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Conference Paper The Interface Between Natural and Social Systems(1993) Berkes, Fikret"This is a background paper on the focus area, interface between social and natural systems. Following definitions, the paper attempts to present some perspectives on the linkage between social and natural systems, and to cover some aspects of the state of knowledge about how natural resource systems and social systems interact under different property rights regimes, and how that interaction affects the performance of natural resource systems."Conference Paper Co-Management Across Levels of Organization: Concepts and Methodological Implications(2003) Carlsson, Lars; Berkes, FikretFrom Page 2: "There is a growing literature on social-ecological linkages and sustainable use of natural resources. This research can be divided into two broad categories. The first category consists basically of case studies that reveal the existence of an extremely rich variety of systems of management of common-pool resources. The second type of research sets out to find empirical and theoretical support for the prospects of suggesting, and deliberately building management systems that fulfill well-known criteria for sustainable use (Burger et al., 2001; Berkes and Folke, 2002). In both types of research, the concept and principles of co-management have been an integral part. This paper is based on the presumption that the two lines of research could be merged and synthesized. The paper deals with three broad questions: 1) What is co-management and how should the phenomenon be understood?; 2) What is co-management good for?; and 3) How can real-life instances of co-management be investigated and analyzed?"Conference Paper Can Cross-Scale Linkages Increase the Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems?(2003) Berkes, Fikret"Resilience thinking helps commons researchers to look beyond institutional forms, and ask instead questions regarding the adaptive capacity of social groups and their institutions to deal with stresses as a result of social, political and environmental change. One way to approach this question is to look for informative case studies of change in social-ecological systems and to investigate how societies deal with change. From these cases, one can gain insights and construct principles regarding capacity building to adapt to change and, in turn, to shape change. "A number of examples exist to indicate that cross-scale linkages, both horizontal (across space) and vertical (across levels of organization), speed up learning and communication, thereby improving the ability of a society to buffer change, speed up self-organization, and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation (Lee 1993; Young 1999). This paper will deal with two cases, one involving aboriginal co-management in the Canadian North, and the other, cross-scale management of ocean fisheries."Conference Paper Knowledge, Learning and the Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems(2004) Berkes, Fikret"There are two broadly conceptualized ways in which conservation knowledge may evolve: the depletion crisis model and the ecological understanding model. Regarding the first one, R.E. Johannes argues that developing conservation thought and practice depends on learning that resources are depletable. Before they could develop conservation practice, points out Johannes, fishers of the Pacific islands first had to learn that their natural resources were limited -- but 'they could only have done so by depleting them.' Thus, such learning typically follows a resource crisis, as also seen in the James Bay caribou case and others. Regarding the second mechanism, there is large amount of evidence that suggests that the development of conservation practice often follows the elaboration of environmental knowledge by a group of people, leading to increasingly more sophisticated understanding of the ecosystem in which they dwell. "The adaptive co-management concept may be useful in suggesting a way in which these two mechanisms may be integrated. Adaptive co-management may be defined as a process by which institutional arrangements and ecological knowledge are tested and revised in a dynamic, ongoing, self-organized process of learning-by-doing. Adaptive comanagement combines the dynamic learning characteristic of adaptive management with the linkage characteristic of cooperative management. Local groups can self- organize, learn and adapt through social networks. This self-organizing process of adaptive co-management, facilitated by knowledge development and learning, has the potential to increase the resilience (shock-absorbing capability) of common property systems. Hence, it can be concluded that conservation and management knowledge develops through a combination of long- term ecological understanding and learning from crises and mistakes. It has survival value, as it increases the resilience of integrated socialecological systems to deal with change."