Socio-ecological system
Social-ecological systems are complex and adaptive and delimited by spatial or functional boundaries surrounding particular ecosystems and their context problems.
[5] Although some scholars (e.g. Bateson 1979)[12] had tried to bridge the nature-culture divide, the majority of studies focused on investigating processes within the social domain only, treating the ecosystem largely as a "black box"[6] and assuming that if the social system performs adaptively or is well organised institutionally it will also manage the environmental resource base in a sustainable fashion.
[5] Elinor Ostrom and her many co-researchers developed a comprehensive "Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework", which includes much of the theory of common-pool resources and collective self-governance.
[19] SES theory emerged from a combination of disciplines[19] and the notion of complexity developed through the work of many scholars, including the Santa Fe Institute (2002).
[19] Studying SESs from a complex system perspective attempts to link different disciplines into a body of knowledge that is applicable to serious environmental problems.
SESs are both complex and adaptive, meaning that they require continuous testing, learning about, and developing knowledge and understanding in order to cope with change and uncertainty.
[dubious – discuss][5] It generates path dependency, which refers to local rules of interaction that change as the system evolves and develops.
A consequence of path dependency is the existence of multiple basins of attraction in ecosystem development and the potential for threshold behaviour and qualitative shifts in system dynamics under changing environmental influences.
High speed computers and nonlinear mathematical techniques help simulate self-organisation by yielding complex results and yet strangely ordered effects.
[43] The adaptive cycle, originally conceptualised by Holling (1986) interprets the dynamics of complex ecosystems in response to disturbance and change.
In order to emphasise the key requirements of a social-ecological system for successful adaptive governance, Folke and colleagues[50] contrasted case studies from the Florida Everglades and the Grand Canyon.
Both are complex social-ecological systems that have experiences unwanted degradation of their ecosystem services, but differ substantially in terms of their institutional make-up.
Such an arrangement in governance creates the opportunity for institutional learning to take place, allowing for a successful period of reorganisation and growth.
A close conceptual and methodological relation exists between the analysis of social-ecological systems, complexity research, and transdisciplinarity.
Moreover, the research on social-ecological systems almost always uses transdisciplinary mode of operation in order to achieve an adequate problem orientation and to ensure integrative results.
This means that scientists from the relevant scientific disciplines or field of research as well as the involved societal stakeholders have to be regarded as elements of the social-ecological system in question.
