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Modelling social-ecological transformation

Steven LadeStockholm Resilience CentreMontpellier, 8 October 2013

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Social-ecological systems

Human behaviour

Naturalresources

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Adaptation and Transformation

• Adaptation: small changes in an SES that reflect the ability of actors “to learn, combine experience and knowledge, and adjust [their] responses” (Folke 2010)

• Transformation: drastic change into a different type of system

?

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Examples of transformations

• Changes in regional tax structures -> farming to suburbanisation (Folke 2010)

• Loss of arctic sea ice -> transformation of geopolitical and economic feedbacks among Arctic nations (Folke 2010)

• Farming -> Ecotourism in Zimbabwe (Cumming, 1999)• Transformation to ecosystem-based management (Swedish

lake, Great Barrier Reef) (Olsson 2004, 2008)• Water system innovations for the development of dryland

agro-ecosystems (Enfors, 2012)

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Resilience

• Persistence: “The ability of a system to withstand shocks.”• Adaptability: “The capacity of actors in a system to

influence resilience.”• Transformability: “The capacity to transform the stability

landscape itself in order to become a different kind of system, to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable.” (Folke 2010)

“Resilience is the long-term capacity of a system to deal with change and continue to develop” (SRC website)

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Outline

• How can we model adaptation and transformation?• Traditional dynamical systems approaches not enough

1. Network theory; adaptive and dynamic networks2. SES framework of Ostrom3. Power and agency Tentative framework for modelling social-ecological

transformation

Biggs et al. (2012)Walker et al. (2004)

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SRC Research Insight #1

Enfors, Global Environmental Change, 2013

Descriptive frameworks

• Per Olsson’s 3 phases of transformation

• Attractors and development trajectories

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Research questions

1. How resilient is a social-ecological system?2. What processes/mechanisms/feedbacks contribute to the

resilience of a social-ecological system?3. How do social-ecological systems transform from one state

to another? What factors drive this transformation?4. What development trajectories can a social-ecological

system follow? Can these trajectories be altered? How?• Initially, not predictive: represent and evaluating knowledge• Later, could create ‘null hypotheses’

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Structure

• Transformations involve reorganisation• New roles, new interactions, new governance structures,

new social norms• Difficult to capture in dynamical systems framework:

require new processes or even new state variables

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Networks

Adaptation

Transformation

?

?

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Dynamic/adaptive networks

• Dynamic networks (social network analysis): statistical tests• Adaptive networks (physics): Mathematical properties and

phase transition

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SES-framework

• Developed by the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and collaborators

• A framework for comparing case studies on with respect to which variables are important for successful SES outcomes

• We can identify three important types of nodes• Links will be interactions between them• The SES framework identifies properties of these nodes to

which we should pay attentionGovernance actors

User

Resource system

Elinor Ostrom

Maja Schlüter

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Example: Poverty trap

Resource system

Governance system

User (Harvester)

Prov

isio

ning Extraction

Reproduction

(low) Resource level

(low) Income

(low) Policy action

+

-

+

Poverty trap

Prov

isio

ning Extraction

Reproduction

(high) Income

(high) Policy action

RuleEnforcem

ent

Mon

itorin

g

(high) Resource level+

+

-

-

-

Well-functioning system

escape from trap?

descent into trap?

Jamila Haider NandaWijermans

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Power

• A critical aspect of a poverty trap is that the resource users lack the power to change their circumstances

• Resilience thinking often criticised for neglecting power, agency, equity

• Power can operate in many different ways

• Include rewiring rate to represent power: ability of an actor to modify links in which they are participating

Gaventa, Institute of development studies, 2006

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Poverty trap with powerPr

ovis

ioni

ng Extraction

Reproduction

(low) Resource level

(low) Income

(low) Policy action

Prov

isio

ning Extraction

Reproduction

(high) Income

(high) Policy action

RuleEnforcem

ent

Mon

itorin

g

(high) Resource level

G rewiring (low)

U rewiring (low)

G rewiring (med)

U rewiring (high) +

-

+

-

Extortion

-

Generationalforgetting

-

-

+

-

-

+ +

Lobb

ying

+

Generationalforgetting

-

escape from trap?

descent into trap?

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Rules for link change

? Links change at random (at actor’s rewiring rate)? Actors make those link changes they expect to be beneficial

for them (ending in a kind of Nash equilibrium)

• Also need dynamical equations for state variablesdIncome/dt = …

dResourceLevel/dt = …

Rules for node dynamics

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Descent into a poverty trap

(low) Resource level

(low) Income

(low) Policy action

(high) Income

(high) Policy action

(high) Resource level

G rewiring (low)

U rewiring (low)

G rewiring (med)

U rewiring (high)

Generationalforgetting

Extortion-

-

Extraction-

Prov

isio

ning

+

RuleEnforcem

ent

-

Mon

itorin

g

-

+

-

Reproduction

+

Lobb

ying

+

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Resilience

Persistence: Eigenvalues/return time

Adaptability: power of an actor

Transformability: network-level ability to re-configure system.

– Number of link changes required to reach basin of attraction of another network configuration?

– Probability of endogenous transformation?

Prov

isio

ning Extraction

Reproduction

(low) Resource level

(low) Income

(low) Policy action G rewiring (low)

U rewiring (low)

Generationalforgetting

Extortion

+

-

+

+ -

-

-

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Caveats

This modelling framework so far does not incorporate• Diversity of actors• Adaptive management: willingness to experiment• Conceptual/cognitive shifts• Transformation within organisations

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Next steps

• Make appropriate dynamical rules for (an initial subset of) link and node dynamics

• Apply to appropriate case or stylised case

Other work• Social-ecological regime shifts

– In a simple theoretical model of resource and extractors– In the Baltic Sea

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General resilience

• Diversity• Modularity• Openness• Reserves• Feedbacks• Nestedness• Monitoring• Leadership• Trust

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Conclusions

Challenge Potential solution

Structure Networks

Dynamics of structure Dynamic/adaptive networks

Multi-scale and multi-type (“multiplex”) SES framework

Power and agency Rewiring rate for each actor

Process-based dynamical model Dynamical systems/generalised modelling

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SES-LINK

Maja Schlüter Jamila HaiderNanda Wijermans Kirill OrachSteven Lade

Exploring the roles of linkages and feedbacks in social-ecological systems using theoretical models

and grounded case studies