Red and green loops help uncover missing feedbacks in a coral reef social–ecological system

Abstract

Social–ecological systems (SES) exhibit complex cause‐and‐effect relationships. Capturing, interpreting, and responding to signals that indicate changes in ecosystems is key for sustainable management in SES. Breaks in this signal–response chain, when feedbacks are missing, will allow change to continue until a point when abrupt ecological surprises may occur. In these situations, societies and local ecosystems can often become uncoupled. In this paper, we demonstrate how the red loop–green loop (RL–GL) concept can be used to uncover missing feedbacks and to better understand past social–ecological dynamics. Reinstating these feedbacks in order to recouple the SES may ultimately create more sustainable systems on local scales. The RL–GL concept can uncover missing feedbacks through the characterization of SES dynamics along a spectrum of human resource dependence. Drawing on diverse qualitative and quantitative data sources, we classify SES dynamics throughout the history of Jamaican coral reefs along the RL–GL spectrum. We uncover missing feedbacks in red‐loop and red‐trap scenarios from around the year 600 until now. The Jamaican coral reef SES dynamics have moved between all four dynamic states described in the RL–GL concept: green loop, green trap, red loop and red trap. We then propose mechanisms to guide the current unsustainable red traps back to more sustainable green loops, involving mechanisms of seafood trade and ecological monitoring. By gradually moving away from seafood exports, Jamaica may be able to return to green‐loop dynamics between the local society and their locally sourced seafood. We discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of this proposed intervention and give indications of why an export ban may insure against future missing feedbacks and could prolong the sustainability of the Jamaican coral reef ecosystem. Our approach demonstrates how the RL–GL approach can uncover missing feedbacks in a coral reef SES, a way the concept has not been used before. We advocate for how the RL–GL concept in a feedback setting can be used to synthesize various types of data and to gain an understanding of past, present and future sustainability that can be applied in diverse social–ecological settings. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Multiple social network influences can generate unexpected environmental outcomes

“…Feedbacks underlie the persistence of ecologically or societally undesirable or desirable conservation states e.g. 32 , 33 , and incorporating human behavior into environmental systems research (and vice versa) can reveal a richer diversity of feedbacks than either social or ecological research alone 34 . Identifying interactions between multiple elements or processes 31 can, for example, inform conservation initiatives that explicitly focus on reinforcing or dampening feedbacks of biodiversity loss 29 .…”

Making the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration a Social-Ecological Endeavour

“…Parameters and feedbacks have received a lot of attention in restoration, not least because feedbacks (in combination with slow variables) fundamentally shape transitions between alternative ecosystem states [24,93]. Social-ecological system design goes beyond such feedbacks and explicitly points to the intertwined nature of social and ecological system components.…”

How a water-resources crisis highlights social-ecological disconnects

“…Damming predictions (Boretti and Rosa, 2019) and realworld crises on many of the world's continents seem to be increasing. We propose that civic water resource management could benefit from the application of a recently developed social-ecological framework, which highlights the importance of feedbacks between humans and ecosystems (Cumming et al, 2014;Hamann et al, 2015;Blythe et al, 2017, Dajka et al, 2020. This framework has not previously been applied within the realm of water resources management and may prove a useful tool in planning for better management and, ultimately, future resilience.…”

“…Such ecological decline can progress unnoticed if the signalresponse chain between the ecosystem and society is masked (e.g. missing feedback fostered by lack of ecological knowledge; Dajka et al, 2020). Both traps can lead to ecosystem and resource degradation if the traps are not addressed (Cumming et al, 2014).…”

“…The RL-GL concept has been applied to a handful of national-level systems, including Sweden (Cumming et al 2014) and Jamaica (Dajka et al 2020). Sweden experienced a transition from green loop to red loop.…”