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Resilience and governance of social-ecological systems (II)
Citation:
Garmestani, A. Resilience and governance of social-ecological systems (II). Resilience of complex legal systems in sustainability transformation, Helsinki, FINLAND, June 04 - 06, 2024.
Impact/Purpose:
· This research enhances understanding of how to improve ecosystem management, which has critical ramifications for better environmental outcomes. The work advances research on ecosystem management by analyzing the issue and providing guidance for moving forward. In the long-term, improving ecosystem management has broad-scale implications for the environment in the United States, with particular interest for Regions (2 and 4), communities (Puerto Rico, USVI), and the general public.
Description:
Environmental governance has largely developed around the prevailing scientific understanding that there is a “balance of nature” that could be sustained in perpetuity or mitigated if out of balance; a dated conception that is at odds with the dynamics of social-ecological systems. Accelerating environmental change will likely result in more frequent non-linear change in social-ecological systems (e.g., regime shifts in coral reef systems; emergence of novel viruses; more frequent, larger, and intense wildfires and tropical storms), and thus formal institutions are now just one piece of the puzzle for governing multi-scale social-ecological systems. This resilience governance perspective has important ramifications for infrastructure (e.g., transportation infrastructure, water infrastructure) moving forward in the Anthropocene. In order to better account for cross-scale dynamics of social-ecological systems, governance should further tap adaptive and transformative approaches to governance, as well as subsidiarity principles in order to improve environmental governance.