patterns. Several combinations of different populations' strategy distributions and shifts were systematically investigated. Such rich dynamics highlight the challenges of anticipating the response of a divided population to a change. The findings in this paper can potentially improve our understanding of a wide range of socio-ecological and technological transitions."
Institutions and the Performance of Coupled Infrastructure Systems
(2016) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.; Schlager, Edella
"Institutions, the rules of the game that shape repeated human interactions, clearly play a critical role in helping groups avoid the inefficient use of shared resources such as fisheries, freshwater, and the assimilative capacity of the environment. Institutions, however, are intimately intertwined with the human, social, and biophysical context within which they operate. Scholars typically are careful to take this context into account when studying institutions and Ostrom’s Institutional Design Principles are a case in point. Scholars have tested whether Ostrom’s Design Principles, which specify broad relationships between institutional arrangements and context, actually support successful governance of shared resources. This article further contributes to this line of research by leveraging the notion of institutional design to outline a research trajectory focused on coupled infrastructure systems in which institutions are seen as one class of infrastructure among many that dynamically interact to produce outcomes over time."
Institutions and the Performance of Coupled Infrastructure Systems: Insights from Large-N Studies of Ostrom's Institutional Design Principles
(2015) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco
"Some of the most challenging problems that modern societies face involve social dilemmas related to natural resources and the environment. Readers of this journal will be intimately familiar with the notion of social dilemmas, indirectly referenced in the journal title through the word 'commons'. Many scholars have worked for decades to understand what characteristics of social organization enable groups to solve social dilemmas. Social dilemmas involve two problems 1) individuals face a choice in which the best outcome can only be achieved if many other decision makers make a choice that benefits the total payoff of the group and 2) there is no way to guarantee others will also make decisions that will benefit the group, so individuals face strong incentives to make a choice that is best for themselves and will have negative impacts on the group. Solving these two problems has proven to be devilishly difficult as Hardin (1968) reminded the (academic) world almost 50 years ago. Again, as readers of this journal know, the dominant discourse around social dilemmas at the time of Hardin’s article and the subsequent 20 years suggested that their solution required the intervention of an exogenous governance body that either a) directly restricts choices of actors thus removing challenge 2 of social dilemmas or b) establishes and enforces property rights removing challenge 1. Of course, these two solutions are just different sides of the same theoretical coin, differentiated by an arbitrary choice about the assignment of 'property rights'."
An Iterative Approach to Case Study Analysis: Insights from Qualitative Analysis of Quantitative Inconsistencies
(2016) Barnett, Allain T.; Baggio, Jacopo Alessandro; Shin, Hoon C.; Yu, David J.; Pèrez-Ibarra, Irene; Rubiños, Cathy; Brady, Ute; Ratajczyk, Elicia; Rollins, Nathan; Aggarwal, Rimjhim; Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.
"Large-N comparative studies have helped common pool resource scholars gain general insights into the factors that influence collective action and governance outcomes. However, these studies are often limited by missing data, and suffer from the methodological limitation that important information is lost when we reduce textual information to quantitative data. This study was motivated by nine case studies that appeared to be inconsistent with the expectation that the presence of Ostrom’s Design Principles increases the likelihood of successful common pool resource governance. These cases highlight the limitations of coding and analysing Large-N case studies. We examine two issues: 1) the challenge of missing data and 2) potential approaches that rely on context (which is often lost in the coding process) to address inconsistencies between empirical observations theoretical predictions. For the latter, we conduct a post-hoc qualitative analysis of a large-N comparative study to explore 2 types of inconsistencies: 1) cases where evidence for nearly all design principles was found, but available evidence led to the assessment that the CPR system was unsuccessful and 2) cases where the CPR system was deemed successful despite finding limited or no evidence for design principles. We describe inherent challenges to large-N comparative analysis to coding complex and dynamically changing common pool resource systems for the presence or absence of design principles and the determination of 'success'. Finally, we illustrate how, in some cases, our qualitative analysis revealed that the identity of absent design principles explained inconsistencies hence de-facto reconciling such apparent inconsistencies with theoretical predictions. This analysis demonstrates the value of combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, and using mixed-methods approaches iteratively to build comprehensive methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding common pool resource governance in a dynamically changing context."
A Multi-Method Approach to Study Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems: The Case of Small-Scale Irrigation Systems
(2013) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.
"Elinor Ostrom was a leader in using multiple methods to perform institutional analysis. In this paper we discuss how a multi-method approach she pioneered may be used to study the robustness of social-ecological systems. We synthesize lessons learned from a series of studies on small-scale irrigation systems in which we use comparative case study analysis, experimental methods in lab and field settings, and mathematical models. The accumulated insights show the importance of creating institutional arrangements that t the human ecology within the biophysical constraints of the system. Critical for success is the ability to maintain trust relationships, low levels of inequality and low transaction costs of coordination. Those systems that can leverage biophysical characteristics to help address challenges of monitoring, sanctioning, and coordination have an even higher chance of success."
Resilience Management in Social-Ecological Systems: A Working Hypothesis for a Participatory Approach
(2002) Walker, Brian H.; Carpenter, Stephen; Anderies, John M.; Abel, Nick; Cumming, Graeme S.; Janssen, Marco A.; Lebel, Louis; Norberg, Jon; Peterson, Garry D.; Pritchard, Rusty
"Approaches to natural resource management are often based on a presumed ability to predict probabilistic responses to management and external drivers such as climate. They also tend to assume that the manager is outside the system being managed. However, where the objectives include long-term sustainability, linked social-ecological systems (SESs) behave as complex adaptive systems, with the managers as integral components of the system. Moreover, uncertainties are large and it may be difficult to reduce them as fast as the system changes. Sustainability involves maintaining the functionality of a system when it is perturbed, or maintaining the elements needed to renew or reorganize if a large perturbation radically alters structure and function. The ability to do this is termed 'resilience.' This paper presents an evolving approach to analyzing resilience in SESs, as a basis for managing resilience. We propose a framework with four steps, involving close involvement of SES stakeholders. It begins with a stakeholder-led development of a conceptual model of the system, including its historical profile (how it got to be what it is) and preliminary assessments of the drivers of the supply of key ecosystem goods and services. Step 2 deals with identifying the range of unpredictable and uncontrollable drivers, stakeholder visions for the future, and contrasting possible future policies, weaving these three factors into a limited set of future scenarios. Step 3 uses the outputs from steps 1 and 2 to explore the SES for resilience in an iterative way. It generally includes the development of simple models of the system's dynamics for exploring attributes that affect resilience. Step 4 is a stakeholder evaluation of the process and outcomes in terms of policy and management implications. This approach to resilience analysis is illustrated using two stylized examples."
Resilience, Adaptability, and Transformability in the Goulburn-Broken Catchment, Australia
(2009) Walker, Brian H.; Abel, Nick; Anderies, John M.; Ryan, Paul
"We present a resilience-based approach for assessing sustainability in a sub-catchment of the Murray-Darling Basin in southeast Australia. We define the regional system and identify the main issues, drivers, and potential shocks, then assess both specified and general resilience. The current state of the system is a consequence of changes in resource use. We identify ten known or possible biophysical, economic, and social thresholds operating at different scales, with possible knock-on effects between them. Crossing those thresholds may result in irreversible changes in goods and services generated by the region. Changes in resilience, in general, reflect a pattern of past losses with some signs of recent improvements. Interventions in the system for managing resilience are constrained by current governance, and attention needs to be paid to the roles and capacities of the various institutions. An overview of the current state of the system and likely future trends suggests that transformational change in the region be seriously considered."
Robustness and Large-Scale Change in Social-Ecological Systems: The Hohokam of the Phoenix Basin
(2004) Anderies, John M.
"Societies frequently generate public infrastructure and institutional arrangements in order to mediate short-term environmental fluctuations. However, the social and ecological consequences of activities directed at dealing with short-term disturbances may increase the vulnerability of the system to infrequent events or to long-term change in patterns of short-term variability. Exploring this possibility requires the study of long-term, transformational change. The archaeological record provides many examples of long-term change, such as the Hohokam of the Phoenix Basin. The Hohokam occupied the Phoenix Basin for over a thousand years and developed a complex irrigation society. In the 14th century, Hohokam society experienced a reduction in complexity and scale possibly associated with regional climatic events. A framework for exploring robustness in coupled social-ecological systems is briefly presented and applied to the Hohokam Cultural Sequence. The possibility that the success of the Hohokam irrigation system and associated social structure may have increased their vulnerability to rare climactic shocks such as those that occurred in the 14th century will be explored."
Robustness and Resilience across Scales: Migration and Resource Degradation in the Prehistoric U.S. Southwest
(2011) Anderies, John M.; Hegmon, Michelle
"Migration is arguably one of the most important processes that link ecological and social systems across scales. Humans (and other organisms) tend to move in pursuit of better resources (both social and environmental). Such mobility may serve as a coping mechanism for short-term local-scale dilemmas and as a means of distributing organisms in relation to resources. Movement also may be viewed as a shift to a larger scale; that is, while it may solve short-term local problems, it may simultaneously have longer term and larger scale consequences. We conduct a quantitative analysis using dynamic modeling motivated by an archaeological case study to explore the dynamics that arise when population movement serves as a link between spatial scales. We use the model to characterize how ecological and social factors can lead to spatial variation in resource exploitation, and to investigate the circumstances under which migration may enhance or reduce the capacity of the system to absorb shocks at different scales."
Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems to Spatial and Temporal Variability
(2007) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.; Ostrom, Elinor
"Some social-ecological systems (SESs) have persisted for hundreds of years, remaining in particular configurations that have withstood a variety of natural and social disturbances. Many of these long-lived SESs have adapted their institutions to the particular pattern of variability they have experienced over time as well as to the broader economic, political, and social system in which they are located. Such adaptations alter resource use patterns in time and/or space to maintain the configuration of the SESs. Even well-adapted SESs, however, can become vulnerable to new types of disturbances. Through the analysis of a series of case studies, we begin to characterize different types of adaptations to particular types of variability and explore vulnerabilities that may emerge as a result of this adaptive process. Understanding such vulnerabilities may be critical if our interest is to contribute to the future adaptations of SESs as the more rapid processes of globalization unfold."
Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems: Implications for Public Policy
(2013) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.
From Introduction: "Specifically, we present a framework that seeks to link the notion of the policy process to the policy context and provide a systematic approach to understand the dynamic interaction between the two. The main intent of the framework is to embed the policy process in a dynamically evolving policy context, driven by the feedbacks between biophysical processes and policy processes. Viewed in this way, the policy process can be understood as an emergent property of a dynamic, underlying social-ecological system. The framework is based on ideas from institutional rational choice and an extension of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, familiar to many policy scholars. The main contribution of this article and the framework it presents is to provide ideas, language, and tools to move, when appropriate, from the conception of the policy process shown in Figure 1 (A) in which a fixed policy context generates streams of challenges which are processed by policy subsystems in which human actors and human-made infrastructure interact to the conception pictured in Figure 1 (B) in which policies drive the dynamics of the biophysical system (natural infrastructure) in which they are embedded, generating new information that feeds back into the policy process."
Robustness Trade-offs in Social-Ecological Systems
(2007) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.
"The governance of common-pool resources can be meaningfully examined from the somewhat broader perspective of the governance of social-ecological systems (SESs). Governance of SESs invariably involves trade-offs; trade-offs between different stakeholder objectives, trade-offs between risk and productivity, and trade-offs between short-term and long-term goals. This is especially true in the case of robustness in social-ecological systems -- i.e. the capacity to continue to meet a performance objective in the face of uncertainty and shocks. In this paper we suggest that effective governance under uncertainty must include the ongoing analysis of trade-offs between robustness and performance, and between investments in robustness to different types of perturbations. The nature of such trade-offs will depend on society's perception of risk, the dynamics of the underlying resource, and the governance regime. Specifically, we argue that it is impossible to define robustness in absolute terms. The choice for society is not only whether to invest in becoming robust to a particular disturbance, but rather, what suit of disturbances to address and what set of associated vulnerabilities is it willing to accept as a necessary consequence."
Robustness, Vulnerability, and Adaptive Capacity in Small-Scale Social- Ecological Systems: The Pumpa Irrigation System in Nepal
(2010) Cifdaloz, Oguzhan; Regmi, Ashok; Anderies, John M.; Rodriguez, Armando A.
"Change in freshwater availability is arguably one of the most pressing issues associated with global change. Agriculture, which uses roughly 70% of the total global freshwater supply, figures prominently among sectors that may be adversely affected. Of specific concern are small-scale agricultural systems that make up nearly 90% of all farming systems and produce 40% of agricultural output worldwide. These systems are experiencing a range of novel shocks including increased variability in precipitation and competing demands for water and labor that challenge their capacity to maintain agricultural output. This paper employs a robustness- vulnerability trade-off framework to explore the capacity of such systems to cope with novel shocks and directed change. Motivated by the Pumpa Irrigation System in Nepal, we develop and analyze a simple model of rice-paddy irrigation and use it to demonstrate how institutional arrangements may, in becoming very well tuned to cope with specific shocks and manage particular human interactions associated with irrigated agriculture, generate vulnerabilities to novel shocks. This characterization of robustness-vulnerability trade-off relationships is then used to inform policy options to improve the capacity of small-scale irrigation systems to adapt to changes in freshwater availability."
Social Roles and Performance of Social-Ecological Systems: Evidence from Behavioral Lab Experiments
(2015) Pérez, Irene; Yu, David J.; Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.
"Social roles are thought to play an important role in determining the capacity for collective action in a community regarding the use of shared resources. Here we report on the results of a study using a behavioral experimental approach regarding the relationship between social roles and the performance of social-ecological systems. The computer-based irrigation experiment that was the basis of this study mimics the decisions faced by farmers in small-scale irrigation systems. In each of 20 rounds, which are analogous to growing seasons, participants face a two-stage commons dilemma. First they must decide how much to invest in the public infrastructure, e.g., canals and water diversion structures. Second, they must decide how much to extract from the water made available by that public infrastructure. Each round begins with a 60-second communication period before the players make their investment and extraction decisions. By analyzing the chat messages exchanged among participants during the communication stage of the experiment, we coded up to three roles per participant using the scheme of seven roles known to be important in the literature: leader, knowledge generator, connector, follower, moralist, enforcer, and observer. Our study supports the importance of certain social roles (e.g., connector) previously highlighted by several case study analyses. However, using qualitative comparative analysis we found that none of the individual roles was sufficient for groups to succeed, i.e., to reach a certain level of group production. Instead, we found that a combination of at least five roles was necessary for success. In addition, in the context of upstream-downstream asymmetry, we observed a pattern in which social roles assumed by participants tended to differ by their positions. Although our work generated some interesting insights, further research is needed to determine how robust our findings are to different action situations, such as biophysical context, social network, and resource uncertainty."
Sustainable Product Indexing: Navigating the Challenge of Ecolabeling
(2010) Golden, Jay S.; Dooley, K. J.; Anderies, John M.; Thompson, Barton H.; Gereffi, G.; Pratson, L.
"There is growing scientific evidence that improving the sustainability of consumer products can lead to significant gains in global sustainability. Historically, environmental policy has been managed by bureaucracies and institutions in a mechanistic manner; this had led to many early successes. However, we believe that if policy concerning product sustainability is also managed in this way, negative unintended consequences are likely to occur. Thus, we propose a social–ecological systems approach to policy making concerning product sustainability that will lead to more rapid and meaningful progress toward improving the environmental and social impacts of consumer products."
Sustaining the Commons
(Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, 2013) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.
"In this book you will learn about institutions--the rules and norms that guide the interactions among us. Those rules and norms can be found from traffic rules, rules in sports, regulations on when and where alcohol can be consumed, to constitutional rules that define who can become president of the United States of America. Rules and norms guide us to cooperative outcomes of so-called collective action problems. If we rely on voluntary contributions only to get anything done, this may not lead to the best results. But research also shows that coercion of people to comply to strict rules do not necessary lead to good outcomes. What combination of sticks and carrots is needed to be successful to solve collective action problems such as sustaining the commons?"
Synthesis: Vulnerability, Traps, and Transformations—Long-term Perspectives from Archaeology
(2011) Schoon, Michael L.; Fabricius, Christo; Anderies, John M.; Nelson, Margaret C.
"In this synthesis, we hope to accomplish two things: 1) reflect on how the analysis of the new archaeological cases presented in this special feature adds to previous case studies by revisiting a set of propositions reported in a 2006 special feature, and 2) reflect on four main ideas that are more specific to the archaeological cases: i) societal choices are influenced by robustness-vulnerability trade-offs, ii) there is interplay between robustness-vulnerability trade-offs and robustness-performance trade-offs, iii) societies often get locked in to particular strategies, and iv) multiple positive feedbacks escalate the perceived cost of societal change. We then discuss whether these lock-in traps can be prevented or whether the risks associated with them can be mitigated. We conclude by highlighting how these long-term historical studies can help us to understand current society, societal practices, and the nexus between ecology and society."
The Topology of Non-Linear Global Carbon Dynamics: From Tipping Points to Planetary Boundaries
(2012) Anderies, John M.; Carpenter, S. R.; Steffen, Will; Rockstrom, Johan
"This paper develops a minimal model of land use and carbon cycle dynamics and explores the relationship between nonlinear dynamics and planetary boundaries. Only the most basic interactions between land cover, terrestrial carbon stocks and atmospheric carbon stocks are considered. The goal is not to predict global carbon dynamics as it occurs in the actual earth system, but rather, to construct a conceptually reasonable representation of a feedback system between dierent carbon stores like that of the actual earth system and use it to explore the topology of the boundaries of what can be called a 'safe operating space' for humans. The analysis of the model illustrates the potential complexity of planetary boundaries and highlights some challenges associated with navigating them."
Toward a Network Perspective of the Study of Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
(2006) Janssen, Marco A.; Bodin, Örjan; Anderies, John M.; Elmqvist, Thomas; Ernstson, Henrik; McAllister, Ryan R.J.; Olsson, Per; Ryan, Paul
"Formal models used to study the resilience of social-ecological systems have not explicitly included important structural characteristics of this type of system. In this paper, we propose a network perspective for social-ecological systems that enables us to better focus on the structure of interactions between identifiable components of the system. This network perspective might be useful for developing formal models and comparing case studies of social-ecological systems. Based on an analysis of the case studies in this special issue, we identify three types of social-ecological networks: (1) ecosystems that are connected by people through flows of information or materials, (2) ecosystem networks that are disconnected and fragmented by the actions of people, and (3) artificial ecological networks created by people, such as irrigation systems. Each of these three archytypal social-ecological networks faces different problems that influence its resilience as it responds to the addition or removal of connections that affect its coordination or the diffusion of system attributes such as information or disease."
Towards A Theoretical Model of Urban Growth
(2009) Murillo, D.; Anderies, John M.; Castillo-Chavez, C.
"The overwhelming trend is for urban areas to grow. The challenge is to accentuate the positive impacts of this growth (innovation, art, wealth, etc) while mitigating the negative burdens (crime, pollution, poverty, loss of biodiversity, etc). However, this challenge is complicated by the interconnected physical, biological and social issues. There are several studies on just one aspect of this problem, but we propose a more encompassing approach by looking at the interplay between institutions and ecological processes (topography, economics, etc) using both computational and analytical (mathematical equations) approaches. We used simplified equations to build an intuition towards a more comprehensive modeling framework."
Transformation of Resource Management Institutions Under Globalization: The Case of Songgye Community Forests in South Korea
(2013) Yu, David J.; Anderies, John M.; Lee, Dowon; Pérez, Irene
"The context in which many self-governing commons systems operate will likely be significantly altered as globalization processes play out over the next few decades. Such dramatic changes will induce some systems to fail and subsequently transform rather than merely adapt. Despite this foreseeable trend, the research on globalization-induced transformations of social-ecological systems (SESs) is still underexplored. This study seeks to help fill this gap by exploring patterns of transformation in SESs and the question of what factors help explain the persistence of cooperation in the use of common-pool resources through transformative change. Analyzing 89 forest commons in South Korea that experienced such transformations, we find the following: 1) two broader types of transformation are observed, cooperative and non-cooperative; 2) two properties of social connectedness within forest organization, the number of user groups (villages) and the ratio of cross-institutional links, are associated with the extent to which user groups maintain cooperation through transformation; 3) the ratio of cross institutional links is positively associated with cooperative transformations while number of user groups is negatively associated with the same outcome; and 4) biophysical conditions of the location of user groups may have aected the type of social connectedness that developed in the region."
Transformation of Resource Management Institutions Under Globalization: The Case of Songgye Community Forests in South Korea
(2014) Yu, David J.; Anderies, John M.; Lee, Dowon; Perez, Irene
"The context in which many self-governed commons systems operate will likely be significantly altered as globalization processes play out over the next few decades. Such dramatic changes will induce some systems to fail and subsequently to be transformed, rather than merely adapt. Despite this possibility, research on globalization-induced transformations of social-ecological systems (SESs) is still underdeveloped. We seek to help fill this gap by exploring some patterns of transformation in SESs and the question of what factors help explain the persistence of cooperation in the use of common-pool resources through transformative change. Through the analysis of 89 forest commons in South Korea that experienced such transformations, we found that there are two broad types of transformation, cooperative and noncooperative. We also found that two system-level properties, transaction costs associated group size and network diversity, may affect the direction of transformation. SESs with smaller group sizes and higher network diversity may better organize cooperative transformations when the existing system becomes untenable."
An Uncommon Scholar of the Commons
(2012) Folke, Carl; Anderies, John M.; Gunderson, Lance; Janssen, Marco A.
"We wish to dedicate this midyear editorial and issue of Ecology and Society to Elinor (Lin) Ostrom who died 12 June from pancreatic cancer at the age of 78 years. Lin was a pioneer in many ways and was incredibly impressive in breaking through many barriers on her way to a remarkable set of life achievements."
Understanding the Dynamics of Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems: Human Behavior, Institutions, and Regulatory Feedback
(2014) Anderies, John M.
"I present a general mathematical modeling framework that can provide a foundation for the study of sustainability in social ecological systems (SESs). Using basic principles from feedback control and a sequence of specific models from bioeconomics and economic growth, I outline several mathematical and empirical challenges associated with the study of sustainability of SESs. These challenges are categorized into three classes: 1) the social choice of performance measures, 2) uncertainty, and 3) collective action. Finally, I present some opportunities for combining stylized dynamical systems models with empirical data on human behavior and biophysical systems to address practical challenges for the design of effective governance regimes (policy feedbacks) for highly uncertain natural resource systems."
Weak Feedbacks, Governance Mismatches, and the Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems: An Analysis of the Southwest Nova Scotia Lobster Fishery with Comparison to Maine
(2014) Barnett, Allain J.; Anderies, John M.
"The insights in Governing the Commons have provided foundational ideas for commons research in the past 23 years. However, the cases that Elinor Ostrom analyzed have been exposed to new social, economic, and ecological disturbances. What has happened to these cases since the 1980s? We reevaluated one of Ostrom’s case studies, the lobster and groundfishery of Port Lameron, Southwest Nova Scotia (SWNS). Ostrom suggested that the self-governance of this fishery was fragile because the government did not recognize the rights of resource users to organize their own rules. In the Maine lobster fishery, however, the government formalized customary rules and decentralized power to fishing ports. We applied the concepts of feedback, governance mismatches, and the robustness of social-ecological systems to understand the pathway of institutional change in Port Lameron. We revisited the case of Port Lameron using marine harvesters’ accounts collected from participant observation, informal interviews and surveys, and literature on fisheries policy and ecology in SWNS and Maine. We found that the government’s failure to recognize the customary rights of harvesters to organize has weakened feedback between the operational level, where resource users interact with the resource, and the collective-choice level, where agents develop rules to influence the behavior of resource users. This has precipitated governance mismatches, which have led harvesters to believe that the decision-making process is detrimental to their livelihoods. Thus, harvesters rarely participate in decision making and resist regulatory change. In Maine, harvesters can influence decisions through participation, but there is a trade-off. With higher influence in decisions, captains have co-opted the decision-making process. Nevertheless, we suggest that the fisheries of SWNS are more vulnerable to social-ecological change because of weaker feedbacks than in Maine. Finally, we have discussed the potential benefits of polycentricity to both fisheries."