Improving network approaches to the study of complex social–ecological interdependencies

Ö. Bodin (), S. M. Alexander, J. Baggio, M. L. Barnes, R. Berardo, G. S. Cumming, L. E. Dee, A. P. Fischer, M. Fischer, M. Mancilla Garcia, A. M. Guerrero, J. Hileman, K. Ingold, P. Matous, T. H. Morrison, D. Nohrstedt, J. Pittman, G. Robins and J. S. Sayles
Additional contact information
Ö. Bodin: Stockholm University, Stockholm Resilience Centre
S. M. Alexander: University of Waterloo
J. Baggio: University of Central Florida
M. L. Barnes: James Cook University
R. Berardo: The Ohio State University
G. S. Cumming: James Cook University
L. E. Dee: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
A. P. Fischer: University of Michigan
M. Fischer: Department of Environmental Social Sciences
M. Mancilla Garcia: Stockholm University, Stockholm Resilience Centre
A. M. Guerrero: The University of Queensland
J. Hileman: Stockholm University, Stockholm Resilience Centre
K. Ingold: Department of Environmental Social Sciences
P. Matous: The University of Sydney, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies
T. H. Morrison: James Cook University
D. Nohrstedt: Uppsala University
J. Pittman: University of Waterloo
G. Robins: The University of Melbourne
J. S. Sayles: Atlantic Ecology Division

Nature Sustainability, 2019, vol. 2, issue 7, 551-559

Abstract: Abstract Achieving effective, sustainable environmental governance requires a better understanding of the causes and consequences of the complex patterns of interdependencies connecting people and ecosystems within and across scales. Network approaches for conceptualizing and analysing these interdependencies offer one promising solution. Here, we present two advances we argue are needed to further this area of research: (i) a typology of causal assumptions explicating the causal aims of any given network-centric study of social–ecological interdependencies; (ii) unifying research design considerations that facilitate conceptualizing exactly what is interdependent, through what types of relationships and in relation to what kinds of environmental problems. The latter builds on the appreciation that many environmental problems draw from a set of core challenges that re-occur across contexts. We demonstrate how these advances combine into a comparative heuristic that facilitates leveraging case-specific findings of social–ecological interdependencies to generalizable, yet context-sensitive, theories based on explicit assumptions of causal relationships.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0308-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:2:y:2019:i:7:d:10.1038_s41893-019-0308-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-019-0308-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().