Search Results (610)

As the impacts of climate change intensify, water resource conflicts are escalating globally, particularly in regions with uneven water distribution, such as Central Asia. Long-standing disputes over water allocation persist between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. This paper aims to examine the conflicts and challenges in water allocation between the two countries and explore the potential of Decision Support Systems (DSSs) as a viable solution. The paper begins by reviewing the historical evolution of water allocation in Central Asia, analyzing upstream–downstream disputes and notable cooperation efforts, with a focus on key water agreements. It then outlines the definitions, development, and classifications of DSSs in the context of water allocation and presents two illustrative case studies—the Tarim River Basin in Xinjiang, China, and the Nile River Basin in Africa. These cases demonstrate the applicability of DSSs in water-scarce regions with similar socio-ecological dynamics and complex multi-country, cross-sectoral water demands. Building on these insights, the paper analyzes the key challenges to implementing DSSs for transboundary water allocation in Central Asia, including limited data availability and sharing, insufficient technical capacity, chronic funding shortages, socio-political complexities, climate change impacts, and the inherent difficulty of modeling complex systems. In response, a set of targeted pragmatic recommendations is proposed. While acknowledging its limitations, the paper argues that establishing a structured, system-based decision-making framework—namely DSSs—can help stakeholders enhance climate-informed strategic planning and foster cooperation, ultimately contributing to more equitable and sustainable water resource allocation in the region. Full article

Against the backdrop of intensifying global climate change and expanding human encroachment into mountainous regions, landslides have increased markedly in both frequency and destructiveness, emerging as a key risk to socio-ecological security and development in mountain areas. Rigorous assessment and forward-looking prediction of landslide disaster vulnerability (LDV) are essential for targeted disaster risk reduction and regional sustainability. However, existing studies largely center on landslide susceptibility or risk, often overlooking the dynamic evolution of adaptive capacity within affected systems and its nonlinear responses across temporal and spatial scales, thereby obscuring the complex mechanisms underpinning LDV. To address this gap, we examine Yunnan Province, a landslide-prone region of China where intensified extreme rainfall and the expansion of human activities in recent years have exacerbated landslide risk. Drawing on the vulnerability scoping diagram (VSD), we construct an exposure–sensitivity–adaptive capacity assessment framework to characterize the spatiotemporal distribution of LDV during 2000–2020. We further develop a multi-model, multi-scale integrated prediction framework, benchmarking the predictive performance of four machine learning algorithms—backpropagation neural network (BPNN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and XGBoost—across sample sizes ranging from 2500 to 360,000 to identify the optimal model–scale combination. From 2000 to 2020, LDV in Yunnan declined overall, exhibiting a spatial pattern of “higher in the northwest and lower in the southeast.” High-LDV areas decreased markedly, and sustained enhancement of adaptive capacity was the primary driver of the decline. At approximately the 90,000-cell grid scale, XGBoost performed best, robustly reproducing the observed spatiotemporal evolution and projecting continued declines in LDV during 2030–2050, albeit with decelerating improvement; low-LDV zones show phased fluctuations of “expansion followed by contraction”, whereas high-LDV zones continue to contract northwestward. The proposed multi-model, multi-scale fusion framework enhances the accuracy and robustness of LDV prediction, provides a scientific basis for precise disaster risk reduction strategies and resource optimization in Yunnan, and offers a quantitative reference for resilience building and policy design in analogous regions worldwide. Full article

This article analyses contemporary transhumance in Gran Canaria as a singular case of insular pastoralism and biocultural heritage within the Mediterranean and Atlantic contexts. While transhumance has been widely recognised for its ecological, cultural and socio-economic relevance, in Gran Canaria it persists in an especially fragile form, maintained by a small, ageing group of herders. Drawing on an interdisciplinary methodology that combines 36 semi-structured interviews, ethnographic fieldwork and GIS-based spatial analysis of routes and grazing areas, the study characterises the socio-ecological functioning of the system, its environmental and cultural contributions, and the threats it faces. The results highlight the role of transhumance in sustaining agrobiodiversity, fire prevention, ecological connectivity and traditional ecological knowledge, as well as in shaping a distinctive pastoral soundscape, toponymy and material culture. At the same time, the system is undermined by demographic ageing, land fragmentation, urban and tourism pressure, bureaucratic burdens and climate uncertainty. The article examines emerging initiatives in cultural and experiential tourism linked to cheese production, wool and participatory transhumant journeys, arguing that tourism can support, but not substitute, the protection of pastoral livelihoods. It concludes by outlining policy implications for island territories, emphasising the need for integrated governance that recognizes transhumance as living heritage and a strategic tool for cultural landscape management. Full article

Whilst there has been substantial attention to care-experienced parents’ needs and experiences in the academic literature internationally, understandings of nascent services, their characteristics and implementation processes are more limited. With an overarching socioecological resilience systems framing and drawing on an innovation perspective, we aim to develop understanding of how to design and develop innovations to enable care-experienced parents’ successing. We conducted a narrative literature review that included 33 sources published internationally between 2017 and 2025. We conducted thematic analysis to identify adversities experienced by and innovations developed for care-experienced parents. We authenticated the themes in a workshop with members of the practice community and developed frameworks to represent the themes. Findings are represented in three sections. First, we consider parental needs, with an overview of adversities experienced by care-experienced parents together with individual protective factors and required service responses, framed by psychological, social and structural domains. Second, drawing upon such understanding, we consider intervention design, with a focus on exemplar innovations and the characteristics that are represented by five service delivery models: therapeutic; social; partnership; advocacy; and co-production. Third, with a need to ensure that service intervention is effective, we examine the process of developing service innovations and consider five dynamic ingredients that enable implementation success: shared leadership; receptivity of context; co-production; learning and adaption; and outcome measurement. Our review contributes new understanding to inform processes of designing and implementing innovations to enable care-experienced parents’ successing. We offer a framework that represents a starting point towards enabling care-experienced parents’ successing that can be applied in policy and practice, although more research is needed. Full article

The conservation status of saltscapes can vary. These areas possess their own biodiversity, which can even be stimulated by balanced socio-ecological systems, particularly those where the development of economic activities has a low ecological footprint, as is the case of traditional salt production. This study examined the conservation status of Portuguese saltscapes, related not only to the ancient activity of extracting salt-based products, but also to the more recent emergence of cultural ecosystem services, particularly those related to tourism. Using the concept of socio-ecological systems the methodological approach combines cross-referencing official statistical data with aerial imagery analysis, testing the conservation status of some saltscapes, determining whether traditional salt production areas tended to be regenerated or abandoned. The results showed that, in the main areas related to traditional salt production, conservation of saltscapes has been ongoing in recent years, particularly through the regeneration of several production areas. In some of these salt pan areas, tourism activities have been developed, increasing the resilience of the activity from a socioeconomic perspective. Saltscapes—with a particular focus on the conservation of traditional salt pans—provide ecosystem services that go beyond mere salt extraction, as they are being revalued both ecologically and culturally. Full article

This paper examines how entrenched dichotomies between natural/cultural and tangible/intangible heritage shape conservation policy in contexts where material, ecological, and socio-cultural dimensions are deeply interdependent. Despite calls for more integrated frameworks, limited empirical research examines how such categorical divisions operate within living rural heritage environments or how they align with community perspectives and inform conservation policies. This paper addresses this gap by analysing the persistence of rigid heritage taxonomies in officially designated traditional villages in central rural Greece exploring how heritage officials and residents perceive and value their heritage. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork across six villages—including interviews, focus groups, and consultations with heritage professionals—it demonstrates that these categorical divisions fail to reflect local understandings of heritage as a living socio-ecological system. For residents, ecological conditions, built forms, agricultural practices, and social relations are interdependent and tied to livelihoods, land stewardship, and communal identity. Findings show that the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) reinforces artificial separations that are misaligned with grassroots perceptions and hinder integrated planning. This mismatch has direct implications for sustainability: governance models that fragment nature, culture, and community obscure socio-ecological processes and limit the development of meaningful sustainability strategies. By foregrounding experiential and affective dimensions of heritage, the paper advances debates on community-centred and context-responsive heritage management. It reframes rural heritage as a co-produced, evolving system of material, social, and ecological relations, positioning rural landscapes as critical arenas for addressing sustainability challenges and offering new empirical insights into an underexplored dimension of heritage research. The study further advocates for governance approaches that embed local ontologies and lived knowledge into policy and practice, fostering more inclusive, resilient, and socio-ecologically grounded heritage frameworks capable of supporting long-term sustainable development. Full article

Quantitative assessment of ecosystem health (EH) effectively provides a scientific reference for regional landscape ecological development and socio-ecological system coordination. This study combined the VORSH framework and the XGBoost-SHAP model to assess EH and its spatiotemporal driving factors in the Pinglu Canal Economic Zone. The results show that the comprehensive ecosystem health index (EHI) generally remained at a moderate level during this period, exhibiting a pattern of initial decline followed by recovery, resulting in an overall improving trend. The period from 2005 to 2010 was identified as a critical transitional phase, during which EH began to recover and gradually improve. The Pinglu Canal Economic Zone exhibits distinct spatial heterogeneity in EH. Areas with poor and unhealthy grades are primarily distributed around urban peripheries, plain regions, and near certain water bodies. In contrast, healthy and relatively healthy areas are predominantly located in the densely vegetated mountainous regions of the southwest, north, and east. Between 2000 and 2020, the EH status demonstrated a significant overall upward trend, with most areas experiencing slight improvement and only a few regions exhibiting significant degradation. Topography and temperature were the primary factors driving the spatiotemporal variations in EH, while the influence of human activities continued to intensify with ongoing socioeconomic development. Full article

Food systems operate as socio-ecological systems (SES) in which governance, markets, and biophysical constraints interact through feedback. However, how resilience capacities accumulate across sequential shocks, particularly in hyper-arid, import-dependent rentier states, remains under-traced. We analyze Qatar’s food-system SES across three distinct stress tests: the 2017–2021 blockade, the COVID-19 pandemic (multi-node logistics and labor shock), and the post-2022 Russia–Ukraine war (global price and agricultural input-cost shock). Using a qualitative longitudinal case-study design, we combine documentary review with process tracing and a two-layer coding scheme that maps interventions to SES components (actors, governance system, resource systems/units, interactions, outcomes/feedback) and to predominant resilience capacities (absorptive, adaptive, transformative). The results indicate path-dependent capability building: the blockade activated rapid buffering and rerouting alongside early adaptive investments; COVID-19 accelerated adaptive reconfiguration via digitized logistics, e-commerce scaling, and targeted controlled-environment agriculture; and the Russia–Ukraine shock validated an institutionalized portfolio (fiscal buffering, reserves, procurement diversification, and upstream linkages). Across episodes, supply continuity was maintained, but resilience gains also generated water–energy–food tradeoffs, shifting pressures toward energy-intensive cooling/desalination and upstream water demands linked to domestic buffers. We conclude that durable resilience in eco-constrained, import-dependent systems requires explicit governance of these tradeoffs through measurable performance criteria, rather than crisis-driven expansion alone. Full article

Agroecology is increasingly shaped by the convergence of traditional knowledge, farmers’ lived experiences, and scientific research, fostering a plural dialog that embraces the ecological and socio-political complexity of agricultural systems. Within this framework, soil biodiversity is essential for maintaining ecosystem functions, with soil microbiology, and particularly arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), playing a pivotal role in enhancing soil fertility, plant health, and agroecosystem resilience. This review explores the synergy between agroecological practices and AMF by examining their ecological, economic, epistemic, and territorial contributions to sustainable agriculture. Drawing on recent scientific findings and Latin American case studies, it highlights how practices such as reduced tillage, crop diversification, and organic matter inputs foster diverse and functional AMF communities and differentially affect their composition and ecological roles. Beyond their biological efficacy, AMF are framed as relational and socio-ecological agents—integral to networks that connect soil regeneration, food quality, local autonomy, and multi-species care. By bridging ecological science with political ecology and justice in science-based knowledge, this review offers a transdisciplinary lens on AMF and proposes pathways for agroecological transitions rooted in biodiversity, cognitive justice, and territorial sustainability. Full article

Glacier mass loss driven by climate change has increased glacier-related hazards, including glacier debris flows, and poses growing threats to downstream communities. The Badswat Basin in northern Karakoram has experienced repeated glacier debris flows in recent years but lacks systematic disaster analysis and detailed monitoring. This study reconstructs and analyzes three glacier debris flows from 2015, 2018, and 2021 using multi-source remote sensing data and high-resolution DEMs. Results show that three events were triggered by tributary glaciers, with the 2015 event creating the initial dammed lake, and the 2018 and 2021 events further enlarging it (up to 0.72 km² and 40 million m³). These events transported glacier mass downstream, expanded alluvial fans, and caused net glacier erosion. The 2018 event was the most destructive, damaging 75 buildings, flooding 0.28 km² of farmland, and destroying 4.95 km of roads. Analysis suggests that topography influences environmental vulnerability and glacier stability. High temperatures, which accelerate glacier melting, are the primary drivers of the hazard. The bidirectional link between glacier movement and debris flows is a key factor in triggering or intensifying events. Under future climate scenarios, both tributary and main glaciers are expected to continue losing mass, further increasing downstream risks. This study details the evolutionary process of recurring periodic debris flows in the Badswat Basin, providing scientific insights into glacier–landform interactions and hazard management in high-mountain socio-ecological systems. Full article

Urban resilience has emerged as a crucial objective for achieving sustainable urban development. However, its practical integration into planning remains limited. This study evaluates the extent to which resilience thinking is integrated into Chengdu’s urban planning system by combining policy-theoretical analysis with empirical evidence. Drawing on a framework of nine resilience attributes, we conduct content analysis of Chengdu’s three types of statutory plan documents (Socioeconomic Development Plan, Urban and Rural Plan, and Land Use Plan) and a questionnaire survey of 70 expert planners. The results reveal that resilience is reflected implicitly in the plans through engineering-oriented attributes such as robustness, efficiency, and connectivity. In contrast, social and ecological attributes like inclusion, redundancy, and innovation are largely absent. Planners demonstrate moderate awareness of resilience, yet associate it predominantly with rapid response and infrastructure robustness rather than long-term adaptation or community capacity-building. These findings indicate the dominant top-down, growth-centric planning logic that constrains the adoption of broader socio-ecological resilience concepts. This paper concludes with policy recommendations for institutionalizing resilience in Chinese urban planning through legal mandates; multi-sectoral coordination; and participatory, adaptive planning frameworks. Full article

Understanding how land tenure and socio-economic pressures shape landscape transformation is critical for sustainable management in biodiversity-rich regions. This study examines three decades (1987–2017) of land use and land cover (LU&LC) change in the Ngerenyi area of the Taita Hills, Kenya, by integrating multispectral Landsat analysis with household survey data. Harmonized pre-processing and supervised classification of four LU&LC classes, agriculture, built-up areas, high-canopy vegetation, and low-canopy vegetation, achieved overall accuracies above 80% and Kappa values exceeding 0.75. Transition modeling using the Minimum Information Loss Transition Estimation (MILTE) approach, combined with net-versus-swap metrics, revealed persistent decline and fragmentation of high-canopy vegetation, cyclical transitions between agriculture and low-canopy vegetation, and the near-irreversible expansion of built-up areas. Low-canopy vegetation exhibited the highest dynamism, reflecting both degradation from canopy loss and natural regeneration from fallowed cropland. Household surveys (n = 141) identified agricultural expansion, charcoal production, fuelwood extraction, and population growth as the dominant perceived drivers, with significant variation across tenure categories. The population in Taita Taveta County increased from 205,334 in 2009 to 340,671 in 2019, reinforcing documented pressures on land resources and woody biomass. As part of the Eastern Arc biodiversity hotspot, the landscape’s diminishing high-canopy patches underscore the importance of conserving undisturbed vegetation remnants as ecological baselines and biodiversity refuges. The findings highlight the need for tenure-sensitive, landscape-scale planning that integrates private landowners, regulates subdivision, promotes agroforestry and alternative energy options, and safeguards remaining high-canopy vegetation to enhance ecological resilience while supporting local livelihoods. Full article

Ecosystem disservices (EDS)—ecosystem properties and functions that cause discomfort or harm—often shape public attitudes to urban biodiversity more strongly than ecosystem services, yet they remain weakly integrated into inclusive spatial planning. This study develops and tests an EDS classification and a decision-making tree intended to help planners recognise disservices, assess ES–EDS trade-offs, and select proportionate responses without defaulting to ecological simplification. The framework was derived from literature, survey evidence, and expert–stakeholder input from Eastern European cities, and then examined through five contrasting urban action situations in Estonia and Belarus. The cases show that a shared decision logic for EDS is transferable across settings, but that its practical uptake depends on governance conditions. Where communication was proactive and explanatory, participation was meaningful, and long-term management was institutionally secured, disservices were reframed or mitigated while ecological objectives were maintained. Where disservices were framed late, trust was low, or political intervention truncated deliberation, even modest nature-based interventions were stalled or redirected toward grey alternatives. These findings justify treating EDS as a routine planning concern and demonstrate how an EDS-aware approach can strengthen inclusive planning by making both benefits and burdens of urban nature explicit. Full article

Vulnerabilities in local food systems revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic were especially evident in highly tourism-dependent islands. This underscores the crucial role of agriculture in ensuring socio-ecological resilience, food security, and livelihood options in these contexts. Yet despite renewed policy attention, sustaining local farming in remote island settings continues to face numerous challenges. Amid growing recognition of the ways in which collective imagination shapes (and constrains) sustainability transformations, this paper applies the conceptual lens of imaginaries to examine agricultural futures in the Galápagos Islands and to explore the question of why agriculture remains marginal, despite widespread acknowledgement that supporting sustainable farming is central to the archipelago’s long-term sustainability. Through reflexive thematic analysis of policy documents, grey literature, and semi-structured interviews, the paper shows how imaginative spaces of possibility around food futures in Galápagos are conditioned by the powerful entanglement of hegemonic conservationist imaginaries with touristic imaginaries of an uninhabited wilderness. Within this contested terrain, five overlapping and co-constituting imaginaries of agriculture are distinguished, oriented variously around conservation priorities, technocratic planning, entrepreneurial growth, traditional livelihoods, and agroecological transformation. The analysis highlights how these imaginaries mobilize contrasting logics of support and mechanisms of change and illustrates how they complicate simplistic binaries, for example, between pristine and human-managed ecosystems, or between technological and holistic approaches to farming. The paper underscores the importance of paying critical attention to imaginaries of agriculture in order to navigate pathways toward more sustainable and resilient food systems in ecologically fragile island contexts. Full article

Socio-ecological systems (SESs) exhibit nonlinear feedback across environmental, social, and economic processes, requiring integrative analytical tools capable of representing such coupled dynamics. This study presents a quantitative framework that integrates a compartmental model of a global human–ecosystem with two complementary optimization approaches (Fisher Information (FI) and Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO)) to evaluate policy strategies for sustainability. The model represents biophysical and socio-economic interactions across 15 compartments, incorporating feedback loops between greenhouse gas (GHG) accumulation, temperature anomalies, and trophic–economic dynamics. Six policy-relevant decision variables were selected (wild plant mortality, sectoral prices (agriculture, livestock, and industry), base wages, and resource productivity) and optimized under temporal (25-year) and magnitude (±10%) constraints to ensure policy realism. FI-based optimization enhances system stability, whereas the MOO framework balances environmental, social, and economic objectives using the Ideal Point Method. Both approaches prevent the systemic collapse observed in the baseline scenario. The FI and MOO strategies reduce terminal global temperature by 11.4% and 15.0%, respectively, relative to the baseline (35 °C → 31.0 °C under FI; 35 °C → 29.7 °C under MOO). Resource-use efficiency, measured through the resource requirement coefficient (λ), improves by 8–10% under MOO (0.6767 → 0.6090) and by 6–7% under FI (0.6668 → 0.6262). These outcomes offer actionable guidance for long-term climate policy at national and international scales. The MOO framework provided the most balanced outcomes, enhancing environmental and social performance while maintaining economic viability. Overall, the integration of optimization and information-theoretic approaches within SES models can support evidence-based public policy design, offering actionable pathways toward resilient, efficient, and equitable sustainability transitions. Full article