Review: (Anderies and Janssen 2013) Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems: Implications for Public Policy

Key Terms
Regime shift = when the key drivers in a system fundamentally change

"problem of fit" = interplay between institutional arrangements and ecological dynamics (Folke, Pritchard, Berkes, Colding & Svedin, 2007; Young 2002)

What are the main objective(s) of the paper?

- key contribution of this article: prove ideas, language and tools to move from conception of the policy process that links policy change to evolving policy context through the dynamic biophysical system

- " There are two key questions that arise in this regard: 

(i) Can the policy process, which often plays out on the order of decades, possibly function when the policy context changes rapidly?

(ii)When the policy process and policy context involving a dynamic biophysical system co-evolve as a coupled feedback system depicted in Figure 1B, under what circumstances does infrastructure (socio-technical structures) emerge that makes the system flexible and robust versus rigid and vulnerable in the face of novel change?" (p. 517)

- will discuss approaches to navigate trade-offs between performance and robustness and choices between different vulnerabilities

- " explore how particular models of the policy process perform when coupled with particular classes of biophysical dynamics and uncertainties" (p. 522)

     -  "not to explain  the policy process but, rather, to explore how different possible policy processes might function in a dynamic policy context."

-  discuss two elements of SESs that are critical to governing changing, deeply uncertain systems:

(i) the notion of “fit”; and 

(ii) fundamental properties of feedback systems. Following that we reflect on the associated set of design principles for such systems.

What are the important results and conclusions?

- " Studies of SES, and feedback systems more generally, suggest that multilevel, polycentric

governance regimes are essential to match institutions to challenges at the right temporal and organizational scale."
     - "The long-term goal for scholars of sustainability science is to recognize which combination of variables tends to lead to relatively sustainable and productive use of particular resource systems operating at specific spatial and temporal scales and which combination tends to lead to resource collapses and high costs for humanity.... The key is assessing which variables at multiple tiers across the biophysical and social domains affect human behavior and social–ecological outcomes over time." (Ostrom 2007)

-  What distinguishes the SES Framework from the Robustness Framework is that it provides a more systematic articulation of framework elements with relationships 1–8  in the Robustness Framework.(p. 522)

- how to operationalize" governance, a.k.a. translate de jure rules into rules-in-use

     - elements that allow translation: monitoring, sanctioning and managing conflict (maintaining fairness)

- " linkages between the governance system and the resource being governed, will not be predicated on measuring harvest amounts—typically because this is too costly to monitor" (p. 525)

-  "Rules on who, where, when, and how to harvest are easier to monitor and enforce than a quota, and if there is more confidence that people are following the rules, others will follow them too."

- " Policies with “good fits,” rather, tend to rely on more practical principles where measurement equates to common-sense, easily observable attributes of the biophysical context that are simple enough to not be debatable" (p. 525)

-  "A governance regime that begins to rely on complex models and precise data that is costly to obtain is likely a “poor fit” in almost any context." (p. 525)

-  we need to learn to govern systems we can never fully understand (p. 526)

     - " navigating such performance-robustness, robustness-fragility trade-offs through policy design and policy processes involving learning and exploration are an essential element of public policy." (p. 528)

- System characteristics that enhance robustness and adaptive capacity:

     - Diversity (a multiplicity of different types of regulatory feedback mechanisms), diversity of agents and connections important for the creation of a diverse portfolio of knowledge or shared organizational mental models (Staber & Sydow 2002)

     - Redundancy (many regulatory mechanisms perform similar functions), ability to function when some modules fail, concurrent use of informal and formal rules for resource mngmt

     - Modularity (some regulatory feedback mechanisms are allowed only limited connectivity with others) (p. 529)

-  "Developing policies to increase robustness of SESs requires an explicit decision about robustness of what  system properties and aspects of performance to what types of exogenous shocks. Once the choice about which vulnerabilities are to be addressed, building robustness requires navigating trade-offs between short-term efficiency and long-term robustness."

- " we need to shift thinking away from coalitions advocating for the “right” policy to policy processes that stimulate experimentation, adaptation, and learning" (p. 532)

Experimental design, statistical analyses or analytical approaches? Flaws?

-  "Policies should therefore be seen as experiments that require systematic, ongoing monitoring and evaluation as elements of regulatory feedback networks. Decentralized experimentation would allow for innovation and increase the probability of achieving a fit between policies and local conditions (modularity and diversity). Governance at higher levels may stimulate a process of information exchange to facilitate learning from local-level experimentation." (p. 532)

-  the "main lesson from studies of robustness is that successes from the past do not guarantee success in the future' (p. 532)

Assumptions made with models? Reasonable?

- '"fixed policy context' may involve considerable variation as long as that variation exhibits a stable structure." Public policy has done so through defining "risk."

     - public policy has been a code or constraint that limits types of contracts allowed for spreading risk, reducing conflict and promoting social stability

- "discourse on societal collapse tends to focus on interaction of the inner policy feedback (decadal time scale) and the outer biophysical context feedback (centennial time scale)" (p. 516)

     - complexity of system collapses under its own weight, possibly triggered by decisions occurring in the inner feedback loop

     - must think seven generations ahead

- " it is not possible to design public policy for a given ecological (environmental) context—i.e., achieve a fit between policies and the biophysical context so that the SES is robust to all possible shocks. Thus, one aspect of the public policy process is effectively navigating trade-offs between performance and robustness and choices between different vulnerabilities." (p. 517)

- "Ostrom’s argument against (what C.S. Holling's defined as :command and control pahyology of natural resource management (Holling & Metcalfe 1996)) was very powerful: Small groups of people can effectively manage complex resource systems without top-down governance structures." (p. 518)

-  "What distinguishes the SES Framework from the Robustness Framework is that it provides a more systematic articulation of framework elements the relationships 1–8." (p. 522)

Main conclusions supported by data? Why or why not?

Good References?

Meet stated objectives?

Number of times cited?

Impact on field?

Opinion

Review: (Anderies, Janssen and Ostrom 2004) A Framework to Analyze the Robustness of Social-ecological Systems from an Institutional Perspective

Key Terms
Robustness (engineering) = "the maintenance of system performance either when subjected to external, unpredictable perturbations, or when there is uncertainty about the values of internal design parameters" (Carlson and Doyle 2002) (p. 1)

Resilience = "measures the amount of change or disruption that is required to transform the maintenance of a system from one set of mutually reinforcing processes and structures to a different set of processes and structures" (Holling 1973) (p. 1)

SES = "subset of social systems in which some of the interdependent relationships among humans are mediated through interactions with biophysical and non-human biological units (p. 3)

Social Capital = rules used by those governing, managing and using the system and those factors that reduce the transaction costs associated with monitoring and enforcement of rules (Ostrom and Ahn 2003) 

External disturbances = 1) biophysical disruptions (affect resource and public infrastructure) & 2) socioeconomic changes (affect resource user and public infrastructure provider)

Internal disturbance = rapid reorganization of ecological or social system induced by ecological or social subsystems

Robustness = "the maintenance of some desired system characteristics despite flucturations in the behavior of its component parts or its environment" (Carson and Doyle 2002)

What are the main objective(s) of the paper?

- What makes SESs robust? 

- examine institutional configurations that affect interactions among resources, resource users, public infrastructure providers and public infrastructure

     - identify potential vulnerabilities of SES to disturbances
     - illustrate problems caused by disruption in link
- relate findings to design principles developed for robust CPR institutions, "good starting point for development of design principles for more general SESs"
- innovative because proposes framework to address: 1) Resource, 2) Governance System, 3) Associated Infrastructure as a coupled system

What are the important results and conclusions?

- link between resource users and public infrastructure providers is a key variable affecting the robustness of SESs that has frequently been ignored in the past

Experimental design, statistical analyses or analytical approaches? Flaws?

- develop framework to study robustness of SES and posit broad design principles for robust SES

- Framework criteria

1) cooperation and potential for collective action must be maintained within the social system
2) ecological systems are dynamic, as are the rules of the games that agents play amongst themselves
3) ecological systems can occupy multiple stable states and move rapidly between them

Paper outline:
- define area of interest and characterize "robustness" 
- use framework to discuss several general themes
- apply it to specific cases
- suggest initial directions for future research

- To examine robustness you must ask ...
1) What is the relevant system?
2) What are the desired system characteristics?
3) When does the collapse of one part of a SES imply that the entire system loses robustness?

Assumptions made with models? Reasonable?

- "one approach to enhance the robustness of a SES would be to focus on governance that enhances the resilience of an ecosystem configuration that produces a desirable bundle of goods and services. The important point is to recognize both the designed and self-organizing components of a SES and to study how they interact." (p. 2)
- Key drivers:
1) strategic interactions between agents
2) rules that constrain actions of agents
3) collective-choice process to generate rules
- "Link 6 is rarely even addressed in most analyses of SESs because many analysts have ignored the active co-production of resource users themselves in the day-to-day operation and maintenance of a public infrastructure (but see Evans 1997)."  Promotion of co-management
      - operation and collective-choice levels must be analyzed together in order to assess robustness of SESs
- Both the social and ecological system must collapse before an SES is considered collapse
     - an SES is robust if it prevents ecological systems from moving into "a new domain of attraction that cannot support a human population/cause long-term human suffering" by just switching to another resource to exploit
- "Just the introduction of money as a medium of exchange can, by itself, be an important disturbance" Kawika
     - "When labor is primary medium of exchange, investment in public infrastructure is easy to monitor"

Main conclusions supported by data? Why or why not?

Good References?

Meet stated objectives?

Number of times cited?

Impact on field?

Opinion

Review: (Ribot and Peluso, 2003) A Theory of Access

Key Terms
- Access = the ability to derive benefits from things, including material objects, persons, institutions and symbols; a bundle of powers
- study of access: concerned with understanding the multiplicity of ways people derive benefits from resources, including, but not limited to, property relations; helps us understand why some people or institutions benefit from resources, whether or not they have rights to them
- Property = a bundle of rights;
- Property (Proudhon 1993:13) = not a civil right, based on occupation and sanctioned by law; not a natural right, arising from labor; an effect without a cause (not caused by occupation or labor)
- Property (Locke, MacPherson 1978; Neale 1998:54) = moral claim to rights arising from the mixing of labor with land
- Use = the enjoyment of some kind of benefit or benefit stream (Hunt 1998)

- "bundles of power" (Ghani, 1995:2)
- Ability ~= power = capacity of some actors to affect the practices of and ideas of others  (Weber 1978:53; Lukes 1986:3); power emerges from, but not always attached to, people
- Access control (Rangan 1997:72) = ability to mediate others' access, checking and direction of action
- Access maintenance = expending resources or powers to keep a particular sort of resource access open (e.g. Berry 1993)
- gaining access = general process by which access established
- mechanisms = means, processes and relations
- "means of transfer" problem (Conyers 2000) = when laws impart access to state agencies and leave resource users in the position of having to invest in relations with these agents in order to maintain access (Ribot 1995)

What was/were the main objective(s) of the paper?

- Access includes a wide range of social relationships that constrain or enable benefits from resource use than property relations alone
- enable scholars and others to map dynamic processes and relationships of access to resources, locates property as one set of access relationships among others
-  explore the range of powers—embodied in and exercised through various mechanisms, processes, and social relations—that affect people’s ability to benefit from resources
-  we expect to find that those who

control some forms of access may cooperate or conflict with others—

or do both at different moments or along different dimensions.

What were the important results and conclusions?

- "People and institutions are positioned differently in relation to resources at various historical moments and geographical scales. The strands thus shift and change over time, changing the nature of

power and forms of access to resources."

(DEFINE NATURE OF POWER AND FORMS OF ACCESS TO RESOURCES OVER TIME . How are people and institutions positions in relation to resources at various historical moments and at what geographic scale to they operate?"
Access is dynamic
- technology, capital, markets, knowledge, authority, social identities, and social relations can

shape or influence access

- access analysis serves as a tool for identifying the larger range of policy mechanisms—

beyond property and other forms of rights—that can affect  changes in resource management and use efficiency, equity, and sustainability with consequences for well-being, justice, conflict, and cooperation.

Errors in experimental design, statistical analyses or analytical approaches?

- Access Analysis involves (framework, not necessarily erred):
1) identifying and mapping the flow of the particular benefit of interest
2) identifying the mechanisms by which different actors involved gain control and maintain benefit flow and distribution
3) analysis of power relations underlying mechanisms of access involved in instances where benefits are derived

Assumptions made with models? Reasonable?

- access focuses on ability, rather than rights as in property theory
- grounds analysis of who actually benefits from things and through what processes are they able to do so
-  powers constitute the material, cultural and political-economic strands within the “bundles” and “webs” of powers that configure resource access
- some people and institutions control resources access, while other maintain access through those that have control
- power is inherent in certain kinds of relationships, can emerge from or flow through intended and unintended consequences of effects of social relationships
-  Someone might have rights to benefit from land but may be unable to do so without access to labor or capital. This would be an instance of having property (the right to benefit) without access (the ability to benefit).
-  Legal means, therefore, are not the only rights-based way of gaining, controlling, or maintaining benefits from resources. Violence and theft must also be considered as rights-denied mechanisms of access.
- because of the status and power that wealth affords, those with wealth may also have privileged access to production and exchange, opportunities, forms of knowledge, realms of authority, and so forth

-  Resource values may vary when resources are commodified or when national or international merchants or state agents begin to extract resources, in turn affecting property rights (Appadurai 1986; Watts 1983; Runge et al. 2000).

Main conclusions supported by data? Why or why not?

Good References?

Hunt, R.C. 1998. “Concepts of Property: Introduction of Tradition.” Pp. 3–28 in Property

in Economic Context, edited by Robert C. Hunt and Antonio Gilman. Lanham.

University Press of America, Monographs in Economic Anthropology, No. 14.

Ghani, A. 1995. “Production and Reproduction of Property as a Bundle of Powers:

Afghanistan 1774–1901.” Draft discussion paper in Agrarian Studies Program. New

Haven: Yale University.

Meet stated objectives?

Number of times cited?

Impact on field?

Opinion

- access to capital shapes who benefits from the resources of Ha‘ena which are rivalrous and to a certain extent non-excludable

Review: (Campbell et al., 2009) Beyond Baselines: Rethinking Priorities for Ocean Conservation

Campbell, L.M., N.J. Gray, E.L. Hazen and J.M. Shackeroff. 2009. Beyond baselines: rethinking priorities for ocean conservation. Ecology and Society 14(1): 14 Key Terms - SBS = refers to both concept and work it has inspired in marine historical ecology - marine historical ecology = a field of study that uses historical data sets and ecological modeling to describe what marine ecosystems might have looked like in the past - distinct from historical ecology due to marine historical ecology : natural sciences :: historical ecology : social sciences - “Stealth policy advocacy” (Lackey 2007) = policy preferences are implicit in the science instead of debated outside of it (should be avoided) What was/were the main objective(s) of the paper? - prove that impact of SBS on ocean mngmt will be limited by underlying and interrelated problematic assumptions about ecology and human-environment relations and prescriptions that these assumptions support - consider conceptual and operational merit of SBS and some problematic assumptions - assumptions relate to ecology and human-environment relations - suggesting ways to overcome limitations and capitalize on merits of SBS, toward goal of improved ocean management What were the important results and conclusions? - promote expanded discussion of SBS that engages broader range of social scientists, ecologists and resource users - explicitly recognize value judgments inherent in deciding what past ecosystems looked like and whether or not and how we might reconstruct them - Potential for interdisciplinary work is strong and unrealized for SBS o Enhance analysis of both problems and potential solutions, avoid divide between marine and terrestrial a.k.a. social science and natural science o Resilience and complex system theories: humans and nature are coupled and coevoloving in social-ecological systems (SES) (Berkes et al 2003, Folke 2004, 2006 Walker et al. 2006) • Rather than asking people to participate in SBS-defined vision of conservation, think how social-ecological systems work and structure participation in related and appropriate ways • Resilience asks how to strengthen capacity of ecosystems to support social and economic development and sustain desirable pathways and ecosystem states in the face of continuous change (Folke et al. 2002, Gunderson and Holling 2002) • Governance is a part of SES rather than external institutional structure imposed on ecological system o Resource users themselves • Who has the experience to warrant inclusion? - Expand SBS & related work in marine historical ecology to include resilience and SES theory + engage with resource users will do 2 things: 1. improve understanding of marine SES as existed in various times in the past 2. facilitate a more direct recognition of the value judgments inherent in deciding both what past states are most desirable (and to whom) and if, how and why we might try to recreate these in the future - *”… marine historical ecology is not the “natural” authority for determining the direction of ocean policy,” - have a place at the table, but one set considered among many Errors in experimental design, statistical analyses or analytical approaches? - consequences of conceptual separation of nature and culture in Western society (Cronon 1995, Castree and Braun 2001) - SBS calls to abandon sustainability as a management goal and instead work to reestablish historic baselines by reducing fleets, target species, establish MPAs; problematic because … 1. Without detailed understanding of consequences prescriptions may have negative results without looking at complexity of benefits and costs 2. Focus on economic gains assumes neoclassical profit-maximization driven by rational choice, ironically heavily looked to for modeling despite calls for interdisciplinary research 3. Natural baselines are not self evident and involve value judgment, must include all stakeholders 4. Ignores the role of fishers and other resources users in formation, uptake, monitoring and enforcement of policy change a. Overlooks co-management b. Opportunity to nurture diversity of uses and knowledge systems c. Participation occurs in a political vacuum with no consideration of power at work in participatory activities d. Breakdown TEK into simple choices of presence/absence and place & time Assumptions made with the data, calculations, models? Reasonable? - concept used for environmental advocacy outside of academia - interdisciplinary research hampered by epistemological one that distinguish between social and natural sciences and definition of what is data and science - 3 ecological assumptions that underlie SBS 1) a natural baseline exists and can be identified and agreed upon, ecologists make judgments about where to set baselines, suggesting there is noting “natural” or self-evident about hem (p.3) 2) once agreed upon baselines can be described accurately, problematic because … a) existing data about valuable & accessible species, not ecosystems b) good data is in context of contemporary understanding, can always be updated c) mass balance models rely on accuracy and completeness of inputs & simply processes thus still estimates rather than uncertainties 3) once described, baselines can be restored, “there and back again” ecology - Berkes and Folke (1998:12) argue “complex, non-linear, multi-equilibrium and self-organizing … permeated by uncertainty and discontinuities” - Holling et al (1998:354) argue “linear, equilibrium-centered view of nature no longer fits the evidence” - Resilience Theory (Holling 1973, Scheffer and Carpenter 2003, Folke et la. 2004) argues an ecosystem can occupy multiple stable states and can undergo dramatic regime shifts due to both anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic forcers - climate plays an important role, anchovy vs. sardine (Pinnegar and Engelhard 2008) or unidirectional, single, stable state (Carscadden et al. 2002) - Pitcher (2005) “ecosystems do not rewind” - human-environment relations - Frank et al (2005) Canadian East Coast cod fishery 1992 fishing moratorium, possibly no recovery due to changes in physical environmental (temp and stratification) - humans are outside of nature, i.e. defining baselines as “pre-human intervention” - consequences: 1) if humans are “naturally” outside of marine nature, enter ecological equation as problem and overlooks role of non-antrhopogenic variability in marine ecosystems - also suggests humans behave the same way, overlooking individuals, groups & institutions degrade AND restore oceans 2) ecological baselines become only ones of interest, assuming human-free baseline is correct - call for few fishers, smaller fleets, economic benefit through more productive fisheries without giving context to fishers nationality, gender, community, society or culture Main conclusions supported by data? Why or why not? References? Meet stated objectives? Number of times cited? Impact on field? Opinion