Toward an analytical framework for understanding complex social-ecological systems when conducting environmental impact assessments in South Africa

Bowd, Rebecca; Quinn, Nevil; Kotze, Donovan C.

doi:10.5751/es-07057-200141

Cited by 25 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Environmental, Social, Health … impacts) can be inserted into a single system framework remains quite challenging. While a considerable number of propositions for conceptual frameworks and planning charts exist (Haberl et al, 2009;Binder et al, 2013;Bowd et al, 2015;Ford et al, 2015) offering some insights into the complex social interactions and policy constraints involved, there is little in the way of theoretical development for impact theory. We only studied here the project activity controlled by its socio-economic cost (side costs being related to remediation and mitigation measures) as a driver of ecosystem changes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have not, for example, considered that changes in some receptors can trigger an increase in cost and a decrease in activity. In other words, we have not considered feedbacks between the receptors and cost, because it did not appear clearly how awareness of stakeholders and reactivity of managers could be directly linked to changes in receptors (Binder et al, 2013;Bowd et al, 2015) for which "acceptable" remediation or mitigation measures should have already been considered during the process ( Figure 2B; Drayson and Thompson, 2013). Indeed, stakeholders' awareness depends on many factors, like information or education (Zobrist et al, 2009), and reactivity of managers can be constraints by many other economic and political factors (Ford et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A roadmap for a quantitative ecosystem-based environmental impact assessment

Coston‐Guarini

Guarini²,

Hinz³

et al. 2017

ICES Journal of Marine Science

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A new roadmap for quantitative methodologies of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is proposed, using an ecosystem-based approach. EIA recommendations are currently based on case-by-case rankings, distant from statistical methodologies, and ecological ideas that lack proof of generality or predictive capacities. These qualitative approaches ignore process dynamics, scales of variations and interdependencies and are unable to address societal demands to link socio-economic and ecological processes (e.g. population dynamics). We propose to re-focus EIA around the systemic formulation of interactions between organisms (organized in populations and communities) and their environments but inserted within a strict statistical framework. A systemic formulation allows scenarios to be built that simulate impacts on chosen receptors. To illustrate the approach, we design a minimum ecosystem model that demonstrates nontrivial effects and complex responses to environmental changes and validated with case study. We suggest that an Ecosystem-Based EIA—in which the socio-economic system is an evolving driver of the ecological one—is more promising than a socio-economic-ecological system where all variables are treated as equal. This refocuses the debate on cause-and-effect, processes, identification of essential portable variables, and allows for quantitative comparisons between projects, which is critical in cumulative effects determinations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A roadmap for a quantitative ecosystem-based environmental impact assessment

Coston‐Guarini

Guarini²,

Hinz³

et al. 2017

ICES Journal of Marine Science

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“…The method used in the present investigation has been widely used in various environmental impact assessments in order to identify the main pressures derived from anthropogenic activities. [32]. In this study, the Leopold matrix was taken as a basis for its ease in providing a methodological framework for avoiding arbitrariness that allows for adaptivity to a wide variety of circumstances [33,34].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict and Impacts Generated by the Filming of Discovery Channel’s Reality Series “Naked and Afraid” in the Amazon: A Special Case in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, Ecuador

et al. 2018

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Conflicts and ecological impacts in natural protected areas can arise for various reasons. The behavior of social stakeholders in the face of conflict is the object of study. Their reactions can be varied according to the personal interests of the parties. Conflicts can cause changes in the communities, incomprehensibly affecting the environment and ultimately transforming their lives. Although the environmental impacts have generally been well studied in protected areas, after reviewing the literature, it was observed that very few studies exist on the local economic conflicts that frequently arise. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the socio-ecological conflicts and impacts generated by the filming of the American reality series Naked and Afraid, produced by the Discovery Channel in the Ecuadorian Amazon-a special case in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. The data was gathered from numerous primary sources, including field interviews with the regional stakeholders involved and a video analysis of the Discovery Channels' Naked and Afraid. The results of our study conclude several interesting insights into various social and ecological conflicts and their resulting impacts on the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. The first of these concerns the high impacts mainly associated with biotic components in the Reserve. The second set of interesting findings are social conflicts that were caused by the discontent of the Indigenous communities in relation to royalties and compensations left by the filming.

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“…In literature, resilience is used in different systems like the SES, the STS, organisational systems and in psychology and sociology. Resilience worked out in a specific system cannot simply be used in another system, because the application of resilience depends, among others, on the system's operational environment and the specific disruptive event (Uday and Marais 2015) (Olsson et al 2015) (Bowd et al 2015). The literature study provided useful, yet general, building blocks for our decision support framework.…”

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilient Drinking Water Resources

Kloosterman

Hoek

Herder

2020

Water Resour Manage

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A significant challenge for managers of drinking water infrastructures is to make effective strategic decisions for assets with a long lifetime in an uncertain and changing environment. Water resources, which are part of the drinking water infrastructures, have a special position in this decision making process as they operate at the interface of the socio-technical and the socio-ecological subsystems: water resources are the input for the technical system, consisting of pipes and pumps that interact with different actors; and water resources can be seen as output from the ecological system which is influenced by environmental and political issues like climate change, drought and competing and changing uses of water and space. This paper discusses how to design the water resources in such a way that they function in the desired way at present, but that the design also fits an uncertain future as good as possible. To this extent, a framework was developed based upon the notion of resilience. Existing general design principles for socio-technical systems from literature were used as building blocks in the development of our water resources design principles (WR-DP) framework. Three key characteristics of water resources were distinguished in this framework: water quantity, water quality and the environmental impact of the water resources. In addition, we distinguished two dimensions that allowed us to explicitly describe all possible design principles: system scale and class. The first dimension, system scale, ranges from one water resource to a network of water resources. The second dimension, class, makes a distinction between social aspects and technical aspects. Application of the WR-DP framework in a case of a drinking water company in the Netherlands showed the usability of the framework.

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Toward an analytical framework for understanding complex social-ecological systems when conducting environmental impact assessments in South Africa

Cited by 25 publications

References 45 publications

A roadmap for a quantitative ecosystem-based environmental impact assessment

A roadmap for a quantitative ecosystem-based environmental impact assessment

Conflict and Impacts Generated by the Filming of Discovery Channel’s Reality Series “Naked and Afraid” in the Amazon: A Special Case in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, Ecuador

Resilient Drinking Water Resources

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