Publication archive

Untapped capacity for resilience in environmental law

Garmestani, A.S., J.B. Ruhl, B.C. Chaffin, R.K. Craig, H.F.M.W. van Rijswick, D.G. Angeler, C. Folke L.H. Gunderson, D. Twidwell, and C.R. Allen. 2019. Untapped Capacity for Resilience in Environmental Law. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA

2020 - Journal / article

Over the past several decades, environmental governance has made substantial progress in addressing environmental change, but emerging environmental problems require new innovations in law, policy, and governance. While expansive legal reform is unlikely to occur soon, there is untapped potential in existing laws to address environmental change, both by leveraging adaptive and transformative capacities within the law itself to...

Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change

Lade, S.J., Norberg, J., Anderies, J.M.,, Beer, C. et.al. 2019. Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change. Global Sustainability, Volume 2 2019, e21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2019.18

2019 - Journal / article

Individual organisms on land and in the ocean sequester massive amounts of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans. Yet the role of ecosystems as a whole in modulating this uptake of carbon is less clear. Here, we study several different mechanisms by which climate change and ecosystems could interact. We show that climate change could cause changes in ecosystems that reduce their capacity to take up carbon, further a...

Wicked problems of smart cities

Colding, J., Barthel, S., Sörqvist, P. 2019. Wicked Problems of Smart Cities. Smart Cities 2019, 2, 512-521.

2019 - Journal / article

It is often uncritically assumed that, when digital technologies are integrated into the operation of city functions, they inevitably contribute to sustainable urban development. Such a notion rests largely on the belief that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions pave the way for more democratic forms of planning, and that ‘smart’ technological devices result in a range of environmental benefits, e.g., energ...

Evaluating heterogeneous brokerage: New conceptual and methodological approaches and their application to multi-level environmental governance networks

Hamilton, M., Hileman, J., Bodin, Ö. 2019. Evaluating heterogeneous brokerage: New conceptual and methodological approaches and their application to multi-level environmental governance networks. Social Networks

2019 - Journal / article

We present two new approaches for assessing the relative contributions of different types of actors to heterogeneous brokerage in networks. These approaches distinguish between the tendency of certain types of actors to (1) mediate between dissimilar actors (heterogeneous brokerage “activity”), and (2) be the sole mediators between dissimilar actors (“exclusivity”). We present methods for implementing these approaches, using b...

Indonesian aquaculture futures — identifying interventions for reducing environmental impacts

Henriksson, P.J.G., Banks L.K., Suri S.K., Pratiwi T.Y., Fatan M.R. 2019. Indonesian aquaculture futures — identifying interventions for reducing environmental impacts. Environmental Research Letters

2019 - Journal / article

Indonesia is the world's second largest producer and third largest consumer of seafood. Fish is thus essential to the nation, both financially and nutritionally. Overfishing and the effects of climate change will, however, limit future capture fisheries landings, so any increases in future seafood production will need to come from aquaculture. Aquaculture's ecological effects are dependent upon the choice of species, managemen...

From Anthrome to Refugium? A short history of small-scale fisheries in the Anthropocene

Boonstra, W.J., Björkvik, E., Joosse, S., Hanh, T.T.H. 2019. From Anthrome to Refugium? A short history of small-scale fisheries in the Anthropocene. Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences.

2019 - Journal / article

In this article we investigate small-scale fisheries—its characteristics and values—by considering the type of aquatic and marine environments in the Global North and South that they exploit and change. We use the literature on (small-scale) fisheries and our own studies to argue that the aquatic and marine environments where small-scale fishers currently operate are shrinking under the pressures from a globalizing and urbaniz...

Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem

Nyström, J.-B. Jouffray, A. V. Norström, B. Crona, P. Søgaard-Jørgensen, S. R. Carpenter, Ö. Bodin, V. Galaz, C. Folke. 2019. Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem. Nature, Volume 575, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1712-3

2019 - Journal / article

Much of the Earth’s biosphere has been appropriated for the production of harvestable biomass in the form of food, fuel and fibre. Here we show that the simplification and intensification of these systems and their growing connection to international markets has yielded a global production ecosystem that is homogenous, highly connected and characterized by weakened internal feedbacks. We argue that these features converge to y...

Cross-scale cooperation enables sustainable use of a common-pool resource

Ringsmuth, A.K., Lade, S.J., Schlüter, M. 2019. Cross-scale cooperation enables sustainable use of a common-pool resource. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286 Proc. R. Soc. B

2019 - Journal / article

In social-ecological systems (SESs), social and biophysical dynamics interact within and between the levels of organization at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Cross-scale interactions (CSIs) are interdependences between processes at different scales, generating behaviour unpredictable at single scales. Understanding CSIs is important for improving SES governance, but they remain understudied. Theoretical models are neede...

Editorial for Special Issue: “Livelihood and Landscape Change in Africa: Future Trajectories for Improved Well-Being under a Changing Climate”

Shackleton, S., Masterson, V., Hebinck, P., Speranza, C., I., Spear, D., Tengö, M. 2019. Editorial for Special Issue: “Livelihood and Landscape Change in Africa: Future Trajectories for Improved Well-Being under a Changing Climate”. Land 2019, 8(8), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/land8080114

2019 - Journal / article

Rural people’s livelihoods are intimately linked to the landscapes in which they live and are particularly vulnerable to changes in these landscapes (Suich et al. 2015 [ 1 ]). At the same time changes in livelihood activities may have negative feedbacks on landscapes and the ecosystem services they provide. In much of Africa, rural landscapes are subject to increasing pressures from environmental and socio-economic change. T...

Upscaling urban data science for global climate solutions

Creutzig, F., Lohrey, S., Bai, X, Baklarov, A., Dawson, R., et.al. 2019. Upscaling urban data science for global climate solutions. Global Sustainability, Volume 2, 2019, e2. DOI: 10.1017/sus.2018.16

2019 - Journal / article

Manhattan, Berlin and New Delhi all need to take action to adapt to climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While case studies on these cities provide valuable insights, comparability and scalability remain sidelined. It is therefore timely to review the state-of-the-art in data infrastructures, including earth observations, social media data, and how they could be better integrated to advance climate change sci...