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SYMPOSIA

PSYMP-1
SOCIO-CULTURAL VALUATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES:
STATUS QUO AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Date: 9-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Tobias Plieninger & Claudia Bieling

Socio-cultural valuation is an important complement to biophysical and economic valuation of ecosystem services that enables a fuller characterization of diverse ecosystem values in research and practice. Socio-cultural approaches can be applied at various stages of ecosystem planning and management, e.g. in problem framing, mapping, assessment, and decision-making. They examine the importance, preferences, needs or demands expressed by people (i.e. individuals and groups) towards nature, and articulate plural values through qualitative and quantitative measures other than monetary or biophysical units. Assessment and mapping of perceptions, values, attitudes, and beliefs provide meaningful insights regarding the contributions of ecosystem services to human well-being. In particular, they facilitate understanding of the relevance of ecosystem services for local stakeholders, allowing cultural sensitivity and recognition of trade-offs in ecosystem services valuation between different user groups, such as between tourists and local residents. However, the normative nature and heterogeneity of valuation by various stakeholders provides methodological challenges, and socio-cultural approaches do not yet constitute a formalized methodological framework.

 

speakers 

  • Using social media photos to explore the relation between cultural ecosystem services and landscape features across five European sites      ​​​

      Tobias Plieninger

 

  • Bridging the gap between ecosystem services valuation, sustainability and justice      Erik Gomez-Baggethun

 

  • Using freelisting interviews for the socio-cultural valuation of ecosystem services      Claudia Bieling

 

  • Do the poor benefit more? Patterns of ecosystem service benefit distribution and poverty in coastal Kenya and Mozambique

      Tim Daw

 

  • Cross-scale connections among stakeholders of freshwater ecosystem services in the San Marcos River watershed: A PECS WaterSES social-ecological system case study

      Jason Julian

 

  • Health clinic gardens as social-ecological systems: Resource diversity and stakeholder perceptions on ecosystem services

      Sarel, S. Cilliers

 

PSYMP-3
LOCAL AND GLOBAL DRIVERS OF TRANSFORMATION TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY IN LATIN AMERICA: CASES FROM PLACE-BASED RESEARCH ON SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS 

Date: 8-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Bruno Locatelli & Paula Juarez

According to the PECS working group on "Seeds of a good Anthropocene", our future is often represented by dystopian representations combining environmental degradation and social inequality. Proposing and discussing positive social-ecological futures can help discussing changes in the way people interact among them and with nature. Some good examples of social-ecological transformation towards sustainability exist in Latin America and are interesting case studies to understand the local and global drivers of such transformations. This session will present place-based research on processes of social-ecological transformation in Latin America. Presentations will describe the processes and their social, ecological and economic outcomes. With explicit conceptual frameworks, presentations will analyse how local and global drivers facilitate or hinder transformation and how social, economic and biophysical drivers interact. Case studies will include a discussion on the future of the studied transformations, the transferability of findings to inform global sustainability research, and the up-scaling of local successful transformation processes.

This session will 1) present case studies of local place-based research on processes of social-ecological transformation in Latin America, 2) analyse the role of local and global drivers in facilitating or hindering transformation and 3) discuss the transferability of findings to inform global sustainability research and the up-scaling of local successful transformation processes.

speakers 

 

  • Toward a sustainable Gulf of Mexico: lessons from transnational scientific research and collaborations in Parque Nacional Caguanes, Cuba

      Victoria Ramenzoni 

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  • Agroecological Strategies and Social Learnings: Case of the Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero in Argentina

      Florencia Trentini

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  • The Stories of the Chagra: Traditional Ecological Knowledge transformations as lessons towards sustainability in indigenous territories in the Colombian Amazon      Valentina Fonseca Cepeda

 

  • Use of resources for food per person as indicator of sustainability: comparing the heterogeneity of diets and agricultural systems of Mexico

  • Maria Jose Ibarrola Rivas

 

PSYMP-4
PUTTING TRANSFORMATIVE ADAPTATION INTO ACTION 

Date: 9-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Matthew Colloff

Several conceptual frameworks have been proposed to enable transformative adaptation to global change, as a basis for sustainable development. Some of these frameworks stem from ongoing projects, whose members are developing partnerships to make their concepts operational, and so move from the theoretical domain towards the practicalities of engagement and implementation. As the practicalities of engagement and implementation play out in different contexts, there is the opportunity for other researchers and practitioners to learn by exploring and determining common features of projects that may be transferable. The scope of the session is relatively open, but would include topics such as: how conceptual frameworks have helped or hindered implementation of transformative adaptation; how to co-create new ways of thinking, learning and acting about adaptation; re-framing decision-making via the interaction of values, rules and knowledge; exploring tools and heuristics that we need but don't currently have; and where issues of power and gender are situated in the implementation of adaptation.

speakers 

  • What is transformative adaptation to global change and how might we do it?

      Matthew Colloff 

 

  • Transformative adaptation and protected areas conservation under climate uncertainty in Colombia

      Claudia Munera Roldan

 

  • Nature-based versus technological approaches to adaptation to climate change in the Peruvian Andes: Different values, rules and knowledge

      Bruno Locatelli

 

  • An heuristic approach to transformative coproduction of knowledge for change

      Elizabeth Clarke

 

  • Emerging lessons from CARIAA: Gender, water security and mobility as entry points for cross-scale adaptation planning in climate change hotspots

      Georgina Cundill

PSYMP-6
BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY AND RESILIENCE OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS​

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Barbara Ayala-Orozco, Julieta A. Rosell, Juliana Merçon

In a world of accelerated environmental change, biocultural diversity could play a key role in maintaining the resilience of social-ecological systems. Biocultural diversity includes the diversity of life, human cultures and languages, and emerges from the close interactions among biological and cultural diversity. Communities who depend directly on natural resources have developed practices, institutions, and knowledge to adapt to social and environmental changes, and many of these communities hold precious knowledge of how biocultural diversity can enhance the ability of societies to cope with present and future changes. Unique opportunities emerge from collaborative learning among indigenous leaders, academics, government officials, and social actors around the connections between biocultural diversity and resilience, as ways to identify and foster good governance for social-ecological systems.

 

speakers 

  • Introductory words for the symposium

      Niceforo Argueta

 

  • Why biocultural diversity and resilience?

      Patricia Balvanera

 

  • How do you speak about people, nature and change? Responses from the languages of Oaxaca

      Alejandro de Avila Blomberg

  • The Constitution and the biocultural heritage

      Xavier Martinez Esponda

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  • Opportunities into the future and policy implications

      Pedro Alvarez-Icaza

PSYMP-8
TACKLING COMPLEXITY BY INCREASING COMPLEXITY. RE-THINKING KNOWLEDGE PROCESSES THROUGH PLACE-BASED TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH 

Date: 8-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Matthew Colloff

Transdisciplinary research aims at overcoming gaps and barriers between actors from different knowledge fields and societal domains in the face of pressing sustainability challenges. Given this ultimate aim, place-based transdisciplinary research allows for continuous cooperation between actors that allows for integrative research and mutual learning to generate knowledge that serves societal transformation. However, there is still much to learn and understand about processes of knowledge production in our endeavours to leverage change for a globally sustainable future. Much of how we understand, how we know, what we know and how we express knowledge as action, is tacit; that is, hidden deep beneath the surface as assumptions, held beliefs etc. In this symposium we propose to facilitate the sharing of processes to create knowledge through place-based transdisciplinary research by exploring the various conceptualisations of, and discourses around, knowledge in transdisciplinary sustainability research. Examples include concepts such as mutual learning, knowledge integration, collective knowledge, or knowledge to action, with a view to gaining a deeper understanding of what constitutes transformative knowledge for global sustainability. We can draw approaches, such as complexity theory, to examine how a place-based focus can be combined with holistic framing, along with theory and practice, and parts and wholes, to leverage the seeming contradiction and tension between seeming polar opposites dichotomies.

speakers 

  • From Resilience Assessment to Resilience Planning: Lessons from Australian regional natural resource management

      My Sellberg 

  • Potentials of cultural differentiations for transdisciplinary sustainability research       Andra Horcea-Milcu 

  • Transdisciplinary process facing severe droughts: lessons learned in Mexican tropical drylands 

      Ana L. Burgos 

  • Experiences of a policy-maker in a Transdisciplinary Network

      Luisa María Calderón Hinojosa 

 

  • Making ecosystem science matter: stakeholder-engaged research through co-design and keystone ecoservice concept      

      Roxane Maranger 

PSYMP-12
FEEDBACKS AND CROSS-SCALE INTERACTIONS DRIVING LAND SYSTEM CHANGE IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD 

Date: 9-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Ariane de Bremond and Tomas Vaclavik

Land systems – understood as coupled social-ecological systems - and their dynamics are decisive for sustainable development outcomes in terms of both the environment and human wellbeing. This is reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that emphasize the need (i) to achieve food security and improved nutrition, (ii) promote sustainable agriculture and economic growth, and (iii) encourage sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss. However, achieving these critical goals, e.g. by increasing agricultural yields through intensification or cropland expansion, is associated with a range of environmental and social externalities and feedbacks that occur across different spatial scales. Dynamics in one place increasingly depend on drivers that emerge from distant other places or from higher levels of spatial scale. Conversely, growing demands and a global revalorization of land are leading to intensified competition over land in distant places. Flows of goods, capital, people, information and policies can lead to phenomena such as large-scale land acquisitions, green grabbing, displaced deforestation, or cascading land use, etc. Such distant interactions often lead to competing claims on land systems implying trade-offs, conflicts among actors, and negative sustainability outcomes in terms of the environment and human wellbeing. Yet, such distant interactions may also bear the potential for governance innovations, help to overcome political obstacles and provide scope for pathways towards more sustainable development. Addressing these cross-scale connections and feedbacks in social-ecological systems is necessary to provide applicable solutions for sustainable land management.

speakers 

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  • Transferability of place-based research in land system science

      Tomas Vaclavik

  • Trade-offs between intensification, expansion, biodiversity and food security - an integrated global approach

      Florian Zabel

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  • A typology to operationalize the telecouplings concept for studying land system change

      Ariane de Bremond

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  • Tax havens, ecological change and global sustainability

      Victor Galaz

 

  • Meeting global land restoration targets: what would the world look like?

      Sarah Wolff​​

  • The simultaneous effects of land-use intensification on biodiversity and production: A global meta-analysis

      Ralf Seppelt

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PSYMP-9
COLLABORATIVE PATHWAYS TO ECOSYSTEM STEWARDSHIP: CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES AND THE SPACES IN BETWEEN 

Date: 8-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Michael Schoon & Georgina Cundill Kemp

Countries worldwide face the need to simultaneously redress past injustice, support social transformation and nurture the emergence of stewardship. Many have opted for co-management arrangements between governmental agencies, NGOs and local communities as a means to achieve these goals simultaneously. Experiences of collaborative governance appear to have differed significantly between developed and developing countries. However, in the thirty or so years since co-management began to be practiced worldwide, there has not been a systematic multi-country assessment of the practical experiences of collaborative governance as a viable option for ensuring more equitable access to ecosystem services as part of broader development imperatives. In addition, recent systematic assessments of collaborative governance have shed light on the complexities of collaboration, but they have not explicitly focused on the enablers and barriers in different contexts. Therefore, this session has two goals. The first goal is to see how collaborative practices are implemented and work toward ecosystem stewardship and improved human well-being at multiple locations around the globe. The second goal is to work toward improving outcomes through advancing our knowledge along this theory-praxis interface, seeking grounded theory capable of influencing and strengthening practice in specific places, and building the state of science with regard to collaboration more generally.​

speakers 

  • Exploring enablers and barriers of landscape-scale collaborative stewardship initiatives in South Africa: Voices from the landscape

      Jessica Cockburn

  • Collaborative schemes to promote food production in African agroecosystems - insights from Kenya

      Chinwe Ifejika Speranza

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  • Towards local governance of marine resources and ecosystems on Easter island: are there spaces for collaboration?

      Jaime Aburto

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  • Participative and collaborative farming to promote the agriculture transition towards sustainable social-ecological systems at agroecosystems

      Marina Garcia-Llorente

PSYMP-13
TOWARD REALISTIC, PLAUSIBLE,
POSITIVE FUTURES FOR THE PLANET ​

Date: 8-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Jan Kuiper

The world has entered the Anthropocene in which the social and ecological are increasingly entangled in surprising and novel ways. Resilience is the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt or transform in the face of these dramatic changes. Building resilience in a world of surprise and novelty require methods that bring multiple futures into current decision making, and scenario planning is an approach that has been increasingly used in research and science/policy processes, in particular places and in international assessment such as IPBES. Scenarios are plausible stories about how the future of a social-ecological system might unfold. Scenario planning can be an important tool in social-ecological transformations because it forces people to think explicitly about alternative situations, consider key uncertainties and create an understanding that a different order of things is possible. We will bring together leading scholars from diverse disciplines to create a novel overview of the multiple roles scenarios can have in social-ecological transformations. We aim to produce at least a synthesis paper outline the state of the art and research frontiers in social-ecological scenarios, and potentially a journal special feature, which could include contributions from audience members.

Our session will promote synthesis by asking our presenters to address a shared set of questions on: How are social-ecological scenarios useful? What research and activities are needed to improve the practice of social-ecological scenario exercises? And what are the research frontiers for social-ecological scenarios. We will engage the session participants by asking them to vote on the answers given by the presenters, as well as using their synthesis to open a facilitated synthesis discussion that will draft a preliminary road map of research and activities to enhance social-ecological scenario practice.

speakers 

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  • Bright Spots: Seeds of good Anthropocene

      Elena Bennett

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  • Integrating scenarios and ecosystem service modeling approaches to explore possible outcomes of decisions

      Anne Guerry

 

  • Participatory Social-Ecological Scenario Planning: Approaches and Frontiers

      Garry Peterson

 

  • Positive futures for Mediterranean wetlands biodiversity and ecosystem services

      Ilse Geijzendorffer

 

  • Priorities for social-ecological scenario research

      Jan Kuiper​

PSYMP-14
SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES: AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH 

Date: 9-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Driss Ezzine de Blas & Sophie Avila

Policy evaluation research has traditionally favored quantitative approaches. These quantitative techniques can be based (i) on econometric analyses to infer the causality chain triggered by the implementation of a policy or; (ii) be based on a control-treatment approach based on the selection of the best possible counterfactual in order to capture the impact of a policy on a target variable. However, such quantitative approaches have difficulties into integrating qualitative dynamics –such as the influence of governance and institutions- and understand the intertwined and complex nature of interactions between Social-Ecological System (SES) variables affected by those policies. As a result, purely quantitative policy evaluation is not able to capture cascade effects and non-linear interactions between primary and secondary SES variables. We define primary variables as those directly affected by the policy, while secondary variables are those directly affected by primary variables and indirectly affected by the policy. Cascade effects occur when primary variables affect secondary variables in such a way that the causality chain leads to unexpected outcomes or to an unexpected pathway for an expected outcome.

 

speakers 

  • Social-Ecological Evaluation of Conservation and Development Policies: An Introduction

      Driss Ezzine-de-Blas

 

  • Ecotourism effects on rural households economy and the role of conservation and development policies in Oaxaca coastal communities     

      Sophie Avila-Foucat

 

  • Exploring farmers responses to policy instruments for better provision of Ecosystem Services: insight from participatory simulation in coffee agro-forestry system Costa Rica and Nicaragua

      Jean-francois Le Coq

  • The "commodification" of nature: an anthropological look at the Payment for Environmental Services

      Eric Sabourin

 

  • An evaluation of the impact of ecosystem management for climate change adaptation in the Oaxaca Sierra Norte

      Armando Sánchez

 

  • Governance of the marine extractive reserve prainha do canto verde (cearã, brazil): contribution to socio-economic incentives

      Diana Alexandra Tovar Bonilla

      

  • Socio-ecological approach on the evaluation of Public Programs in the Conservation Soil of Mexico City

      Lucía Almeida-Leñero

PSYMP-15
GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES FOR CLIMATE ADAPTATION IN PROTECTED AREAS MANAGEMENT 

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chairs: Claudia Munera

Conservation of biodiversity via protected areas and livelihoods dependent upon the environmental services provided by them, are facing growing challenges in dealing with climate change. Biodiversity management under uncertain climate change, would require a different approach in our vision of protected areas as representation of unchanging heritage assets. Although these transformations may be opportunities for protected areas managers, but they must be ready to understand, react and accept ecological transformation as climate changes. This require new abilities that help to incorporate long term change and uncertainty into the policies and planning tools, with implications in the decision making process from local, regional, national and even international level. A traditional approach to climate adaptation follows a learning, cycle pattern, based on response to change as it happens rather than anticipating future changes. Climate adaptation needs governance processes that are prepared for future changes to the climate, focusing on what we can do now to reshape our social, political and practical abilities to anticipate possible changes and respond as changes happen. We frame the "decision context" in the values, rules and knowledge that form the foundation from which we make decisions, plan, and manage for conservation.​

The main objective of the symposium is to discuss and identify with participants about new ways of thinking about the future of conservation under climate change. We also want to identify those links, barriers and opportunities that may support long term conservation policy, planning, management, towards a "transition' to have a more climate smart decision-making for conservation considering the governance challenges posed by climate change. Finally, we want to identify the key issues to design a learning framework that helps to shape knowledge, rules and values in the decision making context.

speakers 

  • Adaptation pathways: enabling multi-level learning

      Michael Dunlop

 

  • Knowledge and environmental governance: challenges of managing for the future

      Lorrae van Kerkhoff

  

  • Pathways to adaptation in the French Alps

      Sandra Lavorel

 

  • Adaptation in Place: learning how to adapt marine NRM

      Rachel Williams  

PSYMP-16
MARINE SYSTEMS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE 

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Magnus Nyström

The human imprint on the biosphere has become so extensive that many scholars consider Earth to have entered a new planetary epoch – the Anthropocene. This presents a situation where people, places, cultures and economies are becoming progressively nested across geographic locations and socioeconomic contexts. Driven by current economic paradigms and consumption patterns, land-based resources are becoming increasingly scarce. Attention is therefore shifting rapidly towards the oceans as engines for sustaining future human needs. Propelled by a wide range of actors – from individuals to transnational corporations, banks, investors and other financial actors - intensification of competing claims is to be expected, which will lead to inevitable conflicts and trade-offs. This new reality necessitates a re-evaluation of how marine ecosystems are perceived, studied, and as well as managed and governed

 

This session will integrate different perspective on what the Anthropocene means for marine systems. In this session the dynamic interplay between biophysical and socioeconomic drivers across scales will be disentangled, the roles of international trade and finance explored, and the major claims behind the ongoing "Great Blue Acceleration" uncovered. Novel ways of engagement and governance strategies for improved marine governance will be shared and discussed.

 

speakers 

  • The Blue Acceleration: racing for the oceans to secure global human support

      Magnus Nyström

 

  • Understanding interacting drivers of change in marine systems: exploring the interplay between proximate and distal drivers

      Albert Norström

 

  • Exploring novel and collaborative governance strategies for guiding global marine futures

      Stefan Gelcich

 

  • Benefits from ecolabels and other market incentives in developing country fisheries

      José Alberto Zepeda Domínguez

 

  • Emergence of a global science-business initiative for ocean stewardship

      Jean-Baptiste Jouffray

PSYMP-18
SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL REGIME SHIFTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS 

Date: 9-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Kristine Maciejewski

Regime shifts can be defined as large, persistent changes in system structure and function. These changes affect the supply of ecosystem services, can have major impacts on human economies, security and wealth. Regime shifts are often difficult to anticipate and costly to reverse, and are a source of growing concern, especially with increasing human demands and rising impacts on ecosystem services. The Regime Shifts Database (RSDB) was created to synthesize, compare and share scientific knowledge about regime shifts across a wide variety of social-ecological systems (www.regimeshifts.org). In this symposium, we will introduce this online database and how environmental tipping points could undermine potential for achieving the SDGs developed by the Sustainable Development Agenda by 2030. During this session, we will present several of these syntheses documented in the database, including woody encroachment, the shift from grassy savanna to wooded savannas, a synthesis of regime shifts in the Arctic, and present a framework for exploring plausible new feedbacks between critical transitions in social-ecological systems.  The session will be structured around the presentation of 4 speakers of 10-15 minutes each, followed by a facilitated discussion structured around central themes of social-ecological regime shifts.​

speakers 

  • The Regime Shift Database and link to the Sustainable Development Goals

     Kristine Maciejewski

 

  • Cascading effects of critical transitions in social-ecological systems

     Juan Carlos Rocha G.

 

  • A survey of the livelihood impacts of social-ecological regime shifts: The case of woody encroachment in South Africa

     Linda Luvuno

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  • Social-ecological regime shifts in the Arctic: Strategies for building resilience

     Garry Peterson 

PSYMP-19
URBAN SUSTAINABILITY TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE-DRIVEN EXTREME EVENTS IN US AND LATIN AMERICA ​

Date: 9-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Timon McPhearson

We will focus on discussing the complexity of urban systems and the need to explicitly link desired resilience with sustainability goals. We will explore a social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) approach and the need to integrate across SETS domains to develop plausible, context-dependent sustainability transformations. The role of ecosystems is a critical component of sustainability transformations. Yet transformations pathways areis not dependent solely on ecological functioning. Rather, human activity and values together with technical and infrastructural components are critical to understanding context specific transformations. This broad approach is also needed to understand the delivery of a broad suite of ecosystem services as part of solutions for climate change adaptation and resilience building. Planning and decision-making for resilient, improved urban futures can be supported by innovative qualitative and quantitative scenarios. We will explore how scenarios and a SETS approach can be tools for exploring urban vulnerabilities as well as transformations toward more resilient futures.

 

The objectives of this session are to 1) introduce a social-ecological-technical systems (SETS) approach to understanding complex urban systems, 2) highlight the role of ecosystems in cities and the characteristics of cities as arenas for sustainability transformations and 3) showcase scenarios as a platform for planning urban futures which are more livable, resilient, and just.

 

speakers 

  • Cross-City Spatial Comparison of Green Infrastructure Distribution in the US and Latin America

      Timon McPhearson

 

  • A Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) Approach to Urban Ecosystem Services

      Elizabeth Cook

 

  • A social-ecological-technical systems approach to understanding urban complexity and building climate resilience

      Nancy Grimm

 

  • Scenarios of alternative water governance in vulnerability to water risks in Mexico City

      Hallie Eakin

 

  • Visions and Strategies for Guiding Urban Transformations

      David Iwaniec

 

  • Transformative change in social-ecological-technological systems

      Marta Berbés-Blázquez

PSYMP-20
EXPLORING THE SOCIOECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS OF PAYMENT FOR HYDROLOGIC SERVICES PROGRAMS: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR ENHANCING WATERSHED SUSTAINABILITY 

Date: 8-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Heidi Asbjornsen

Hydrologic services are arguably one of the most critical and highly threatened ecosystem services for sustaining human societies. Payment for Hydrological Services schemes (PHS) have gained popularity in recent years as a policy tool for linking downstream water users to upstream water producers through economic incentives to promote watershed sustainability. The experiences gained from the implementation of PHS across diverse social, economic, cultural, and environmental contexts worldwide over the past several decades provide a unique opportunity to explore the lessons learned and to identify best management practices for designing PHS and monitoring their social and ecological impacts. This session brings together speakers from a broad range of disciplines, geographic regions, and local contexts to discuss the challenges and opportunities for using PHS to enhance watershed sustainability and the consequences, trade-offs, and interactions within socioecological systems. By synthesizing these discussions, this session seeks to identify emerging principles and social and ecological indicators of PHS success that can provide a baseline for developing guidelines for PHS design and approaches for monitoring their performance in achieving watershed sustainability. Finally, by promoting discussion by scientists and diverse stakeholders, this session will assess opportunities for better linking science and policy to enhance decision making processes.

speakers 

  • Putting Suppliers on the Map: A participatory approach to giving voice to upstream actors of water funds

      Kelly Meza Prado

 

  • Spatial impact evaluation of payment for watershed services programs in Veracruz, Mexico

      Jacob Salcone

 

  • Finding the global in the local mechanisms for payments for ecosystem services national program in Mexico

      Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza

 

  • Payment for watershed ecosystem services: practices and lessons from China

      Lin Zhen

 

  • Impacts and challenges of environmental restoration on hydrological services in dryland area - biophysical processes and socioeconomic perspectives

      Lulu Zhang

 

  • Science and tools for investing in watershed services: Lessons learned from PHS decision support

      Adrian Vogl

PSYMP-21
EQUITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN AN URBANIZING WORLD 

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 12.30 – 14.00

Chair: Dr. Bonnie Keeler

In a rapidly urbanizing world, the decisions we make about how to plan and manage cities will determine not only the fate of habitats and species, but also the health and wellbeing of billions of urban residents. The emerging focus on quantifying and valuing urban ecosystem services (ES) has the potential to increase awareness of the benefits of nature and create new markets for conservation. However, there are lingering questions and critiques about the urban ES approach, mainly how issues of equity, distribution, and power are accounted for in ES assessments. This symposium will explore frontiers in the application of urban ES assessments around the world with a focus on how researchers and practitioners have accounted for inequality, representation of diverse voices, and the social demand for ES from different communities. Presenters represent applications of environmental research around the world, from urban communities of color in the United States struggling with watershed degradation and pollution to growing cities in Latin America leveraging conservation to protect water supplies. The session will touch on issues of inequality, governance, segregation and poverty as they intersect with the growing movement to enhance the value of nature in the city.

Cities are complex social-ecological systems where environmental change and human wellbeing are intricately linked. The objective of this symposium is to explore how researchers are advancing our understanding of the provision and value of urban ecosystem services (ES), especially through the incorporation of cultural, social, and governance factors. 

 

speakers 

  • Clientelism, Corruption, Poverty, and Informality: the governance of land and ecosystem services in Mexico City's conservation zone

      Beth Tellman

 

  • Incorporating cultural ecosystem services into urban wetland management: The case of Xochimilco, Mexico City

      Amy Lerner

 

  • Inequities in the provision, tradeoffs and synergies of urban vegetation ecosystem services

      Cynnamon Dobbs

 

  • The Inequality Effect: Links between Income Inequality, Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Services in South African municipalities

      Maike Hamann

 

  • Urban racial segregation in the US and implications for ecosystem services research

      Kate Derickson

 

  • Accounting for equity in the supply and value of urban ecosystem services

      Bonnie Keeler

PSYMP-21
EQUITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN AN URBANIZING WORLD 

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 12.30 – 14.00

Chair: Dr. Bonnie Keeler

In a rapidly urbanizing world, the decisions we make about how to plan and manage cities will determine not only the fate of habitats and species, but also the health and wellbeing of billions of urban residents. The emerging focus on quantifying and valuing urban ecosystem services (ES) has the potential to increase awareness of the benefits of nature and create new markets for conservation. However, there are lingering questions and critiques about the urban ES approach, mainly how issues of equity, distribution, and power are accounted for in ES assessments. This symposium will explore frontiers in the application of urban ES assessments around the world with a focus on how researchers and practitioners have accounted for inequality, representation of diverse voices, and the social demand for ES from different communities. Presenters represent applications of environmental research around the world, from urban communities of color in the United States struggling with watershed degradation and pollution to growing cities in Latin America leveraging conservation to protect water supplies. The session will touch on issues of inequality, governance, segregation and poverty as they intersect with the growing movement to enhance the value of nature in the city.

Cities are complex social-ecological systems where environmental change and human wellbeing are intricately linked. The objective of this symposium is to explore how researchers are advancing our understanding of the provision and value of urban ecosystem services (ES), especially through the incorporation of cultural, social, and governance factors. 

 

speakers 

  • Clientelism, Corruption, Poverty, and Informality: the governance of land and ecosystem services in Mexico City's conservation zone

      Beth Tellman

 

  • Incorporating cultural ecosystem services into urban wetland management: The case of Xochimilco, Mexico City

      Amy Lerner

 

  • Inequities in the provision, tradeoffs and synergies of urban vegetation ecosystem services

      Cynnamon Dobbs

 

  • The Inequality Effect: Links between Income Inequality, Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Services in South African municipalities

      Maike Hamann

 

  • Urban racial segregation in the US and implications for ecosystem services research

      Kate Derickson

 

  • Accounting for equity in the supply and value of urban ecosystem services

      Bonnie Keeler

PSYMP-23
TRANSFORMATIONS OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS: PATHWAYS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE RESILIENCE IN MEXICO ​

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Amy Lerner

Mexico is one of the world's richest countries in biodiversity and diversity of traditional knowledge. However, as in many other middle or low-income countries, strategies for dealing with challenges such as inequality, urbanization, water shortage, and social exclusion of native groups are insufficient or lacking. There is a growing need to better understand different social-ecological systems in Mexico, and identify possibilities for exploring different pathways for transformation, requiring new approaches in research, governance, and management. This symposium gathers several young scholars from the new graduate program in Sustainability Science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The presentations discuss some of the emerging social-ecological challenges in Mexico, opportunities for preferred transformations, and the potential for transdisciplinary science in Mexico. Themes will include rural and urban hydrological risk, urban growth and wetland transformation, and vulnerability in informal settlements. The cases provide an overview of some complex social-ecological management and governance problems in Mexico, as well as examples of adaptation strategies by local populations. The symposium will conclude with a discussion of how transdisciplinary science can contribute to sustainability and resilience in the Mexican context, and how to encourage transformations of governance and management towards more desired social-ecological states.​

speakers 

  • Supporting resilient urban freshwater production in the Anthropocene: applying the Resilience Assessment tool to Mexico City

     Maria Schewenius

 

  • Promoting transformative pathways to sustainability: The Transformation-lab in the Xochimilco social-ecological system

     Lakshmi Charli-Joseph

 

  • Thresholds for resilience changes of Chinampas Socio-Ecological System (C-SES): an agent based approach

     Patricia Pérez Belmont        

 

  • Challenges of building sustainable resilience through waste management in peri-urban landscapes: A case of the Xochimilco wetland in Mexico City

     Beatriz Ruizpalacios

 

  • Understanding collective adaptation in conditions of water scarcity: the case of Iztapalapa, Mexico City

     Bertha Hernández Aguilar

 

  • Transforming water access in the Sierra Huichol: Water as a pathway towards sustainability

     Shiara Kirana González Padrón

PSYMP-23
TRANSFORMATIONS OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS: PATHWAYS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE RESILIENCE IN MEXICO ​

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Amy Lerner

Mexico is one of the world's richest countries in biodiversity and diversity of traditional knowledge. However, as in many other middle or low-income countries, strategies for dealing with challenges such as inequality, urbanization, water shortage, and social exclusion of native groups are insufficient or lacking. There is a growing need to better understand different social-ecological systems in Mexico, and identify possibilities for exploring different pathways for transformation, requiring new approaches in research, governance, and management. This symposium gathers several young scholars from the new graduate program in Sustainability Science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The presentations discuss some of the emerging social-ecological challenges in Mexico, opportunities for preferred transformations, and the potential for transdisciplinary science in Mexico. Themes will include rural and urban hydrological risk, urban growth and wetland transformation, and vulnerability in informal settlements. The cases provide an overview of some complex social-ecological management and governance problems in Mexico, as well as examples of adaptation strategies by local populations. The symposium will conclude with a discussion of how transdisciplinary science can contribute to sustainability and resilience in the Mexican context, and how to encourage transformations of governance and management towards more desired social-ecological states.​

speakers 

  • Supporting resilient urban freshwater production in the Anthropocene: applying the Resilience Assessment tool to Mexico City

     Maria Schewenius

 

  • Promoting transformative pathways to sustainability: The Transformation-lab in the Xochimilco social-ecological system

     Lakshmi Charli-Joseph

 

  • Thresholds for resilience changes of Chinampas Socio-Ecological System (C-SES): an agent based approach

     Patricia Pérez Belmont        

 

  • Challenges of building sustainable resilience through waste management in peri-urban landscapes: A case of the Xochimilco wetland in Mexico City

     Beatriz Ruizpalacios

 

  • Understanding collective adaptation in conditions of water scarcity: the case of Iztapalapa, Mexico City

     Bertha Hernández Aguilar

 

  • Transforming water access in the Sierra Huichol: Water as a pathway towards sustainability

     Shiara Kirana González Padrón

PSYMP-25
THE ROLE OF SENSE OF PLACE IN SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM DYNAMICS: EXPLORING THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM PLACE-BASED STUDIES 

Date: 8-Nov-17

Time: 10.30 – 12.00

Chair: Vanessa Masterson

Sense of place has been shown to be a key factor in adaptation to large ecosystem changes and transformations, and there is increasing but scattered evidence of the relevance and complexity of these relationships. Our recent review article indicates advances in assessing the importance of both place attachment and place meanings for motivating stewardship, learning and ecosystem governance. In this session we bring these explorations of sense of place into dialogue with one another, and begin to synthesise insights for resilience and sustainability to outline future research possibilities in PECS-related research. The presentations, and discussion are structured around the following areas identified in our review paper, where an in-depth focus on the key dimensions of sense of place will advance a comparative place-based empirical understanding of stewardship and transformation in social-ecological systems: 1) The contribution of place meanings and attachment to initiating and maintaining social-ecological traps, as well as to transformative change for stewardship; 2) Whose place meanings are favoured and why - and implications of these power dynamics for SES systems;  3) A dynamic ecological perspective on sense of place;  4) The influence of chronic versus acute changes on sense of place; and 5) Scaling up stewardship behaviour from the individual to the global.​

 

speakers 

  • Sense of place in maintaining social-ecological system dynamics: insights from the Eastern Cape, South Africa

      Vanessa Masterson

           

  • The role of place making in collective action for transforming water resources management in a social–ecological trap

      Maria Tengö

 

  • The politics of place meanings in a transformation: insights from farm workers in the conversion of farmland to "conservation" land in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

      Marja Spierenburg

 

  • Place, risk and resilience: adaptation in rapidly changing coasts

      Chloé Guerbois

 

  • Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Can Sense of Place Scale Up?

      Corrine Knapp

PSYMP-28
MAKING CHANGE HAPPEN?
TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE​

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 12.30 – 14.00

Chair: Tobias Luthe

Considering the many global environmental problems that we face today, and that human activity is emerging as a major force shaping the Earth system, it is becoming clear that we need to facilitate, catalyze and identify opportunities for transformations to sustainability. This needs to happen at a rate and scale that the challenges of the Anthropocene call for.  A variety of models and frameworks for analysing transformations to sustainability have emerged in recent years across various academic disciplines and areas of study, including: social-ecological resilience, social-technological transitions, Earth system governance, international development, social movements, and research focusing on social innovation. These have all helped to make important advances in the rapidly emerging field of sustainability science. This session will explore some of the frontiers in this research field.

Presentations will span a wide range of topics that relate to sustainability transformations,

such as catalyzing transformative change through a next mode of TD science, local to global pathways in world’s mountains, biocultural systems in the Pamir mountains, and the role of experimental and Real-world Labs in driving transformational change. We will discuss how such place-based laboratories can stimulate transformational change on a regional to global scale, and how the mountain context can be extrapolated to down-stream locations – urban, rural, sea shores.

speakers 

  • Transformative science for society: The next evolution of transdisciplinary science for sustainability?

      Robin Reid

 

  • Local to Global Pathways towards Sustainability in the World"s Mountains

      Julia Klein

 

  • Transformative biocultural systems

      Jamila Haider

       

  • Real world laboratories as place-based experiments for informing global sustainability

      Tobias Luthe

 

  • The role of experimental Labs in socio-ecological transformations for sustainability

Christina Zurbriggen

PSYMP-10
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS 

Date: 10-Nov-17

Time: 10:30 – 12.00

Chair: Omar Masera

In recent years, scholars (Anderies 2014; Redman and Miller 2015) within the field of social-ecological systems (SES) have highlighted the importance of technology in processes of societal change, and the need for the field to engage explicitly with the role of technology in order to realize the transformation to a sustainable Anthropocene. In parallel, scholars of sociotechnical systems (STS) have argued for the value of bridging across these two fields, while being aware of important conceptual differences (Smith and Stirling 2010; Stirling 2011). Understanding the role of technology in mediating processes of ecological change is critical to effectively addressing questions of scale and power. Further, technologies enable and give durability to human practices affecting natural environments. Technological change is strongly context dependent and produces ambivalent and uncertain outcomes. In order to successfully bridge SES and STS scholarship, we recognize the importance of deep theoretical engagements in combination with empirical, place-based research and methodological development. It is likely that the importance of collaborating across the two fields goes beyond each field adding pieces together. Possibly, integration and translation across these domains will lead to qualitative and fruitful changes in the theoretical and methodological approaches of both fields.​

 

speakers 

  • The technological dimension in the socioecosystem concept

      Manuel Maass

 

  • Technology and social-ecological systems research - motivations for theoretical and methodological integration across fields

      Helene Ahlborg

 

  • Infrastructure Governance and Institutional Misfit in Delta Socioecological Systems

      Kimberly Rogers

 

  • Studying socio-technical-ecological systems: monitoring adoption of ecotechnologies in Mexico

      Ilse Ruiz-Mercado

 

  • Technology drowns ecology? Some insights from the water sector

      Sharachchandra Lele

 

  • Operating the Lever of "information flows" to foster accountable sustainability

      Miguel Equihua

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