Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems: Implications for Public Policy

Abstract

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."