Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."
  • Journal Article
    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."