Browsing by Author "Cox, Michael"

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2012 Household Questionnaire: Snowmelt Dependent Systems in the United States and Kenya
(2012) Evans, Tom; Cox, Michael; McCord, Paul
"Within water-scarce environments, household characteristics such as family size, income, dependence on markets, and influence of external agents, among others, interact with the biophysical environment to produce socio-hydrological outcomes. Livelihood decisions and outcomes not only are dependent on socio-economic factors such as proximity of employment sources and the number of individuals to tend to farming operations, they are also tied to periodicity of rainfall and the reliability of surface water to maintain livelihood operations. As a result, an understanding of both social and biophysical characteristics is essential when examining coupled outcomes within water-scarce environments. In the Mount Kenya region, livelihoods are heavily dependent on the availability of water, whether through rainfall or surface water. To manage this essential resource, irrigation projects have been established on the western and north-western slopes of the mountain. The management committees of these irrigation projects determine water availability during seasonal dry periods, enforce penalties for water misuse, make repairs to damaged infrastructure, and collect membership and maintenance fees. The ability of the irrigation projects to reliably deliver water is essential in determining the agricultural performance of the member households. The 2012 household questionnaire was designed to understand household characteristics, seasonal water availability, irrigation project management, and, most importantly, how these forces combine to create socio-hydrological outcomes. Such outcomes include household food security, agricultural sustainability, and appropriate water use. The 2012 household survey was administered within five formal irrigation projects which used pipe infrastructure and three formal irrigation projects which relied on direct water extraction from rivers rather than pipe infrastructure. A total of 315 households were visited within the eight irrigation projects."
2012 Manager Questionnaire: Snowmelt Dependent Systems in the United States and Kenya
(2012) Evans, Tom; Cox, Michael; McCord, Paul
"Within water-scarce environments, household characteristics such as family size, income, dependence on markets, and influence of external agents, among others, interact with the biophysical environment to produce socio-hydrological outcomes. Livelihood decisions and outcomes not only are dependent on socio-economic factors such as proximity of employment sources and the number of individuals to tend to farming operations, they are also tied to periodicity of rainfall and the reliability of surface water to maintain livelihood operations. As a result, an understanding of both social and biophysical characteristics is essential when examining coupled outcomes within water-scarce environments. In the Mount Kenya region, livelihoods are heavily dependent on the availability of water, whether through rainfall or surface water. To manage this essential resource, irrigation projects have been established on the western and north-western slopes of the mountain. The management committees of these irrigation projects determine water availability during seasonal dry periods, enforce penalties for water misuse, make repairs to damaged infrastructure, and collect membership and maintenance fees. The ability of the irrigation projects to reliably deliver water is essential in determining the agricultural performance of the member households. The 2012 manager questionnaire was administered to the chairperson of each irrigation project. It was designed to understand attributes of the irrigation projects (such as age of the infrastructure and membership fees), land and water assets of the irrigation project members, agricultural activities taking place within the irrigation project, and the rules and norms that exist within the irrigation project. Questions concerning the rules and norms represented the majority of manager survey questions, as the inner workings of the irrigation projects are revealed through examination of monitoring structures, monetary penalties, participation in project meetings, distribution of water during low flow periods, and coordination with other irrigation projects. The 2012 manager survey was administered within eight irrigation projects."
Advancing a Diagnostic Approach to Addressing Environmental Problems
(2010) Cox, Michael
"Social-ecological systems exhibit patterns across multiple levels along spatial, temporal, and functional scales. The outcomes that are produced in these systems result from complex, non-additive interactions between different types of social and biophysical components, some of which are common to many systems, and some of which are relatively unique to a particular system. These properties, along with the mostly non-experimental nature of the analysis, make it difficult to construct theories regarding the sustainability of social-ecological systems.This paper builds on previous work that has initiated a diagnostic approach to facilitate analysis of these systems. The process of diagnosis involves asking a series of questions of a system at increasing levels of specificity based on the answers to previous questions. The answer to each question further unpacks the complexity of a system, allowing an analyst to explore patterns of interactions that produce outcomes. An important feature of this approach is the use of multiple levels of analysis. As this paper will show, this feature can be used to analyze a diversity of environmental problems. Following this discussion, the implications of such a diagnostic approach for future research and pedagogy in the field of environmental management and policy are explored."
Advancing the Diagnostic Analysis of Environmental Problems
(2011) Cox, Michael
"Social-ecological systems exhibit patterns across multiple levels along spatial, temporal, and functional scales. The outcomes that are produced in these systems result from complex, non-additive interactions between different types of social and biophysical components, some of which are common to many systems, and some of which are relatively unique to a particular system. These properties, along with the mostly non-experimental nature of the analysis, make it difficult to construct theories regarding the sustainability of social-ecological systems. This paper builds on previous work that has initiated a diagnostic approach to the analysis of these systems. The process of diagnosis involves asking a series of questions of a system at increasing levels of specificity based on the answers to previous questions. The answer to each question further unpacks the complexity of a system, allowing an analyst to explore patterns of interactions that produce outcomes. An important feature of this approach is the use of multilevel analysis. This paper explores this concept and introduces another multilevel causation to further develop the diagnostic approach. It demonstrates that these concepts can be used to analyze a diversity of environmental problems."
Balancing Accuracy and Meaning in Common-Pool Resource Theory
(2008) Cox, Michael
"Common-pool resources are managed in complex environments that are amenable to understanding, analysis, and management at multiple levels. This paper develops a heuristic criterion to identify the costs and benefits of adopting various levels of analysis when constructing theory for common-pool resource management. It argues that there is no single optimal level for such analysis. Instead, a trade-off is posed where theories at higher levels tend to be more accurate but less meaningful than theories at lower levels."
A Basic Guide for Empirical Environmental Social Science
(2015) Cox, Michael
"In this paper, I address a gap in the literature on environmental social science by providing a basic rubric for the conduct of empirical research in this interdisciplinary field. Current literature displays a healthy diversity of methods and techniques, but this has also been accompanied by a lack of consistency in the way in which research in this area is done. In part this can be seen as resulting from a lack in supporting texts that would provide a basis for this consistency. Although relevant methods texts do exist, these are not written with this type of research explicitly in mind, and so translating them to this field can be awkward. This paper is designed to fill this gap and enable more consistency in the conduct of empirical environmental social science. Basic types of research designs and methods are covered, as are criteria for evaluating these methods."
Diagnosing Institutional Fit: A Formal Perspective
(2012) Cox, Michael
"I attempt to demonstrate that the concept of institutional fit and the closely related approach of institutional diagnosis can be improved with the process of formalization. In this context, the concept of fit is interpreted as a way of expressing certain theoretical propositions that relate a set of variables with each other and with an outcome. This perspective is demonstrated through the use of the Web Ontology Language to express several 'theories of fit.' Using a formal language to describe types of fit and their associated theories is argued to have much potential for advancing the scientific study of social-ecological systems."
Diagnosing Oceanic Commons: ICCAT and the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna
(2013) Epstein, Graham; Nenadovic, Mateja; Cox, Michael; Boustany, Andre
"The governance of oceanic fisheries is a growing concern in the twenty-first century as their contribution to global food security and livelihoods are threatened by declining stocks. Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (ABFT) is a prominent example of the complexities associated with managing oceanic resources with their extensive range, which includes much of the North-Atlantic and Mediterranean. This wide ranging distribution has led to limited attention from commons theorists that tend to focus on small-scale social ecological systems. In order to explore the fit between theories of the commons developed in small-scale systems, we applied the Social-Ecological Systems Meta-Analysis Database to systematically analyze ABFT governance over a 22 year period by the International Commission on the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna. The results, which focus on the effects of resource characteristics, broadly correspond to expectations from commons theory. Interestingly, however, the addition of resource storage in the form of ABFT ranches appears to be contributing to unsustainable harvests. This stands in contrast to previous findings in the commons literature that storage tends to enhance prospects for sustainable governance. As a result of this finding several alternative hypotheses are identified for future research to consider the conditions under which storage enhances prospects for sustainable governance. Secondary contributions of this study include demonstrating the potential value of linking case studies to a large-n database for the purpose of generating and testing hypotheses, and adding an alternative theoretical perspective with which to study and explore ABFT governance."
Exploring the Dynamics of Social-Ecological Systems: The Case of the Taos Valley Acequias
(2010) Cox, Michael
"This dissertation addresses two primary research questions. First, under what conditions can communities of users sustainably manage natural resources? Second, what types of disturbances are such systems resilient or vulnerable to? To address these questions, this dissertation examines the strengths and vulnerabilities exhibited by communities of irrigating farmers known as acequias in the Taos valley of northern New Mexico. These strengths and vulnerabilities are measured by the acequias‘ abilities to respond to a range of disturbances, including droughts, urbanization, changing demographics, labor markets, state policies, and water transfers. Several analytical approaches and technologies are used, including longitudinal and spatial statistical analysis, institutional analysis, geographic information systems, and remote sensing. Based on the analysis, we can conclude that the acequias have adopted a particular set of social and biophysical properties that enable successful decentralized responses to droughts over time, but which leave them vulnerable to novel disturbances that result from economic growth and development. One implication of these findings is that such communities will likely experience fundamental disruptions to their identity and traditional functions as they are increasingly integrated into a larger socioeconomic system."
Linking Classroom Learning and Research to Advance Ideas about Social-Ecological Resilience
(2015) Ban, Natalie C.; Boyd, Emily; Cox, Michael; Meek, Chanda L.; Schoon, Michael; Villamayor-Tomas, Sergio
"There is an increasing demand in higher education institutions for training in complex environmental problems. Such training requires a careful mix of conventional methods and innovative solutions, a task not always easy to accomplish. In this paper we review literature on this theme, highlight relevant advances in the pedagogical literature, and report on some examples resulting from our recent efforts to teach complex environmental issues. The examples range from full credit courses in sustainable development and research methods to project-based and in-class activity units. A consensus from the literature is that lectures are not sufficient to fully engage students in these issues. A conclusion from the review of examples is that problem-based and project-based, e.g., through case studies, experiential learning opportunities, or real-world applications, learning offers much promise. This could greatly be facilitated by online hubs through which teachers, students, and other members of the practitioner and academic community share experiences in teaching and research, the way that we have done here."
Missing Ecology: Integrating Ecological Perspectives with the Social-Ecological System Framework
(2013) Epstein, Graham; Vogt, Jessica M.; Mincey, Sarah; Cox, Michael; Fischer, Burney
"The social-ecological systems framework was designed to provide a common research tool for interdisciplinary investigations of social-ecological systems. However, its origin in institutional studies of the commons belies its interdisciplinary ambitions and highlights its relatively limited attention to ecology and natural scientific knowledge. This paper considers the biophysical components of the framework and its epistemological foundations as it relates to the incorporation of knowledge from the natural sciences. It finds that the mixture of inductive and deductive reasoning associated with socially-oriented investigations of these systems is lacking on the ecological side, which relies upon induction alone. As a result the paper proposes the addition of a seventh core sub-system to the social-ecological systems framework, ecological rules, which would allow scholars to explicitly incorporate knowledge from the natural sciences for deductive reasoning. The paper shows, through an instructive case study, how the addition of ecological rules can provide a more nuanced description of the factors that contribute to outcomes in social-ecological systems."
The Pathology of Command and Control: A Formal Synthesis
(2016) Cox, Michael
"One of the most important theories in the study of environmental governance and policy is the pathology of command and control, which describes the negative consequences of top-down, technocratic governance of social and ecological systems. However, to date, this theory has been expressed somewhat inconsistently and informally in the literature, even by the seminal works that have established its importance and popularized it. This presents a problem for the sustainability science community if it cannot be sure of the precise details of one of its most important theories. Without such precision, applications and tests of various elements of the theory cannot be conducted reliably to advance the knowledge of environmental governance. I address this problem by synthesizing several seminal works to formalize this theory. The formalization involves the identification of the individual elements of the theory and a diagrammatic description of their relationships with each other that unfold in a series of semi-independent causal paths. Ideally, with such a formalization, scholars can use this theory more reliably and more meaningfully in their future work. I conclude by discussing the implications this theory has for the governance of natural resources."
A Review and Reassessment of Design Principles for Community-based Natural Resource Management: Appendix
(2010) Cox, Michael; Arnold, Gwen; Villamayor Tomás, Sergio
"Appendix for the article: 'A Review and Reassessment of Design Principles for Community-based Natural Resource Management.'"
A Review of Design Principles for Community-Based Natural Resource Management
(2010) Cox, Michael; Arnold, Gwen; Villamayor Tomás, Sergio
"In 1990, Elinor Ostrom proposed eight design principles, positing them to characterize robust institutions for managing common-pool resources such as forests or fisheries. Since then, many studies have explicitly or implicitly evaluated these design principles. We analyzed 91 such studies to evaluate the principles empirically and to consider what theoretical issues have arisen since their introduction. We found that the principles are well supported empirically and that several important theoretical issues warrant discussion. We provide a reformulation of the design principles, drawing from commonalities found in the studies."
The SESMAD Project
(2013) Cox, Michael
"This article introduces the Social-ecological systems meta-analysis database (SESMAD) project, which is the project behind the case studies and synthetic articles contained in this special issue of the International Journal of the Commons. SESMAD is an internationally collaborative meta-analysis project that builds on previous seminally synthetic work on small-scale common-pool resource systems conducted at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. This project is guided by the following research question: can the variables found to be important in explaining outcomes on small-scale systems be scaled up to explain outcomes in large-scale environmental governance? In this special issue we report on our findings thus far through a set of case studies of large-scale environmental governance, a paper that describes our conceptual advances, and a paper that compares these five case studies to further examine our central research question."
Spatially Explicit Ontology for the Institutional Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems
(2009) Evans, Tom; Cox, Michael; López, Maria Claudia
"Dynamics within complex social-ecological systems (SES) are the product of a diverse array of socio-economic and biophysical processes. The spatial structure of these systems often influences the management of resources (e.g. forests, water, fish) including the institutional rules that are developed governing how these systems can be used. Prior work has developed frameworks to describe SESs to address what institutional contexts make SESs resilient or sustainable, but without articulating the spatial relationships inherent in these systems. The objective of this paper is to develop an ontology designed to describe the actors, resources and relationships within an SES, with an emphasis on the spatial relationships inherent in human environment interactions. This ontology can be used to explore what spatial structures contribute to the resilience or sustainability of SESs. Many elements of SESs have explicitly spatial characteristics that in part affect the dynamics within those systems such as the proximity of actors to a resource, or the size of land holdings. The ontology presented here emphasizes the actors and resources in a system as well as the spatial characteristics and relationships that relate to the institutional factors affecting system dynamics. A series of three distinct case studies are used to demonstrate how this ontological framework can be applied to specific SESs. While the presentation here focuses on community level dynamics, the general framework presented here is broadly applicable to a wider array of analytical scales from local to regional level dynamics."
Understanding Large Social-Ecological Systems: Introducing the SESMAD Project
(2014) Cox, Michael
"This article introduces the Social-ecological systems meta-analysis database (SESMAD) project, which is the project behind the case studies and synthetic articles contained in this special issue of the International Journal of the Commons. SESMAD is an internationally collaborative meta-analysis project that builds on previous seminally synthetic work on small-scale common-pool resource systems conducted at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. This project is guided by the following research question: can the variables found to be important in explaining outcomes on small-scale systems be scaled up to explain outcomes in large-scale environmental governance? In this special issue we report on our findings thus far through a set of case studies of large-scale environmental governance, a paper that describes our conceptual advances, and a paper that compares these five case studies to further examine our central research question."