Special Issue "Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems—Operationalizing Concepts and Approaches"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Oliver Frör
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Koblenz-Landau, Mainz 76829, Germany
Interests: ecosystem services; social-ecological systems; environmental policy; environmental valuation; environmental economics
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Berger
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Koblenz-Landau, Mainz 76829, Germany
Interests: stress ecology; aquatic ecology; freshwater ecosystem management; social-ecological systems; transdisciplinarity
Dr. Daniel Callo-Concha
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Koblenz-Landau, Mainz 76829, Germany
Interests: complex systems analysis; interface agricultural systems/environment; disturbance and change: resilience; vulnerability and adaptability; food and nutrition security; urbanization in the global south; agroforestry; agriculture and rural development

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of social-ecological systems (SES) has emerged as a new and integrative perspective to understand and analyze complex human-environment interactions [1]. Rather than linking environmental and human aspects in a bi-disciplinary manner (e.g., ecology and economy, sociology, and anthropology), SES suggests a network of multiple components interconnected in a complex manner. However, as the complexity increases, the analysis of the system becomes more challenging. Under conditions of global change, SES experience pressure of different types at various spatial and temporal scales. How these affect the resilience of SES is of key interest to manage them in a sustainable way.

While numerous conceptual frameworks to describe and analyze SES have been developed [2], there is a lack of approaches to operationalize the analysis of SES resilience in practice. Planetary Boundaries [3] and Tipping Points [4] are popular and recent conceptualizations for resilience analysis, which in some cases have demonstrated high real-world applicability. Nevertheless, approaches that operationalize the analysis of SES resilience in practice remain rare. Hence, in this Special Issue, we seek contributions that aim to operationalize the SES concepts to assess the resilience in specific real-world examples, in a wide diversity of contexts and spatial scales. Since a unified framework or a common definition of SES does not exist, we ask authors to clearly define their use of the term SES and make clear reference to their thought origins.

The Guest Editors are engaged in two collaborative research projects dealing with the subject—Soil biodiversity governing tipping points in the Amazon region (PRODIGY; prodigy-biotip.org), and Salt in the system (SALIDRAAjuj; salidraajuj.uni-landau.de)—from which we expect contributions. We also expect contributions from authors working on related subjects or other thematics, e.g. food security, health or pandemics.

References:

  1. Berkes, F.; Colding, J.; Folke, C. Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change, 1st ed.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2002.
  2. Colding, J.; Barthel, S. Exploring the social-ecological systems discourse 20 years later. Soc. 2019, 24, 2.
  3. Rockström, J.; Steffen, W.; Noone, K.; Persson, Å.; Chapin, III, F.S.; Lambin, E.; Lenton, T.M.; Scheffer, M.; Folke, C.; Schellnhuber, H.; et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 2009, 461, 472–475.
  4. Lenton, T.H.; Held, H.; Kriegler, E.; Hall, J.W.; Lucht, W.; Rahmstorf, S.; Schellnhuber, H.J. Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system. PNAS 2008, 105, 1786–1793.

Prof. Dr. Oliver Frör
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Berger
Dr. Daniel Callo-Concha
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • resilience
  • social-ecological systems
  • ecosystem services
  • tipping points
  • planetary boundaries
  • transdisciplinarity
  • interdisciplinarity
  • systems analysis
  • stakeholders
  • case study
  • human-environment interactions
  • participation
  • sustainability

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Managing Rather Than Avoiding “Difficulties” in Building Landscape Resilience
Sustainability 2021, 13(5), 2629; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052629 - 01 Mar 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 890
Abstract
Building landscape resilience inspires the cultivation of the landscape’s capacity to recover from disruption and live with changes and uncertainties. However, integrating ecosystem and society within such a unified lens—that is, socio–ecological system (SES) resilience—clashes with many cornerstone concepts in social science, such [...] Read more.
Building landscape resilience inspires the cultivation of the landscape’s capacity to recover from disruption and live with changes and uncertainties. However, integrating ecosystem and society within such a unified lens—that is, socio–ecological system (SES) resilience—clashes with many cornerstone concepts in social science, such as power, democracy, rights, and culture. In short, a landscape cannot provide the same values to everyone. However, can building landscape resilience be an effective and just environmental management strategy? Research on this question is limited. A scoping literature review was conducted first to synthesise and map landscape management change based on 111,653 records. Then, we used the Nuozhadu (NZD) catchment as a case study to validate our findings from the literature. We summarised current critiques and created a framework including seven normative categories, or common difficulties, namely resilience for “whom”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why”, as well as “can” and “how” we apply resilience normatively. We found that these difficulties are overlooked and avoided despite their instructive roles to achieve just landscape management more transparently. Without clear targets and boundaries in building resilience, we found that some groups consume resources and services at the expense of others. The NZD case demonstrates that a strategy of building the NZD’s resilience has improved the conservation of the NZD’s forest ecosystems but overlooked trade-offs between sustaining people and the environment, and between sustainable development for people at different scales. Future researchers, managers, and decision-makers are thereby needed to think resilience more normatively and address the questions in the “seven difficulties” framework before intervening to build landscape resilience. Full article
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