Conference Agenda

This panel is the second part of the panel “Overcoming the dichotomy of humans and nature in Earth System Governance research “. There has been considerable effort invested in developing frameworks to study Earth System Governance, creating a landscape of frameworks that is not easy to navigate. It is not evident how this multiplicity has helped to advance the field as a whole or whether this hampers the progress and cumulation of knowledge. In this panel, we open a discussion about how to navigate this diversity in terms of what frameworks fit which application, and how we can put them in dialogue. We will start this panel with an evaluation of six leading frameworks aiming to enable a ‘deep diagnosis’ of social-ecological systems for understanding the phenomenon of interest. This is followed by a study using the Social-Ecological Action Situations (SE-AS) framework combined with a morphogenetic/morphostatic approach to explaining change and no-change in social-ecological transformations. The next presentation will show a modeling approach to understanding agricultural innovations as social-ecological phenomena. The panel will close with a presentation about a comparison of the SE-AS framework and the Network of Actions Situations (NAS) framework applied to a comparative case study about the governance of trade-off situations in US National Parks. The four presentations as well as the experiences of the panel participants will inspire a discussion on how to navigate the different frameworks and which framework could be useful for which kind of research questions. The panel will be complemented by an innovative session exploring the different uses of the SE-AS framework and providing room for more in-depth discussions on navigating frameworks in smaller groups.

The complex and interdisciplinary nature of socio-ecological systems (SES) has led to numerous efforts to develop frameworks capturing the structural and processual elements of SES. The frameworks aim to enable a ‘deep diagnosis’ of SES for understanding the phenomenon of interest. We evaluate six leading frameworks, i.e., Institutional Analysis and Development framework (IAD), Polycentric Governance, Networks of Action Situations (NAS) approach, Ecology of Games (EG) framework, Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) framework, and the nascent Social-Ecological Action Situations (SE-AS) framework. The goal of the evaluation is two-fold: 1) Outlining the main tenets, origins, and supporting literature with a specific focus on how the individual frameworks capture social-ecological dynamics and integrate contextual factors; and 2) Highlighting the strengths of each framework in studying complex SES. Our discussion provides first, some reflections on what the different frameworks could learn from each other, and second, suggestions on which framework could be useful for studying specific kinds of research questions of complex SES.

Studies on social-ecological transformations have explained change and no-change at systemic level through notions such as tipping points, basins of attractions, and resilience. However, when it comes to analysing agency frameworks focus on key agents of change, such as institutional entrepreneurs. This approach overlooks the contribution of agents that keep the system from changing, which constitutes a critical analytical gap due to the limited success of societies at transforming social-ecological systems. We advance an analytical strategy that tackles this gap by explicitly accounting for vested interests attached to agents’ positionality and their influence on their courses of action—which contribute to either change or no-change. We draw from social realism’s morphogenetic approach to analytically distinguish between material and ideational interests, disentangle situations that bring them about, and account for their relations. We rely on the social-ecological action situations framework to track agents’ interaction and outcomes. This combined approach renders explicit: a) the constitution of material interests by both ecosystemic processes and social structures; b) the relations of compatibility/incompatibility between groups’ material interest; and c) the role of social-ecological interaction in shaping discursive relations of compatibility/incompatibility among actor groups.

We illustrate the usefulness of this approach by applying it to the well-documented case of governance transformation of Chilean small-scale fisheries. We revisited existing literature and conducted interviews with experts and key actors from fishermen’s organisations, academia, government, and a private environmental consultancy. We used qualitative text analysis and mapping of social-ecological action situations to analyse the emergence of material and ideational interests of relevant actors, the relations of compatibility/incompatibility between them, and track interaction’s outcomes. Our analysis focused on the following processes:

The analytical approach used in this study advances the explanatory capacity of the social-ecological transformation scholarship by explicitly accounting for material and ideational reasons to act, which are necessary to explain both change and reproduction. It also helps formulating causal and constitutive explanations. The former accounts for social activity, and the latter for the emergent properties of social-ecological organization. Together they help disentangling co-evolution of social-ecological systems. We close the study by discussing implications for other social-ecological problems.

Agricultural innovations are examples of dynamic, cross-scalar processes for agricultural development, improved productivity, and environmental sustainability. Such innovation systems can be seen as agents (individuals, organizations, institutions) operating within a changing ecological environment. However, most models of innovation focus on social aspects of innovation processes. Such models do not adequately incorporate interactions within social and ecological components (within and across scales) within which innovations often occur.

Our modelling approach focused on developing an empirically informed, stylized model of innovation, that builds on a contextual case study of agricultural innovation in Mali, West Africa. Our research questions were: i) How does inclusion of social-ecological interactions within innovation affect model outcomes of food security and income inequality? ii) How do two alternate mechanisms of innovation: foreign aid-driven exogenous mechanism and community-driven endogenous mechanism influence income inequality and food insecurity outcomes? In our model, innovation outcomes emerge from (inter-)actions of farmers in their social-ecological environments. To ensure adequate representation of both social and ecological dynamics within the model, we used the framework of social-ecological action situations (SE-AS) (Schlüter et al., 2019) as a diagnostic tool to identify the key social as well as ecological actors and their interactions. We identified three social-ecological and ecological-ecological interactions as critical dynamics that needed to be incorporated into the model including 1) the effect of external drivers (such as droughts, climate risks) on capital allocation by donors 2) the effect climate risk perception on producers for crop cultivation, innovation belief and desire formation 3) soil fertility regulation through ecological feedback.

Our results demonstrates that the model outcomes changes with the inclusion of social-ecological interactions such as climate risk perception, crop choice based on climate risk, formation of innovation beliefs and desires, and regulatory ecological feedback. The exogenous mechanism of social-ecological innovation can lead to higher levels of food security but no significant change in income inequality. Endogenous mechanism can lead to higher food security as well as higher income inequality. We highlight how Social-Ecological Action Situation (SE-AS) framework can be an effective diagnostic tool for the integration of social-ecological interactions for social-ecological system models and assist in modelling decisions such as establishing system boundaries, choice of key processes and actors, selection of theories, and use of empirical evidence. Further, the focus on actors, their interactions, and subsequent actions in the SE-AS framework fits well with agent-based model approach that focuses on agents, their actions, and interactions leading to emergent outcomes.

‘Action situations’ have become central in various frameworks for studying social-ecological systems. This study compares two nascent action situation approaches - the Network of Action Situations (NAS) approach and the Social-Ecological Action Situations (SE-AS) framework – to analyse the governance of trade-off situations between Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The NAS approach conceptualizes a network of social action situations – events, venues, or physically interdependent instances of decision-making – to unpack conditioning factors and roles of multiple, interrelated decision-making situations and to understand how they collectively produce resource use or other policy outcomes of interest. The SE-AS framework integrates also social-ecological action situations and ecological action situations into the network to overcome the dichotomy between the social and the ecological, and thus to better account for the intertwined nature of social-ecological systems.

I use a comparative case study research design for two National Parks in the United States to compare the two action situation approaches. The first case is a trade-off situation about a uranium mine adjacent to the Grand Canyon National Park contaminating land and water. The second case is a proposed withdrawal of oil and gas development in a zone around Chaco Culture National Historical Park which would threaten the income of local (tribal) communities but protect the environment, landscape, and archaeological sites in this area. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews in 2022 and 2023 and document analysis. Data were analysed through qualitative content analysis.

The results show that the NAS approach allows for tackling governance challenges by analysing the role of institutions and of hierarchical, competitive, or cooperative connections between social action situations on the outcome of interest in detail. However, the SE-AS framework emphasizes the dynamics of social-ecological interactions and their emergent outcomes differently. This enables to adopt a coevolutionary perspective which allows a rethinking of how decision-making is conceptualised and practiced and could change the understanding of their coevolutionary dynamics and emergent outcomes in trade-off situations with strong implications for sustainable development.