Summary
The analysis of the sustainability should be addressed with a holistic approach that facilitates an integral analysis of the social, economic, institutional and environmental factors and their interactions characterizing complex socio-ecological systems (SES). Nevertheless, despite the increasing acknowledgment about the need for such systemic approaches, their application in real SES are less frequent than desirable. Among the difficulties behind this, the need for a new conceptual perspective concerning the relationships between science and the management of real SES, as well as the lack of tools to manage the inherent complexity of such systems should be emphasized. In this work, we further discuss these difficulties and propose an integral methodological framework for the assessment of SES sustainability, with the following key components: i) The hierarchical definition of sustainability goals and indicators. ii) A dynamic system model taking into account the key socio-economic and environmental factors and their interactions, in which the most representative indicators and their sustainability thresholds are integrated. iii) The analysis of vulnerabilities to exogenous drivers (scenario analysis) and the exploration of available management and planning options (policy assessment). iv) An uncertainty assessment concerning system behavior and model outcomes to guide decisions for an improved sustainability in complex SES. The whole framework highlights the need to integrate a participative approach, above all at the initial and final steps. In this work, these components are exemplified by means of their application to a real socioecological system: Fuerteventura island (The Canary Islands, Spain).
Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This article addresses a need for a new conceptual perspective concerning the relationships between science and the management of real SES. The point of departure is that the traditional relationships between science and management are not adapted to address complex systems, as SES. Integration is a keyword in many new approaches, about what to integrate, which deals with the increasing integration towards a systemic knowledge throughout the gradient from individual disciplines to multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinar and transdisciplinar. Also who is involved in such integration, which intersects with the previous one and deals with two key issues: i) who creates knowledge: the role of non-academic actors in the co-production of knowledge ; and ii) who uses the knowledge to shape decisions: the deliberative participation of stakeholders and social actors in the decisions process using the available knowledge .
In this paper, science about sustainability is understood as the knowledge required to better understand the sustainability concept at different scales (from local to global). Sustainability is here the study object and involves, among other questions, the definitions, criteria, indicators, thresholds and how to measure and model the sustainability of real systems, as well as their relative advances towards sustainability goals. Three questions are relevant: i) What do we need to know, in order to understand and manage socioecological systems?, ii) How can we generate the needed knowledge?, iii) How can we use the generated knowledge to improve the sustainability of concrete, real SES?
The main features of the new conceptua perspective are highlighted below:
- A problem based approach where relevant questions are identified.
- Highly inter-disciplinary knowledge to understand complex adaptive systems, as real SES
- Need for a prospective knowledge about the expected effects of different scenarios and policy options
- uncertainty must be explicitly incorporated, including the uncertainty linked to an insufficient knowledge and the one emerging as a property inherent to the system, which constitutes a non-reductible uncertainty.
In addition the article stresses that knowledge about SES should be coproduced integrating academic and non-academic actors.
The use of knowledge requires the need of deliberative democratic processes to define the goals and the criteria to select the best options in order to achieve such goals. The assessment should consider inclusion and exclusion criteria for an option to be acceptable, as well as prioritization criteria for the subset of acceptable options. The best available knowledge should be used to inform the decision process. If citizens are not able to take appropriate decisions using the best available knowledge, the value of democratic participation would fail.
The knowledge should be used within an adaptive management-evaluation learning cycle. Knowledge and policy co-evolve in a cycle in which knowledge constitutes an input for policy actions and the monitoring and evaluation of policy results, in turn, feeds the available knowledge.
