Human responses to social-ecological traps

Social-ecological (SE) traps refer to persistent mismatches between the responses of people, or organisms, and their social and ecological conditions that are undesirable from a sustainability perspective. Until now, the occurrence of SE traps is primarily explained from a lack of adaptive capacity;...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability science 2016-11, Vol.11 (6), p.877-889
Main Authors: Boonstra, Wiebren Johannes, Björkvik, Emma, Haider, L. Jamila, Masterson, Vanessa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate Change Management and Policy
Desire
Earth and Environmental Science
Ecological conditions
Environment
Environmental Economics
Environmental Management
Farming
Fisheries
Landscape Ecology
Natural Resources Management
naturresurshushållning
Primary production
Public Health
Responses
Rural development
Small farms
Social sciences
Social-ecological traps
Sociology
Special Feature: Original Article
Special Feature: Traps! Expanding Thinking on Persistent Maladaptive States in Pursuit of Resilience
Studies
Sustainability
Sustainability Science
Sustainable Development
Typological analysis
Typology
vetenskap om hållbar utveckling
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Summary:Social-ecological (SE) traps refer to persistent mismatches between the responses of people, or organisms, and their social and ecological conditions that are undesirable from a sustainability perspective. Until now, the occurrence of SE traps is primarily explained from a lack of adaptive capacity; not much attention is paid to other causal factors. In our article, we address this concern by theorizing the variety of human responses to SE traps and the effect of these responses on trap dynamics. Besides (adaptive) capacities, we theorize desires, abilities and opportunities as important additional drivers to explain the diversity of human responses to traps. Using these theoretical concepts, we construct a typology of human responses to SE traps, and illustrate its empirical relevance with three cases of SE traps: Swedish Baltic Sea fishery; amaXhosa rural livelihoods; and Pamir smallholder farming. We conclude with a discussion of how attention to the diversity in human response to SE traps may inform future academic research and planned interventions to prevent or dissolve SE traps.
ISSN:1862-4065
1862-4057
1862-4057
DOI:10.1007/s11625-016-0397-x