Exploring New Pathways for Science-Governance and Society to Address Multi-Scale Environmental Challenges
Rebecca V. Gladstone-Gallagher
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Winning article: Social–ecological connections across land, water, and sea demand a reprioritization of environmental management (Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 2022)
“Focus on real ecosystem connections and remove artificial management boundaries and time lags to enable ecosystem recovery in coastal zones”
Why are we crossing ecological boundaries that impact the fundamental life-supporting capacity of our world? Is it because we do not have sufficient understanding of how ecosystems respond to change, or are we unable/unwilling to use this information to secure a better future? We know we have a lot to learn, but using current ecological knowledge more effectively could deliver substantial environmental gains. This will necessitate changes in governance and management actions, and this is difficult to achieve. Our scientific problem was to address the connections between science, governance, and management responses by building on ecological knowledge to identify key trigger points for action in a joined-up framework. Specifically, we have been focusing on solutions to the environmental and societal problems that stem from the disparities in scientific research, policy, and management responses to environmental issues in land, water, and sea (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Disparities in social, political, ecological, and management variables between ecosystem domains contribute to the difficulties in managing ecosystems within safe operating spaces. Figure modified from our paper published in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene: 10 (1): 00075.
We recognised the need for more connected thinking about solutions for managers and policy makers concerning ecological tipping points and how they can cascade though land, freshwater and marine social-ecological systems. This issue came into focus when the New Zealand government set up the National Science Challenges to solve ‘wicked' social-ecological problems. The environmental Challenges were deliberately setup to concentrate on separate ecosystem (and management) domains (marine, freshwater, and land) but all contained research groups addressing ecological tipping points. This was our inspirational spark. We held a workshop in 2019 involving an international group of researchers spanning ecology, economy, ecosystem modelling, indigenous knowledge systems, and social science (Photo 1). The group included a mix of world leaders in their fields, as well as up and coming early career researchers to build a clear vision for what is important and needed to find solutions to the Planet’s major sustainability crises.
Photo 1. The research team at a workshop in 2019 in Leigh, New Zealand. The workshop brought together cross-disciplinary and cross-ecosystem domain experts from multiple countries to discuss critical issues to sustainability that arise from the sectoral nature of science and governance. From the left: Alf Norkko, Steven Lade, Helen Warburton, Richard Le Heron, George Perry, Judi Hewitt, Daniel Hikuroa, Johanna Yletyinen, Suzie Greenhalgh, Vasilis Dakos, David Schiel, Simon Thrush, Emily Douglas, Rebecca Gladstone-Gallagher, Conrad Pilditch, Jason Tylianakis. Absent from photo: Ewa Siwicka.
Our subsequent paper published in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, hit on a solution linked to ecosystem and societal complexity and the consequences for time lags in the interaction of the two. This highlights the interactions involving both ecological and social connections. The ecological connections include the movement of pollutants from the land to the sea, or the migration of fish from the sea to the rivers and lakes. The social connections involve people’s values, management, and relationships among places and environments. Here our research points to an ignored, but critical feedback, where the impacts of humans on the land accumulate in the sea, but the land management strategy and consequent action are not informed by these far-field effects. The social-ecological connections we identify are not always straightforward to respond to because they can occur over large spatial and temporal scales. However, responding to them is critical for providing early warning of downstream changes and for preventing slow management responses to environmental issues.
Let me give a recent and painful real-world example from New Zealand. As a result of massive soil erosion on the east coast of the North Island during Cyclone Bola (1988), steep hillsides were retired from grazing and used for plantation forestry to help stabilise the land. Fast forward three decades and a large proportion of the forest reached harvest at the same time. The exposed soil associated with clear felling was left draped in woody debris to protect the soil from rain. However, another cyclone (Gabrielle, 2023) with extreme rainfall washed both soil and woody debris into the stream network, disturbing habitats, transporting vast amounts of silt and destroying low land farms and critical infrastructure. This debris also clogged the harbours and coastal beaches, smothered sea floor habitats destroying fisheries and impacted cultural and recreational values. This real-world example demonstrates the severe consequences of lags in information flow and management responses; if land use management decisions had been connected to cross-ecosystem domain impacts the outcomes could have been different. Our paper proposes a series of social-ecological properties related to cross-ecosystem domain connections that demand a reprioritisation of environmental management. These include properties related to the movement of stressors across ecosystem domains, and the role of people’s values and interests in one domain impacting people and ecological health in other domains. These properties inform actions that if implemented would reduce management response times across ecological domains and prevent tipping points. We can act on these social-ecological properties now, and the environmental gains from addressing the lags in decision-making will be substantial.
We are optimistic that sound science and knowledge generation, as well as cultural and societal partnerships, underpin the modifications and resource use changes that are necessary for improved environmental outcomes. Our work is at the forefront of such a vision with New Zealand providing a model ‘societal laboratory’, to highlight pathways to safe operating spaces. Guided by the wisdom of our indigenous people, we are focused on multiple ecological and societal timescales and the responsibility of being a good ancestor. We have had some early successes in engagement and uptake of our research and recommendations in the development of new <<<
environmental policy in New Zealand (see guidance document here). Over the past 18 months, our collective viewpoints have been a key component in written and oral submissions on new environmental bills before the New Zealand Parliament. The submissions emphasised the need to include cross-domain cumulative effects and were well received informing revisions to the bills.
Our vision is one where social and ecological connections across ecosystem domains are at the forefront of navigating to more sustainable futures where we live with nature, not off it. We believe that powerful, evidence-based, but simple messages can bring connections and interactions to the forefront of environmental management and policy. Living within the planetary boundaries requires a paradigm shift in behaviours, including the way we link science and management to on-ground action. While individual actions may be local, the behavioural shift underpins the way to a more integrated, broad-scale ability to act and affect planetary science and management. The Jena Declaration gives saliency to our research, especially cultural, social, and natural dimensions being inherently connected, locally embedded, and globally interrelated. Our research shows we can, with trust and open minds, transcend the disciplinary silos to support new forms of research organisation.
The challenge now is to extend holistic approaches into new “road unblocking” frameworks and practices. This means identifying opportunities where connected social-ecological research can alter behaviours, such as offering evidence needed to track value-focused, purposeful investments that facilitate sustainable social transitions. New research is needed to provide this evidence which will inevitably feedback to the development of new questions about fundamental ecological and earth-system processes. We believe that the new holistic approaches will create a dynamic where our science can be incorporated into decision making to ensure ‘environmental perspectives’ are rich and robust. Our research is the beginning of new connected research agendas and a new development of the next generation of research leadership searching for solutions to multiple planetary crises.
