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

Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., et.al.

2019 - Journal / article

Food systems have the potential to nurture human health and support environmental sustainability; however, they are currently threatening both. Providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an immediate challenge. Although global food production of calories has kept pace with population growth, more than 820 million people have insufficient food and many more consume low-quality diet...

Effects of assets and weather on small-scale coastal fishers’ access to space, catches and profits

Thoya, P., D, Daw, T.M.

2019 - Journal / article

Fishers’ spatial behavior affects their incomes, livelihoods and ecological sustainability and is affected by establishment of protected areas, and the impacts of changing climate and weather patterns. An understanding of fishers’ spatial behavior is essential for evaluating catch trends or estimating per-area yeilds. Location choice by fishers has largely been understood through foraging models and empirical studies in large ...

Stewardship, care and relational values

West., S., Haider, J.L., Masterson, V. et al.

2019 - Journal / article

Stewardship is a popular term for describing action in pursuit of sustainability. There is growing interest in how relational values, such as care, animate stewardship action. In this paper we develop relational understandings of care in stewardship, in so doing infusing the relational values literature with modes of ‘relational thinking’ increasingly adopted in sustainability science. We use three theoretical perspectives — d...

The colour of maize: Visions of green growth and farmers perceptions in northern Laos

Kallio, M.H., Hogarth, N.J., Moeliono, M., Brockhaus, M., Cole, R., Bong, I.W., Wong, G.Y.

2019 - Journal / article

The rapid expansion of hybrid maize in the uplands of northern Laos is viewed by the government as meeting policy aims related to green economic development. Yet, growing evidence of negative consequences of maize expansion are emerging. Based on farmers’ perceptions, we study: (1) farmers’ reasons for adopting and abandoning maize, and; (2) implications of commercial maize expansion on local livelihood security and inclusiven...

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