Herrfahrdt-Pähle Elke, Schlüter Maja, Olsson Per, Folke Carl, Gelcich Stefan, Pahl-Wostl Claudia
German Development Institute, Germany.
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Glob Environ Change. 2020 Jul;63:102097. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102097.
Faced with accelerating environmental challenges, research on social-ecological systems is increasingly focused on the need for transformative change towards sustainable stewardship of natural resources. This paper analyses the potential of rapid, large-scale socio-political change as a window of opportunity for transformative change of natural resources governance. We hypothesize that shocks at higher levels of social organization may open up opportunities for transformation of social-ecological systems into new pathways of development. However, opportunities need to be carefully navigated otherwise transformations may stall or lead the social-ecological system in undesirable directions. We investigate (i) under which circumstances socio-political change has been used by actors as a window of opportunity for initiating transformation towards sustainable natural resource governance, (ii) how the different levels of the systems (landscape, regime and niche) interact to pave the way for initiating such transformations and (iii) which key features (cognitive, structural and agency-related) get mobilized for transformation. This is achieved through analyzing natural resource governance regimes of countries that have been subject to rapid, large-scale political change: water governance in South Africa and Uzbekistan and governance of coastal fisheries in Chile. In South Africa the political and economic change of the end of the apartheid regime resulted in a transformation of the water governance regime while in Uzbekistan after the breakdown of the Soviet Union change both at the economic and political scales and within the water governance regime remained superficial. In Chile the democratization process after the Pinochet era was used to transform the governance of coastal fisheries. The paper concludes with important insight on key capacities needed to navigate transformation towards biosphere stewardship. The study also contributes to a more nuanced view on the relationship between collapse and renewal.
面对加速的环境挑战，社会生态系统研究越来越关注实现自然资源可持续管理的变革性变化的必要性。本文分析了快速、大规模社会政治变革作为自然资源治理变革性变化的机遇之窗的潜力。我们假设社会组织层面的冲击可能为将社会生态系统转变为新的发展路径创造机会。然而，机遇需要谨慎把握，否则变革可能停滞不前，或导致社会生态系统朝着不理想的方向发展。我们调查：（i）在哪些情况下，行为者将社会政治变革用作启动向可持续自然资源治理转型的机遇之窗；（ii）系统的不同层面（景观、制度和小生境）如何相互作用，为启动此类转型铺平道路；（iii）哪些关键特征（认知、结构和与行为体相关的）被调动起来推动转型。这是通过分析经历了快速、大规模政治变革的国家的自然资源治理制度来实现的：南非和乌兹别克斯坦的水治理以及智利的沿海渔业治理。在南非，种族隔离制度末期的政治和经济变革导致了水治理制度的转型，而在苏联解体后的乌兹别克斯坦，经济和政治层面以及水治理制度内部的变革仍然很表面。在智利，皮诺切特时代后的民主化进程被用于转变沿海渔业治理。本文最后对实现向生物圈管理转型所需的关键能力提出了重要见解。该研究还对崩溃与复兴之间的关系提出了更细致入微的观点。
