Regime shifts in a social-ecological system

Lade, Steven J.; Tavoni, Alessandro; Levin, Simon A.; Schlüter, Maja

doi:10.1007/s12080-013-0187-3

Cited by 189 publications

(173 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…At the same time, the finiteness, structure and dynamics of resources and the ecosystems they are part of are often neglected in studies of common-pool resource use. This can lead to misleading results if the system is truly coupled, as demonstrated here and in [41]. In our model, a community of harvesters exploits a shared resource such as water from a groundwater aquifer.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

2016

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Sustainable use of common-pool resources such as fish, water or forests depends on the cooperation of resource users that restrain their individual extraction to socially optimal levels. Empirical evidence has shown that under certain social and biophysical conditions, self-organized cooperation in the commons can evolve. Global change, however, may drastically alter these conditions. We assess the robustness of cooperation to environmental variability in a stylized model of a community that harvests a shared resource. Community members follow a norm of socially optimal resource extraction, which is enforced through social sanctioning. Our results indicate that both resource abundance and a small increase in resource variability can lead to collapse of cooperation observed in the no-variability case, while either scarcity or large variability have the potential to stabilize it. The combined effects of changes in amount and variability can reinforce or counteract each other depending on their size and the initial level of cooperation in the community. If two socially separate groups are ecologically connected through resource leakage, cooperation in one can destabilize the other. These findings provide insights into possible effects of global change and spatial connectivity, indicating that there is no simple answer as to their effects on cooperation and sustainable resource use.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

2016

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“…As Tavoni et al (80) show, maintenance of the norm in their model is possible only if the number of cooperators can be elevated above some threshold level; thus the model may exhibit multiple stationary states, a cooperative one in which the norm is enforced and a noncooperative one in which the resource collapses to much lower levels. A corollary of this result is that cooperation and the maintenance of a commons may be fragile, subject to collapse as external parameters vary (3,81). The results also have an interesting parallel in the way international agreements are often structured, dependent on reaching a threshold level of signatories before they become activated (82).…”

Section: Social Norms and Group Formationmentioning

confidence: 89%

Public goods in relation to competition, cooperation, and spite

Levin

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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104

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Public goods and common-pool resources are fundamental features of biological and social systems, and pose core challenges in achieving sustainability; for such situations, the immediate interests of individuals and the societies in which they are embedded are in potential conflict, involving game-theoretic considerations whose resolution need not serve the collective good. Evolution has often confronted such dilemmas-e.g., in bacterial biofilms-in the challenges of cancer, in nitrogen fixation and chelation, in the production of antibiotics, and in collective action problems across animal groups; there is much to learn from the Darwinian resolution of these situations for how to address problems our societies face today. Addressing these problems involves understanding the emergence of cooperative agreements, from reciprocal altruism and insurance arrangements to the social norms and more formal institutions that maintain societies. At the core are the issues of how individuals and societies discount the future and the interests of others, and the degree that individual decisions are influenced by regard for others. Ultimately, as Garrett Hardin suggested, the solution to problems of the commons is in "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon," and hence in how groups of individuals form and how they arrive at decisions that ultimately benefit all.prosociality | collective phenomena | complex adaptive systems

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“…And in fact, they have been linked for a long time (e.g., Ellis 2015). Theoretical and empirical analyses show how intertwined socialecological systems are more than the sum of the ecological or the social or their combination, and provide new explanations to regime shifts and tipping points (e.g., Liu et al 2007, Bodin and Tengö 2012, Lade et al 2013 The resilience approach, as part of complex systems understanding (e.g., Holland 1995, Cillier 2008, emphasizes that systems of humans and nature exhibit nonlinear dynamics, thresholds, uncertainty, and surprise, and in particular how periods of gradual change interplay with periods of rapid change and how such dynamics interact across temporal and spatial scales (e.g., Holling 2002, Berkes et al 2003). Complex systems have multiple attractors and there may be shifts from one attractor on a certain pathway to a new attractor and a contrasting pathway (stability domain or basin of attraction).…”

Section: Resilience and Complex Adaptive Social-ecological Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience (Republished)

Folke¹

2016

E&S

668

393

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ABSTRACT.Resilience thinking in relation to the environment has emerged as a lens of inquiry that serves a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. Resilience is about cultivating the capacity to sustain development in the face of expected and surprising change and diverse pathways of development and potential thresholds between them. The evolution of resilience thinking is coupled to socialecological systems and a truly intertwined human-environment planet. Resilience as persistence, adaptability, and transformability of complex adaptive social-ecological systems is the focus, clarifying the dynamic and forward-looking nature of the concept. Resilience thinking emphasizes that social-ecological systems, from the individual, to community, to society as a whole, are embedded in the biosphere. The biosphere connection is an essential observation if sustainability is to be taken seriously. In the continuous advancement of resilience thinking there are efforts aimed at capturing resilience of social-ecological systems and finding ways for people and institutions to govern social-ecological dynamics for improved human well-being, at the local, across levels and scales, to the global. Consequently, in resilience thinking, development issues for human well-being, for people and planet, are framed in a context of understanding and governing complex social-ecological dynamics for sustainability as part of a dynamic biosphere.This invited article is a republication of Folke, C. 2016. "Resilience" of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science

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Regime shifts in a social-ecological system

Cited by 189 publications

References 51 publications

Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

Public goods in relation to competition, cooperation, and spite

Resilience (Republished)

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