Tajima Hidetomo, Sato Tetsu, Matewere John Banana, Rampisela Dorothea Agnes, Shimagami Motoko, Takemura Shion, Makino Mitsutaku
Marine Fisheries Research and Development Center, Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, Yokohama, Japan.
SDGs Promotion Office, Ehime University, Matsuyama, Japan.
PLoS One. 2025 May 14;20(5):e0323451. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323451. eCollection 2025.
Transformation of social-ecological systems is required to overcome complex and difficult challenges and move forward toward sustainable futures for humanity and the environment. We have accumulated case examples of autonomous innovations emerging among community members in rural areas of developing countries through transdisciplinary dialogues with innovators. Collective actions among diverse actors in communities are mobilized in these autonomous innovations to promote transformations by creating synergies among resource management practices. Synergy creation has a greater impact on transformations of social-ecological systems because broader people are involved in the network, the range of covered resources and ecosystems is wider, and diverse beneficiaries are involved. We applied a novel approach to visualize leverage points in the emergence processes of synergies in autonomous innovations to understand the pathways and mechanisms of social-ecological transformation driven by these innovations. We made comparisons of 17 cases of autonomous innovations with and without synergies to clarify the mechanisms of social-ecological transformations through synergies. The process of synergy creation was complicated and several factors in the initial phases of autonomous innovations interact with each other to generate synergies. These factors included perception changes of people and innovators and visualization of new challenges. We also found that diverse functions of leverage points appearing at the initial phases played critical roles in synergy creation. Functions related to synergy creation such as the visualization of challenges, creation of values, and promoting changes of perceptions were important. Based on these analyses, we propose six guiding principles for local practitioners, community-based innovators, and transdisciplinary scientists collaborating with these actors to promote the transformation of social-ecological systems through the creation of synergies in autonomous innovations.
为了克服复杂而艰巨的挑战，并朝着人类与环境的可持续未来迈进，社会生态系统的转型是必要的。通过与创新者进行跨学科对话，我们积累了发展中国家农村地区社区成员自主创新的案例。在这些自主创新中，社区中不同行为体之间的集体行动被动员起来，通过在资源管理实践中创造协同效应来促进转型。协同效应的创造对社会生态系统的转型具有更大的影响，因为参与网络的人群更广泛，涵盖的资源和生态系统范围更广，涉及的受益者也更多样化。我们采用了一种新颖的方法来可视化自主创新中协同效应出现过程中的杠杆点，以了解这些创新驱动的社会生态转型的途径和机制。我们对17个有协同效应和无协同效应的自主创新案例进行了比较，以阐明通过协同效应实现社会生态转型的机制。协同效应的创造过程很复杂，自主创新初始阶段的几个因素相互作用以产生协同效应。这些因素包括人们和创新者认知的变化以及新挑战的可视化。我们还发现，在初始阶段出现的杠杆点的不同功能在协同效应的创造中起着关键作用。与协同效应创造相关的功能，如挑战的可视化、价值的创造以及促进认知的改变，都很重要。基于这些分析，我们为地方从业者、社区创新者以及与这些行为体合作的跨学科科学家提出了六项指导原则，以通过在自主创新中创造协同效应来促进社会生态系统的转型。
