Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 11.1.
Social-ecological systems interactions and interdependencies operating across
spatial and institutional scales influence the coevolution of future landscapes and institutions
along with the emergence of conditions conducive to integration and collaboration for novel
ecological management and restoration (after Brunckhorst 2010).
justments (e.g., urban development, ecological conservation, or restoration initia-
tives) and policy decrees that have a considerable influence on social-ecological sys-
tems resilience. Various forms of property and resource rights (private, public, com-
mon) are a key influence on landscape change and the degradation (or potential
resilience) of ecological resources and ecosystem services. With time, feedback and
feed-forward loops drive the (nonlinear) coevolution of landscapes and institutions
within and across geographic spaces, producing an array of emergent conditions (see
fig. 11.1). These interactions and responses cause changes to social-ecological systems
that are then assessed as positive or negative. They also influence “sense of place” con-
texts that, in turn, provide frameworks to forge collaboration and integration of gover-
nance,
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policy, and community comanagement initiatives for ecological management
and restoration. The brief examples provided in the next section follow this pattern of
coevolution of institutions and landscapes through communities, collaborations, and
their restoration activities within socially and ecologically meaningful contexts.
Landscapes of People, Property, and Policy in Restoration
Policymakers, planners, landscape ecologists, and conservation scientists are increas-
ingly finding themselves at odds with property and policy systems that create barriers
to effective ecological management and restoration. Rather than fighting such em-
bedded institutions, innovative approaches to circumvent such barriers might be
a more efficient and effective means for “scaling-up” landscape planning and man-
agement. Novel institutional reconfiguration might include using existing property
institutions, but knitted in a different way to facilitate cross-boundary ecological
