Photo: R. Kautsky/Azote

The Photo: R. Kautsky/Azote

Biosphere stewardship

This research stream explores what kind of knowledge systems, values, management practices, behaviors, and governance arrangements that build sustainability in an increasingly interconnected and turbulent world

The research stream on Biosphere stewardship originates in the realization that humans can, and need to, act in concert with the living systems we depend on (the biosphere). Our research explores what kind of knowledge systems, values, management practices, behaviors, and governance arrangements that build sustainability in an increasingly interconnected and turbulent world.

The concept of biosphere stewardship directs attention to human-nature relationships that generate positive outcomes for biodiversity and ecosystem services, emphasizing notions of care, learning and collaboration.

We build on our strong legacy of place-based studies of social-ecological systems, and the insight that in the Anthropocene, stewardship needs to be studied and enacted beyond the local scale. Biosphere stewardship can emerge in traditional as well as modernized societies, at local to global levels, and in urban as well as rural settings. It is a process that engages individuals, communities, networks, organizations and institutions in shared visions, building capacity to live with change, adapt and transform. In order to understand coupled social-ecological dynamics, our research engages with actors at diverse levels and mobilizes multiple sources of evidence and experience.

Research in this stream combines research on ecosystem dynamics, e.g. the role of functional diversity, fast and slow variables and regime shifts, and aspects of interrelated social dynamics including e.g. emergence of ecosystem based management and adaptive governance, social learning, strategic interventions to influence behavior, and changes in norms and institutions conducive with stewardship.

The cultural dimension of complex adaptive social-ecological systems is also part of this stream, and spans from research involving traditional societies, to recent developments in the area of cultural ecosystem services.

Research in this stream encourage explorations of methods that enable new ways to study social-ecological systems as inherently interlinked in time and space, including mixed methods and tools and approaches for co-constructing knowledge with actors at multiple scales.

THEME PUBLICATIONS

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.

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...

Collaboration and conflict in complex water governance systems across a development gradient: addressing common challenges and solutions

Mancilla García, M., J. Hileman, and Ö. Bodin (Eds.).

2019 - Journal / article

On the other end of research: exploring community-level knowledge exchanges in small-scale fisheries in Zanzibar

Hakkarainen, V., Daw, T.M., Tengö, M.

2019 - Journal / article

Sustainability science has increasingly adopted more action-oriented approaches in an attempt to mobilise and implement a broad knowledge base to sustain human wellbeing and promote sustainable development. There is an increasing recognition of the importance of knowledge exchange (KE) between scientists and end users of research for enhancing social, environmental and economic impacts of research. Here, we explore the proces...

Beyond “linking knowledge and action”: towards a practice-based approach to transdisciplinary sustainability interventions

West, S., van Kerkhoff, L., Wagenaar, H.

2019 - Journal / article

The imperative to “link knowledge and action” is widely invoked as a defining characteristic of sustainability research. The complexities of sustainability challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss mean that linear models of knowledge and action, where knowledge is produced first (by researchers) then “applied to” action (by policy actors), are considered insufficient. Researchers have developed more dynamic, ope...

Projects

EKOKLIM 4

Ekoklim is an inter-disciplinary research programme at Stockholm University. It investigates how climate change impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services and how these can be managed in the Mälardalen region, Sweden. Read more here

Ecosystem-based and integrated coastal zone management - challenges and possibilities

This project aims to identify determinants of successful co-management processes embracing the guiding principles of ecosystem-based management Read more here

Stockholm Resilience Centre is a collaboration between Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Stockholm Resilience Centre
Stockholm University, Kräftriket 2B
SE-10691
Phone: +46 8 674 70 70
info@stockholmresilience.su.se

Organisation number: 202100-3062
VAT No: SE202100306201