An urbanization bomb? Population growth and social disorder in cities

For the first time in history, the majority of the world population now lives in cities. Global urbanization will continue at high speed; the world's urban population is projected to increase by more than 3 billion people between 2010 and 2050. Some of this increase will be the result of high urban fertility rates and reclassification of rural land into urban areas, but a significant portion of future urbanization will be caused by rural-to-urban migration. This migration is expected to be particularly prevalent in countries and regions most affected by the changing climate. While urban populations generally enjoy a higher quality of life, many cities in the developing world have large slums with populations that are largely excluded from access to resources, jobs, and public services. In the environmental security literature, great rural resource scarcity, causing rural to urban migration, is seen as an important source of violent conflict. This study investigates how population growth affects patterns of public unrest in urban centers within the context of crucial intervening factors like democracy, poverty, economic shocks. It utilizes a newly collected event dataset of urban social disturbance covering 55 major cities in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa since 1960. The empirical analysis provides little support for the notion that high and increasing urban population pressure leads to a higher risk or frequency of social disorder. Instead, we find that urban disorder is primarily associated with a lack of consistent political institutions, economic shocks, and ongoing civil conflict.     

How do natural resource dependent firms gain and lose a social licence?

A project, firm or industry whose activities are accepted by communities and stakeholders is said to have a social licence to operate. The importance of a social licence is increasingly being realized in natural resource industries where a project or firm can impose more environmental and social costs, e.g. pollution, or strain on service delivery and housing, on communities than they are willing to accept. However, the conditions that are necessary and/or sufficient to obtain/maintain a social licence are unclear. To rectify this gap, a global literature review paired with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of 47 natural resource case studies from 25 countries was used to identify the conditions necessary and/or sufficient to: (1) obtain or lose a social licence; (2) result in voluntary practice change by firms; and/or (3) create regulatory change. No single condition out of the ten conditions tested was found to be necessary to obtain or lose a social licence or to change firm behavior. However, a combination of five conditions created a robust pathway for maintaining a social licence, including: (1) delivery (or perception) of net economic benefits beyond the firm; (2) adequate stakeholder consultation; (3) minimal media coverage; (4) minimal public protests; and/or (5) absence of well-defined and enforced private property rights. These results contribute to an understanding of the somewhat limited effectiveness of social licence as a form of governance, and suggest that social licence outcomes are determined by the expectations of stakeholders, decisions and behaviors of firms, and broader institutional governance factors.     

Policy support,social capital,and farmers’ adaptation to drought in China

Increasingly severe drought has not only threatened food security but also resulted in massive socio-economic losses. In the face of increasingly serious drought conditions, the question of how to mitigate its impacts through appropriate measures has received great attention. The overall goal of this study is to examine the influence of policies and social capital on farmers’ decisions to adopt adaptation measures against drought. The study is based on a large-scale household and village survey conducted in six provinces nationwide. The survey results show that 86% of rural households have taken adaptive measures to protect crop production against drought, most of which are non-engineering measures. In the case of non-engineering measures, changing agricultural production inputs and adjusting seeding or harvesting dates are two popular options. A multivariate regression analysis reveals that government policy support against drought such as releasing early warning information and post-disaster services, technical assistance, financial and physical supports have significantly improved farmers’ ability to adapt to drought. However, since only 5% of villages benefited from such supports, the government in China still has significant room to implement these assistances. Moreover, having a higher level of social capital in a farm household significantly increases their adaptation capacity against drought. Therefore, the government should pay particular attention to the farming communities, and farmers within a community who have a low level of social capital. Finally, farmers’ ability to adapt to drought is also associated with the characteristics of their households and local communities. The results of this study also have implications for national adaptation plans for agriculture under climate change in other developing countries.     

A social contract with the ancestors—Culture and ecosystem services in southern Madagascar

We investigate the role of culture in sustaining essential ecosystem services in the arid and erratic climate of an agropastoral landscape in southern Madagascar. Our fieldwork and interviews in Ambovombe subprefecture in Androy addressed land use, agropastoralism, livelihood, institutions and their moral basis. Our analysis points to the interdependence of cultural practices and ecosystem services: sacred forests, crop pollination, subsistence farming, cattle economy and societal transition and purification rituals. We posit a social-ancestral contract that works as a moral attractor structuring and sustaining the agropastoral ecosystem services system. The contract between living and nonliving clan members underpins the cultural practices and rituals that regulate the vulnerable agropastoral system. We conclude that the well-being values of the inhabitants of the south of Madagascar depend upon moralities that lend legitimacy and stability to the management of the social–ecological processes that precondition ecosystem services production. Neither ecosystem nor culture delivers ecosystem services to society. Ecosystem services are generated by an interdependent social–ecological system in which knowledge, practice, and beliefs coevolve: culture is a key factor in their generation and persistence. The study suggests these are significant interdependences to consider in dynamic analyses of ecosystem service production.     

Climate,conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?

Are violent conflict and socio-political stability associated with changes in climatological variables? We examine 50 rigorous quantitative studies on this question and find consistent support for a causal association between climatological changes and various conflict outcomes, at spatial scales ranging from individual buildings to the entire globe and at temporal scales ranging from an anomalous hour to an anomalous millennium. Multiple mechanisms that could explain this association have been proposed and are sometimes supported by findings, but the literature is currently unable to decisively exclude any proposed pathway. Several mechanisms likely contribute to the outcomes that we observe.     

Seawalls or social recovery? The role of policy networks and design in disaster recovery

This mixed-methods study examines the case of 30 advisory committees across 25 municipalities in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures in northeast Japan after the 3/11 triple disasters. Drawing on synthetic control experiments, social network analysis, and case studies, we test whether the design of these committees’ policies or the traits of these committee networks improved the recovery trajectories of municipalities. We find that communities highly connected to this network of advisory committees saw better economic recovery than expected, especially when researchers, hyper-connected individuals, or plans for community centers were involved, controlling for disaster damage, infrastructure quality, social vulnerability, governance capacity, emergency services, and social capital. Our results bring with them a number of concrete policy recommendations for disaster managers, local residents, and decision makers.     

Spinning in circles? A systematic review on the role of theory in social vulnerability,resilience and adaptation research

An increasing number of publications focus on social vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation (SVRA) towards natural hazards and climate change. Despite this proliferation of research, a systematic understanding of how these studies are theoretically grounded is lacking. Here, we systematically reviewed 4432 articles that address SVRA in various disciplinary fields (e.g. psychology, sociology, geography, mathematics) for various hazards, including floods, droughts, landslides, storm surges, wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcano eruptions. We focus on the extent to which these studies explicate the frameworks, theoretical constructs or theories they rely on. Surprisingly, we found that about 90% of the reviewed studies do not explicitly refer to a theoretical underpinning. Overall, theories focusing on individuals’ SVRA were more frequently used than those focusing on systems, society, groups, and networks. Moreover, the uptake of theories varied according to the hazard investigated and field of knowledge, being more frequent in wildfire and flood studies and articles published in social science journals. Based on our analysis, we propose a reflexive handling of theories to foster more transparent, comparable, and robust empirical research on SVRA.     

Integrating farmers’ adaptive knowledge into flood management and adaptation policies in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: A social learning perspective

Flood management and adaptation are important elements in sustaining farming production in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). While over the past decades hydraulic development introduced by the central government has substantially benefited the rural economy, it has simultaneously caused multiple barriers to rural adaptation. We investigate the relational practices (i.e., learning interactions) taking place within and across the flood management and adaptation boundaries from the perspective of social learning. We explore whether and how adaptive knowledge (i.e., experimental and experiential knowledge) derived from farmers’ everyday adaptation practices contributes to local flood management and adaptation policies in the selected areas. We collected data through nine focus groups with farmers and thirty-three interviews with government officials, environmental scientists, and farmers. Qualitative analysis suggests that such processes are largely shaped by the institutional context where the boundary is embedded. This study found that while the highly bureaucratic operation of flood management creates constraints for feedback, the more informal arrangements set in place at the local level provide flexible platforms conducive to open communication, collaborative learning, and exchange of knowledge among the different actors. This study highlights the pivotal role of shadow systems that provide space for establishing and maintaining informal interactions and relationships between social actors (e.g., interactions between farmers and extension officials) in stimulating and influencing, from the bottom-up, the emergence of adaptive knowledge about flood management and adaptation in a local context.     

Are there social limits to adaptation to climate change?

While there is a recognised need to adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is an emerging discourse of limits to such adaptation. Limits are traditionally analysed as a set of immutable thresholds in biological, economic or technological parameters. This paper contends that limits to adaptation are endogenous to society and hence contingent on ethics, knowledge, attitudes to risk and culture. We review insights from history, sociology and psychology of risk, economics and political science to develop four propositions concerning limits to adaptation. First, any limits to adaptation depend on the ultimate goals of adaptation underpinned by diverse values. Second, adaptation need not be limited by uncertainty around future foresight of risk. Third, social and individual factors limit adaptation action. Fourth, systematic undervaluation of loss of places and culture disguises real, experienced but subjective limits to adaptation. We conclude that these issues of values and ethics, risk, knowledge and culture construct societal limits to adaptation, but that these limits are mutable.     

A social–ecological systems analysis of impediments to delivery of the Aichi 2020 Targets and potentially more effective pathways to the conservation of biodiversity

The Aichi 2020 Targets, under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), aim to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2020, in order to ensure that ecosystems continue to provide essential services. Here we apply a social–ecological systems analysis to provide insight into the diverse system interactions that pose impediments to delivery of the Aichi Targets. We applied an analytical framework of pair-wise exchanges along six axes between the social, economic, environmental and political loci of the global social–ecological system. The analysis identified that many impediments result from partial decoupling in the system through phenomena including delayed feedbacks and insufficient information flows. It suggests 15 of the Aichi Targets are unlikely to be delivered; 3 are likely to be delivered in part; and 2 in full. We considered how interventions at leverage points may overcome the impediments, and compared these to actions included within the Implementation Decision for the Aichi Targets, to find gaps. These new leverage points to fill identified gaps involve many aspects of system re-coupling: co-production of knowledge and more equitable food systems governance (environmental–social axis); support for social change movements (social–political axis); an appropriate financial target for biodiversity conservation investment, with a clear means of implementation such as a currency transaction tax (economic–political axis); and co-governance of natural resources (environmental–political axis). The recently released Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 shows that 18 of the 20 Aichi Targets are tracking in accordance with our analysis; and that current efforts are unlikely to result in an improvement in the base state of biodiversity by 2020, confirming some of our results. We argue that attention to the interactions within, and the partial decoupling of, the global social–ecological system provides new insights, and is worthy of further attention both for delivery of the Aichi Targets and for guiding longer term actions for the conservation of biodiversity.     

What could go wrong with cooking? Exploring vulnerability at the water,energy and food Nexus in Kampala through a social practices lens.

Sub-Saharan African cities like Kampala face challenges with rapid urbanization and impacts of climate change. These challenges have exacerbated the struggle to provide adequate infrastructural and socio-ecological services to Kampala's growing poor. Based on a social practices perspective, this paper presents a study of emergent vulnerabilities at the urban Nexus of water, energy and food (WEF) in the informal settlements of Bwaise and Kanyogoga. We employ methods of observation, interviews, focus group discussions and a vision-building workshop to explore the growing vulnerabilities of poor households as they daily navigate deteriorating water quality, rising energy prices and food insecurity. Results indicate that most household-level vulnerabilities relate to energy poverty. Households scale back on water treatment practices such as boiling and the cooking of highly-nutritious yet energy-demanding foods such as beans in efforts to conserve charcoal. Emergent practices of everyday resilience-building include the use of biomass briquettes as an alternative to solid charcoal as well as social networks and capital which allow households to borrow food and energy. We suggest the notion of ‘precarious consumption’ as a tool for understanding emergent everyday vulnerabilities in relation to the urban WEF Nexus service provision and resilience policy-making in cities of the Global South.     

My neighbourhood,my country or my planet? The influence of multiple place attachments and climate change concern on social acceptance of energy infrastructure

Research on place attachments and identities has made an important contribution to understanding social acceptance of low carbon infrastructure, which are often objected to by local communities. However, a focus on local attachments predominates in studies to date, neglecting the potential role of national and global attachments and identities on energy beliefs and attitudes, despite the fact that large energy infrastructures are not only local in significance or function. To investigate this, survey data was collected from a representative sample of UK adults (N = 1519), capturing place attachments at local, national and global levels, climate change concern, beliefs about power lines and support for energy system change. Findings show significant differences in infrastructure beliefs and attitudes depending upon relative strength of attachments at different levels, controlling for personal characteristics. Analyses of variance revealed that individuals with stronger national than local or global attachments were less likely to support European grid integration; those with relatively stronger global attachment were most likely to support decentralised energy and those with relatively stronger local attachment were most likely to protest against a nearby power line. In addition, those with strong attachments at local, national and global levels were most willing to reduce energy demand, and those with weak attachments were least likely to trust grid companies. Relatively stronger global than national attachment was positively associated with support for decentralised energy, with this effect partially mediated by climate change concern. Explanations for the findings and implications for future research are discussed.     

What role for social–ecological systems research in governing global teleconnections?

The paper considers the extent to which social–ecological systems research might contribute to an improved understanding of the social and environmental impacts of teleconnections inherent in economic globalisation. Recognising the importance and specificity of regional interconnections, wherein actions in certain parts of the world impact quite specifically on the sustainability of certain other spatially distant places and systems, the paper reflects on the social and environmental implications of increasingly interconnected agri-food systems and intersecting global commodity chains. Key elements of social–ecological systems approaches, which have purported relevance to research on globalisation, are critically examined, and aspects of social–ecological systems thinking that pose challenges for its application in this context are considered. Wider implications and limitations of social–ecological systems approaches to research and practice in (global) governance for sustainability are discussed. The general conclusion is that social–ecological systems research may offer insights into the governance of social and environmental impacts of agri-food systems and other complex systems at certain scales. However, the formal utility of concepts like resilience, vulnerability and adaptability becomes considerably less clear as research turns to analyses of larger, complex, globally teleconnected systems, where the main contribution of such concepts may lie in their metaphorical appeal to important aspects of interconnectivity and interdependence.     

Research on Early-Warning and Control Techniques for Agricultural and Forest Pests and Diseases and Agrometeorological Disasters

After the open bidding and specialist appraisal, the project is undertaken jointly by the Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, the Institute of Plant Protection of the Sichuan Province Academy of Agricultural Science, the Chinese Agricultural University, the Research Institute of Forest Protection of the Forestry Academy of China, the Chinese Forest University, the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, and the Research Institute of Agrometeorology of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. The project (Project No: 2001BA509B, including 15 subprojects), is organized     

Recurring droughts or social shifts? Exploring drivers of large-scale transformations in a transformed country

As climate change intensifies, the need for large-scale transformations that reform vulnerable systems’ prevailing values and development pathways is increasingly recognized. However, there is limited understanding of the factors that underlie such changes. This study sheds light on these factors by examining the case of Israel – a largely arid to semi-arid country with highly scarce natural water resources and a historical rural-agricultural ideology. Adopting an historically-informed systems perspective, I analyze two transformations that diminished Israel’s vulnerability to recurring droughts: the 1960s’ economic transformation from agriculture to industry, and the shift to seawater desalination in the mid-2000s. These changes are examined using causal-loop diagrams based on multiple data sources, including archival records, statistical reports and a systematic review of grey and academic literature.The findings show that both transformations, instigated by state institutions during exceptionally severe droughts, were driven by shifts away from development paradigms embedded in the nation-building ideology, as well as by social stresses that exceeded the natural limits of the agricultural system and water supply system. Repeated drought shocks activated and later reactivated the shift to desalination, intended to a certain degree to reduce drought vulnerability. However, drought did not significantly affect the economic transformation, initiated mainly due to saturation in agricultural development. Thus, I argue that alongside concerted adaptation efforts state institutions should dedicate greater attention to the management of broader social challenges and crises in a manner that fosters greater resilience against future climate changes. Ideological shifts and consequent restructuring of development paths, as well as the interaction between population growth and limited natural resources, may constitute important entry points. These entry points are particularly pertinent to emerging economies in other dry areas, many of which face similar social and economic trends to those experienced in Israel over the last decades.     

Using social–ecological syndromes to understand impacts of international seafood trade on small-scale fisheries

Globalization has increased the speed and flow of people, information, and commodities across space, integrating markets and increasing interdependence of geographically dispersed places worldwide. Places historically driven by largely local forces and market demands are now increasingly affected by drivers at multiple scales. Trade is particularly important in driving these changes and more fish is now exported to international markets than ever before. When small-scale fisheries are integrated into global markets, local social–ecological systems change with potentially both positive and negative impacts on livelihoods, economics and ecology, but few studies systematically investigate how and why the outcomes of market integration vary from case to case.This paper systematically assesses multiple (social, ecological, economic and institutional) local effects of market integration in cases around the world by drawing on the global environmental change syndromes approach. Furthermore, we examine the factors contributing to the syndromes observed. Our analysis identifies three distinct social–ecological syndromes associated with international seafood trade. Results suggest that the presence of strong and well-enforced institutions is the principal factor behind the syndrome characterized by sustained fish stocks, while a combination of weak institutions, patron–client relationships, high demand from China and highly vulnerable target species explain the other two syndromes distinguished by declining stocks, conflict and debt among fishers.A key finding is that the factors emerging as important for explaining the different syndromes derive from different scales (e.g. local market structures vs distant market characteristics), indicating a need for multi-level governance approaches to deal with the effects of market integration. Furthermore, the meta-analysis shows that each syndrome encompasses fisheries from multiple continents. This suggests that the increasingly global nature of the seafood trade appears to be driving local dynamics by creating similar conditions for vulnerabilities in localities around the world, lending support to the notion of tele-connectivity across geographic space.     

Can REDD+ social safeguards reach the ‘right’ people? Lessons from Madagascar

There is extensive debate about the potential impact of the climate mechanism REDD+ on the welfare of forest-dwelling people. To provide emission reductions, REDD+ must slow the rate of deforestation and forest degradation: such a change will tend to result in local opportunity cost to farmers at the forest frontier. Social safeguard processes to mitigate negative impacts of REDD+ are being developed and can learn from existing safeguard procedures such as those implemented by the World Bank. Madagascar has a number of REDD+ pilot projects with World Bank support including the Corridor Ankeniheny-Zahamena (CAZ). Nearly two thousand households around the corridor have been identified as ‘project affected persons’ (PAPs) and given compensation. We compare households identified as project affected persons with those not identified. We found households with more socio-political power locally, those with greater food security, and those that are more accessible were more likely to be identified as eligible for compensation while many people likely to be negatively impacted by the REDD+ project did not receive compensation. We identify three issues which make it difficult for a social safeguard assessment to effectively target the households for compensation: (a) poor information on location of communities and challenging access means that information does not reach remote households; (b) reluctance of people dependant on shifting agriculture to reveal this due to government sanctions; and (c) reliance by safeguard assessors on non-representative local institutions. We suggest that in cases where the majority of households are likely to bear costs and identification of affected households is challenging, the optimal, and principled, strategy may be blanket compensation offered to all the households in affected communities; avoiding the dead weight costs of ineffective safeguard assessments. The Paris Agreement in December 2015 recognised REDD+ as a key policy instrument for climate change mitigation and explicitly recognised the need to respect human rights in all climate actions. However, safeguards will be prone to failure unless those entitled to compensation are aware of their rights and enabled to seek redress where safeguards fail. This research shows that existing safeguard commitments are not always being fulfilled and those implementing social safeguards in REDD+ should not continue with business as usual.     

The role of social networks in natural resource governance: What relational patterns make a difference?

Resent research has identified the existence of social networks as a common and important denominator in cases where different stakeholders have come together to effectively deal with natural resource problems and dilemmas. It has even been shown that social networks can be more important than the existence of formal institutions for effective enforcement and compliance with environmental regulations. However, all social networks are not created equal. On the contrary, the structural pattern of relations (i.e. the topology) of a social network can have significant impact on how actors actually behave. This clearly has implications for actors’ abilities to manage environmental challenges. This review aims to add more precision to initial insights and pending hypotheses about the positive impacts of social networks on governance processes and outcomes, by reviewing and synthesizing empirically based literature explicitly studying structural characteristics of social networks in natural resource governance settings. It is shown that significant differences in governance processes and outcomes can be expected among networks experiencing structural differences in terms of density of relations, degree of cohesiveness, subgroup interconnectivity, and degree of network centralization. Furthermore, the review shows that none of these structural characteristics present a monotonically increasing positive effect on processes of importance for resource governance, and that favoring one characteristic likely occurs at the expense of another. Thus, assessing the most favorable level and mix of different network characteristics, where most of the positive governance effects are obtained while undesired effects are minimized, presents a key research and governance challenge.     

Selling climate change? The limitations of social marketing as a strategy for climate change public engagement

Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals relevant to the social good. Social marketing approaches are becoming increasingly popular among governmental and non-governmental actors seeking to engage the public on climate change. The effectiveness of social marketing in achieving specific behavioural goals is empirically well-supported. However, in the first systematic critique of social marketing as a strategy for engaging the public on climate change, we present evidence that social marketing alone is insufficient to build support for the more ambitious policy changes and interventions that constitute a proportional response to climate change. In some circumstances, social marketing approaches may even be counterproductive. We describe some alternative approaches for engaging the public, which may provide governmental and non-governmental actors with additional or preferable tools for promoting public engagement with climate change. Given the scale of the challenge, it seems critical that those seeking to engage the public are equipped with the most effective strategies available - a goal that this paper seeks to contribute to. We conclude that acknowledging the limitations of social marketing - and exploring alternative methods of engaging the public - is an urgent task for climate change communication researchers and practitioners.