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

Integrating supply and demand in ecosystem service bundles characterization across Mediterranean transformed landscapes

Quintas-Soriano, C., García-Llorente, M., Norström, A. et al.

2019 - Journal / article

Humans continually transform landscapes, affecting the ecosystem services (ES) they provide. Thus, the spatial relationships among services vary across landscapes. Managers and decision makers have access to a variety of tools for mapping landscapes and analyzing their capacity to provide multiple ES. This paper characterizes and maps ES bundles across transformed landscapes in southeast Spain incorporating both the ecological...

From local landscapes to international policy: contributions of the biocultural paradigm to global sustainability

Merçon J., Vetter S., Tengö M.,Cocks M., Balvanera P., Rosell J.A., Ayala-Orozco B.

2019 - Journal / article

Nature and culture are intricately linked and the rapid loss of both biological and cultural diversity around the globe has led to increasing concerns about its effects on sustainability. Important efforts to understand biocultural relations and bolster sustainable practices have been made by scientists, local communities, civil society organizations and policy makers. In spite of their efforts, a stronger articulation between...

Learning from social–ecological crisis for legal resilience building: multi-scale dynamics in the coffee rust epidemic

Libert Amico, A., Ituarte-Lima, C. & Elmqvist, T.

2019 - Journal / article

A recent coffee leaf rust epidemic has generated a severe fall in Coffea arabica production throughout Mexico and Central America. This paper analyzes the social–ecological crisis presented by the Hemileia vastatrix outbreak, with a focus on how global, regional and national dynamics interact with local processes in the Chiapas Sierra Madre of south-eastern Mexico, a biodiversity hotspot with a tradition of smallholder, ...

Incorporating international biodiversity law principles and rights perspective into the European Union Timber Regulation

Ituarte-Lima, C., Dupraz-Ardiot, A. & McDermott, C.L.

2019 - Journal / article

This article assesses the synergies and conflicts between the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR), and the potential role of the CBD principles and rights perspective in improving coherence across these diverse forest-related agreements. We find that both the EUTR, which aims to eliminate illegal wood from EU supply chains, and the CBD, with its core focus on biodiversity an...

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