1 Modelling social-ecological transformation Steven Lade Stockholm Resilience Centre Montpellier, 8 October 2013

2 Social-ecological systems Human behaviour Natural resources

3 Adaptation and Transformation Adaptation: small changes in an SES that reflect the ability of actors “to learn, combine experience and knowledge, and adjust [their] responses” (Folke 2010) Transformation: drastic change into a different type of system

4 Examples of transformations Changes in regional tax structures -> farming to suburbanisation (Folke 2010) Loss of arctic sea ice -> transformation of geopolitical and economic feedbacks among Arctic nations (Folke 2010) Farming -> Ecotourism in Zimbabwe (Cumming, 1999) Transformation to ecosystem-based management (Swedish lake, Great Barrier Reef) (Olsson 2004, 2008) Water system innovations for the development of dryland agro-ecosystems (Enfors, 2012)

5 Resilience Persistence: “The ability of a system to withstand shocks.” Adaptability: “The capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience.” Transformability: “The capacity to transform the stability landscape itself in order to become a different kind of system, to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable.” (Folke 2010) “Resilience is the long-term capacity of a system to deal with change and continue to develop” (SRC website)

6 Outline How can we model adaptation and transformation? Traditional dynamical systems approaches not enough 1.Network theory; adaptive and dynamic networks 2.SES framework of Ostrom 3.Power and agency  Tentative framework for modelling social-ecological transformation Biggs et al. (2012) Walker et al. (2004)

7 SRC Research Insight #1 Enfors, Global Environmental Change, 2013 Descriptive frameworks Per Olsson’s 3 phases of transformation Attractors and development trajectories

8 Research questions 1.How resilient is a social-ecological system? 2.What processes/mechanisms/feedbacks contribute to the resilience of a social-ecological system? 3.How do social-ecological systems transform from one state to another? What factors drive this transformation? 4.What development trajectories can a social-ecological system follow? Can these trajectories be altered? How? Initially, not predictive: represent and evaluating knowledge Later, could create ‘null hypotheses’

9 Structure Transformations involve reorganisation New roles, new interactions, new governance structures, new social norms Difficult to capture in dynamical systems framework: require new processes or even new state variables

10 Networks Adaptation Transformation

11 Dynamic/adaptive networks Dynamic networks (social network analysis): statistical tests Adaptive networks (physics): Mathematical properties and phase transition

12 SES-framework Developed by the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and collaborators A framework for comparing case studies on with respect to which variables are important for successful SES outcomes We can identify three important types of nodes Links will be interactions between them The SES framework identifies properties of these nodes to which we should pay attention Governance actors User Resource system Elinor Ostrom Maja Schlüter

13 Example: Poverty trap Resource system Governance system User (Harvester) Provisioning Extraction Reproduction (low) Resource level (low) Income (low) Policy action Poverty trap Provisioning Extraction Reproduction (high) Income (high) Policy action Rule Enforcement Monitoring (high) Resource level Well-functioning system escape from trap? descent into trap? Jamila Haider Nanda Wijermans

14 Power A critical aspect of a poverty trap is that the resource users lack the power to change their circumstances Resilience thinking often criticised for neglecting power, agency, equity Power can operate in many different ways Include rewiring rate to represent power: ability of an actor to modify links in which they are participating Gaventa, Institute of development studies, 2006

15 Poverty trap with power Provisioning Extraction Reproduction (low) Resource level (low) Income (low) Policy action Provisioning Extraction Reproduction (high) Income (high) Policy action Rule Enforcement Monitoring (high) Resource level G rewiring (low) U rewiring (low) G rewiring (med) U rewiring (high) Extortion - Generational forgetting Lobbying + Generational forgetting - escape from trap? descent into trap?

16 Rules for link change ?Links change at random (at actor’s rewiring rate) ?Actors make those link changes they expect to be beneficial for them (ending in a kind of Nash equilibrium) Also need dynamical equations for state variables dIncome/dt = … dResourceLevel/dt = … Rules for node dynamics

17 Descent into a poverty trap (low) Resource level (low) Income (low) Policy action (high) Income (high) Policy action (high) Resource level G rewiring (low) U rewiring (low) G rewiring (med) U rewiring (high) Generational forgetting Extortion - - Extraction - Provisioning + Rule Enforcement - Monitoring Reproduction + Lobbying +

18 Resilience Persistence: Eigenvalues/return time Adaptability: power of an actor Transformability: network-level ability to re-configure system. – Number of link changes required to reach basin of attraction of another network configuration? – Probability of endogenous transformation? Provisioning Extraction Reproduction (low) Resource level (low) Income (low) Policy actionG rewiring (low) U rewiring (low) Generational forgetting Extortion

19 Caveats This modelling framework so far does not incorporate Diversity of actors Adaptive management: willingness to experiment Conceptual/cognitive shifts Transformation within organisations

20 Next steps Make appropriate dynamical rules for (an initial subset of) link and node dynamics Apply to appropriate case or stylised case Other work Social-ecological regime shifts – In a simple theoretical model of resource and extractors – In the Baltic Sea

21 General resilience Diversity Modularity Openness Reserves Feedbacks Nestedness Monitoring Leadership Trust

22 Conclusions ChallengePotential solution StructureNetworks Dynamics of structureDynamic/adaptive networks Multi-scale and multi-type (“multiplex”)SES framework Power and agencyRewiring rate for each actor Process-based dynamical modelDynamical systems/generalised modelling

23 SES-LINK Maja Schlüter Jamila Haider Nanda Wijermans Kirill Orach Steven Lade Exploring the roles of linkages and feedbacks in social-ecological systems using theoretical models and grounded case studies