Within local knowledge systems research, gender is a relatively unexplored topic. Despite women’s significant roles in economic and domestic spheres, their connection and knowledge regarding social-ecological systems requires more attention. Acosta-Naranjo et al. (2021) have therefore conducted long-term research in three regions of Spain in order to understand differences in knowledge, consumption and gathering of wild edible plants (WEP) by men and women, and the causes or context behind this. This approach is led by previous research in the area proposing that wild edible plant location determined whether it was harvested by men or women, thus the relationship between gendered relationships to space and place, and WEPs was researched.
In order to collect this data, Acosta-Naranjo et al. (2021) selected three study areas, within which qualitative and quantitative data collection was to take place. The regions of Doñana, Sierra Morena Extremeña, and Sierra Norte de Madrid were chosen, due…
Multiple threats face the sustainability and survival of social-ecological systems. In recent years, a growing focus on the potential of different actions in producing lasting change has emerged. Meadows’ (1999) paper concerning leverage points has been a catalyst for the growth of this field. However, the application of this perspective to real-world scenarios and cultural landscapes has been slow. Riechers et al. (2021) discuss the ability of human-nature connections to produce changes in sustainability through a leverage points perspective (see Box 1). The authors analyse the ways in which different aspects of human-nature connectedness portray leverage points, at which interventions could be key in reversing unsustainable cultural landscape changes in five different communities throughout Europe.
Box 1. Description of terms used regarding the leverage points perspective. These descriptions are partly direct quotes from the sources named below, partly defined or edited by the authors (Riechers et al. 2021:2).
The concept of resilience has become increasingly popular over the past years – especially in sustainability science. As of late 2020, there were almost 13,000 peer-reviewed publications in the Scopus scientific database that mentioned both resilience and sustainability. However, the definitions of resilience vary greatly. In their recent paper, Nüchter et al. (2021) investigate how the concept of resilience has been used in peer-reviewed empirical sustainability science articles that were published from 2014 to 2018. More specifically, the authors seek to provide an overview of the current research landscape of empirical resilience research in sustainability science and to contribute to the discussion on the potential of resilience as a boundary object. To this end, they combine an inductive text analysis with a multivariate statistical full-text analysis of 112 journal articles.
The qualitative content analysis revealed that a social-ecological resilience understanding was most popular in sustainability science literature: while one third…
The world faces multiple, interconnected sustainability challenges. Researchers publish ever more findings on trends and developments, knowledge on feedbacks and drivers, or frameworks for methodological approaches. While essential to sustainability theory and practice, however, this is not sufficient to induce real change. In their recent paper, Care et al. (2021) argue that sustainability transformations also require polycentric leadership collectives. The authors share the insights they collected in the context of a training program for early-career scholars with a focus on leadership competencies for sustainability over the past 2 years. Thereby, they provide a synthesis of opportunities, gaps, and critical needs for an alternative model of leadership.
“O. Care” serves as a first-author pseudonym for publications by the Careoperative, a group of researchers from different institutions and disciplines. Right: Picture of a visit to Voelkel juices. (Both pictures from Gunnar Dreßler)
According to Care et al. (2021), current leadership models remain…
Where humans and wildlife coexist, conflicts are part of the interactions between the two groups. While ecological and economic aspects of human-wildlife conflicts have been extensively researched, social dimensions commonly receive less attention. In their recent paper, Jiren et al. (2021) introduce a step-by-step template for how to use participatory scenario planning to address human-wildlife coexistence. Their framework allows stakeholders to jointly identify plausible future trajectories for their region and develop management responses by engaging in a transdisciplinary process. The authors illustrate the application of their template with the help of a case study in the Zambezi region of Namibia. There, growing wildlife populations and human encroachment resulted in an intensification of human-wildlife conflicts over the last few decades.
The Zambezi region is home to diverse wildlife including lions and jackals, as well as to people who mainly rely on subsistence agriculture and livestock. Conflicts between humans and wildlife jeopardize…
By Carina Wyborn (Australian National University) and Jasper Montana (University of Oxford)
Addressing interconnected challenges of environmental degradation and social justice requires revisiting the foundations of biodiversity research and action
The announcement from the UN-backed IPBES Global Assessment that 1 million species are at risk of extinction offered a sobering statistic on the state of the natural world. The potential for catastrophic loss of biodiversity highlights the need for research and action that takes the scope, complexity and stakes of environmental degradation seriously. While species loss attracts headline news, improving relations between humanity and the ecosystems and environments upon which they depend demands attention to the ways in which biodiversity loss, climate change, poverty, injustice and inequality around the globe are interconnected.
A tree of commitments that participants made at the Biodiversity Revisited Symposium in Vienna, 2019
A research agenda recently published in Conservation Biology outlines the possible role for research in enabling a transition towards more diverse and just futures for life on Earth. It sets out an agenda for researchers, research funders and research institutions to consider as a possible roadmap for a way forward in biodiversity-related research.
The agenda emerged from a two-year collaboration involving nearly 300 multidisciplinary researchers, practitioners, writers and journalists of 46 nationalities called the Biodiversity Revisited initiative. The process began as a self-reflective dialogue about what was wrong with current research on biodiversity, why it had failed to mobilise collective action, and how research might move forwards in productive ways.
The published agenda argues for a principles-based approach to research and action for biodiversity, which we call ‘revisiting biodiversity’. Instead of prescribing a particular set of ‘one-size-fits-all’ actions, the agenda identities a set of nine overarching principles (Figure 1.) that can help researchers, practitioners and decision-makers to reframe biodiversity research in a holistic way that emphasises justice and the inclusion of a diversity of perspectives from different disciplines, knowledge systems and experiences.
Figure 1. The nine principles of revisiting biodiversity
The agenda sets out four themes.
“Revisiting biodiversity narratives” addresses the entrenched concepts and narratives that have separated humans, cultures, economies and societies from nature.
“Anthropocene, biodiversity, and culture” explores perspectives on the fundamental and evolving relationships between biodiversity and human cultures.
“Nature and economy” examines the existing economic and financial systems, which are some of the primary drivers of biodiversity loss.
“Enabling transformative biodiversity research and change” draws all of these together, focusing on what individuals and institutions can do to embrace and open up spaces for transformative change by expanding the knowledge, values and cultures utilised within biodiversity research.
These themes are not exhaustive, but set out research questions considered by the author team to be important to broadening thinking and collaboration for biodiversity, and encouraging a more comprehensive understanding of what constitutes ‘desirable’ futures.
Time is of the essence and the ongoing task of revisiting biodiversity will take many forms. We hope that this agenda can offer a renewed vision of the what and the how of future transdisciplinary research and action for biodiversity and social justice. We invite others to engage with it as an open and adaptable resource that inspires, rather than prescribes, new collaborative engagement between different sectors of society and academia.
Visit Biodiversity Revisited for more information about the initiative and its outputs, including Seeds of Change, a compilation of expert reviews and provocative essays that preceded this agenda.
Food, fuel, shelter, tools – these are all examples of key livelihood products that forests and farmlands provide to humans. While such ecosystem services are important for human well-being, their accessibility is modified by a set of mediating factors that determine how much and which benefits different people receive. Hence, different groups of people – although they might be surrounded by the same ecosystems – benefit differently from them, depending on complex mechanisms that either influence the stock or the flow of ecosystem services. In the context of a case study in southwestern Ethiopia, Schultner et al. (2021) explored benefit profiles of different beneficiary groups and identified reasons for unequal access to ecosystem services. To this end, they disaggregated ecosystem service recipients and scrutinized current and historical mechanisms shaping access to services.
In their analysis, Schultner et al. (2021) focused on eight key ecosystem services: the two most common farmland…
Food security and biodiversity conservation are two key challenges for many countries around the world. The simultaneous provision of food security and biodiversity conservation requires a governance system that can address intra- and intersectoral complexity. However, the two sectors are often treated as separate goals. In their recent study, Jiren et al. (2021) explore challenges encountered by governance systems to deliver integrated biodiversity and food security governance. To this end, they identified food security and biodiversity governance challenges in a multi-level governance context in southwestern Ethiopia. Specifically, this study focused on identifying institutional interplay problems within and between the two sectors at different governance levels.
The study area in Jimma zone in southwestern Ethiopia is a biodiversity hotspot and the birthplace of coffee (Coffea arabica, see picture). Food insecurity and biodiversity loss are major problems in the area and are accelerated by population pressure, agricultural land expansion, and challenges related…
In areas where people and wildlife share the same habitat, conflicts can arise between the two groups. This can undermine people’s tolerance of wildlife and thereby contribute to the ongoing decline in wildlife numbers. Hence, it is crucial to understand the factors that determine communities’ willingness to coexist with wildlife and tolerate potential costs in order to ensure the viability of landscape approaches to wildlife conservation. Kansky et al. (2021) examine the relative importance of monetary and non-monetary costs and benefits as drivers of tolerance to five potentially damage-causing mammal species. In addition, the authors compare drivers of tolerance across wildlife species.
The study by Kansky et al. (2021) focuses on the Zambian section of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area that spans five countries in southern Africa. The surveyed communities experience high rates of human-wildlife conflicts and do not obtain significant monetary benefits from wild animals. This provides the opportunity…
Each year, millions of tons of plastic are produced worldwide – a considerable part of which end up in the environment. Even in remote regions such as the arctic or the deep sea, remnants of plastic can be found. In 2019, a group of European experts gathered in San Sebastián, Spain, to discuss current challenges of researching microplastics pollution in the ocean in a transdisciplinary workshop. The experts covered a range of actors – from natural to social scientists, to a teacher, representatives from different companies and the EU-Commission. In their recent paper, Riechers et al. (2021) summarize the key discussion points and outcomes of the conference.
The 2019 workshop “Plastics in our ocean: a micro or macro challenge?” was organized by nanoGUNE and funded by the European Commission through the 2nd Capacity Building call made by the European Project EKLIPSE of Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It created…
