Modelling social-ecological transformations: an adaptive network proposal
Abstract
Transformations to create more sustainable social-ecological systems are urgently needed. Structural change is a feature of transformations of social-ecological systems that is of critical importance but is little understood. Here, we propose a framework for conceptualising and modelling sustainability transformations based on adaptive networks. Adaptive networks focus attention on the interplay between the structure of a social-ecological system and the dynamics of individual entities. Adaptive networks could progress transformations research by: 1) focusing research on changes in structure; 2) providing a conceptual framework that clarifies the temporal dynamics of social-ecological transformations compared to the most commonly used heuristic in resilience studies, the ball-and-cup diagram; 3) providing quantitative modelling tools in an area of study dominated by qualitative methods. We illustrate the potential application of adaptive networks to social-ecological transformations using a case study of illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean and a theoretical model of socially networked resource users.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1704.06135,
title = {Modelling social-ecological transformations: an adaptive network proposal},
author = {Steven J. Lade and Örjan Bodin and Jonathan F. Donges and Elin Enfors Kautsky and Diego Galafassi and Per Olsson and Maja Schlüter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.06135},
year = {2017}
}