A Framework to Analyze the Robustness of Social-ecological Systems from an Institutional Perspective

By J. Marty Anderies, Marco A. Janssen, Elinor Ostrom. 2004

1,611 citations recorded by the source corpus.

What makes social-ecological systems (SESs) robust? In this paper, we look at the institutional configurations that affect the interactions among resources, resource users, public infrastructure providers, and public infrastructures. We propose a framework that helps identify potential vulnerabilities of SESs to disturbances. All the links between components of this framework can fail and thereby reduce the robustness of the system. We posit that the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers is a key variable affecting the robustness of SESs that has frequently been ignored in the past. We illustrate the problems caused by a disruption in this link. We then briefly describe the design principles originally developed for robust common-pool resource institutions, because they appear to be a good starting point for the development of design principles for more general SESs and do include the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bb4db89348ffba6884f7adc243fb376bf8844afb

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Citations in the corpus

Network resilience (2020, neutral): “Table 2: From [558].”
Strengthening conceptual foundations: Analysing frameworks for ecosystem services and poverty alleviation research (2013, background): “These are defined as an ‘ecological system intricately linked with and affected by one or more social systems’ (Anderies et al., 2004; 3) Resilience in Social– Ecological Systems is defined by Gunderson (2000) as the ability to absorb disturbance without flipping into another state or phase.”
Cognitive and institutional influences on farmers’ adaptive capacity: insights into barriers and opportunities for transformative change in central Arizona (2016, background): “…also includes a large component of physical infrastructure (i.e., the engineered elements of an irrigation system) for which specific rules over use and maintenance are developed, and which in turn influences the dynamics of resource use and thus resource system itself (Anderies et al. 2004).”
The globalization of socio-ecological systems: An agenda for scientific research (2006, background): “In the present context, it seems to refer to the structural and other properties of a system that allow it to withstand the influence of disturbances without changing structure or dynamics (Anderies et al., 2004).”
A framework to diagnose barriers to climate change adaptation (2010, methodology): “To understand why a given barrier arises in the adaptation process, we build on a framework proposed for the analysis of social-ecological systems (29, 30).”
A review of the social-ecological systems framework: applications, methods, modifications, and challenges (2018, methodology): “The evolution of the framework is supported by a long history of empirical research on the commons, institutions, and collective action (e.g., Ostrom 1990, Agrawal 2001, Meinzen-Dick et al. 2002, Anderies et al. 2004, Wollenberg et al. 2007, Poteete et al. 2010).”
Integrated and Adaptive Management of Water Resources: Tensions, Legacies, and the Next Best Thing (2011, background): “…were respected, many stakeholders claimed that because of the way they were constituted, in terms of representation and dominance of certain groups over others, these councils fell short of representing the diversity of interests at the basin level (Ballestero 2004, Taddei 2005, Broad et al. 2007).”
Conservation policy in traditional farming landscapes (2012, background): “Second, many of the institutions that have governed traditional farming landscapes for centuries exhibit characteristics that are typical of longenduring institutions governing sustainable resource use (Ostrom 1990; Anderies et al. 2004), whereas the sustainability of industrial agricultural systems”