How Much Can Actors Learn from the Dynamics Within Social-Ecological Systems When Managing Ecosystem Services? An Application of the SE-AS Framework.

Human impact on ecosystems has intensified over the last decades, putting intense pressure on ecosystem service provision including clean drinking water, functioning biogeochemical cycles, and arable topsoil for agriculture. The extent to which ecosystems have degraded has been studied and documented by researchers and international scientific bodies, such as the IPBES. However, it is well known that stakeholders often manage ecosystems without being fully aware of their inherent dynamics and their repercussions on social systems, leading to our research question: How does reflection on social-ecological system dynamics and their potential repercussions on the social system inform actors for the management of ecosystem services? We examine the impressions of actors with respect to the alterations and dynamics within the social-ecological system in which they are integrated, and we study how their considerations are reflected in ecosystem management. To do so, we analyze intense land and water use, and the alteration and management of ecosystem services in two lake catchment areas in Northern Germany and Québec, Canada. The paper applies the SE-AS framework by Schlüter et al. (2019) which structures the study of social-ecological systems along configurations of action situations within the social and the ecological system, as well as across them. In our study, we examine a) the effects of anthropic resource exploitation and use on ecosystem dynamics and services; b) feedbacks associated with changes in ecosystem services and their effects on social systems; and c) resulting responses of social systems, i.e., actions undertaken by decision-makers responsible for managing ecosystems. We complement our study with insights from stakeholders of the management regimes under study. We assess the responses of the resource management regimes based on stakeholder interviews and on causal loop diagrams which outline stakeholders’ perceptions of their social-ecological systems. For evaluating management actions, we compare: how stakeholders perceive the status of the social-ecological system; the degree to which they address unforeseen dynamics and changes in the ecosystem; their reflections on former management measures; coordination of their actions across sectors and levels, and; whether they plan to work towards a clear vision (cf. Folke et al. 2005). Overall, we examine whether stakeholders learn from the social-ecological system they manage and whether their actions are purely reactive or adaptive in nature. References: Folke, Carl, Hahn, Thomas, Olsson, Per, and Jon Norberg. 2005. Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Environemntal Resources 30: 441-473. Schlüter, Maja, Haider, Jamila L., Lade, Steven J., Lindkvist, Emilie, Martin, Romina, Orach, Kirill, Wijermans, Nanda, and Carl Folke. 2019. “Capturing emergent phenomena in social-ecological systems: an analytical framework.” Ecology and Society 24(3): 11.