In many coastal nations, community-based arrangements for marine resource management (CBRM) are promoted by government, advocated for by non-government actors, and are seen by both as one of the most promising options to achieve sustainable use and secure inshore fisheries and aquatic resources. Although there is an abundant literature on what makes CBRM effective, is it less clear how CBRM is introduced or develops as an idea in a community, and the process of how the idea leads to the adoption of a new resource management approach with supporting institutions. Here we aim to address this gap by applying an explicit process-based approach drawing on innovation history methodology by mapping and analysing the initiation and emergence of CBRM in five fishing-dependent communities in Solomon Islands. We use insights from the literatures on diffusion of innovation and transformability to define phases of the process and help guide the inductive analysis of qualitative data. We show the CBRM institutionalisation processes were non-linear, required specific strategies to move from one phase to the next, and key elements facilitated or hindered movement. Building active support for CBRM within communities depended on the types of events that happened at the beginning of the process and actions taken to sustain this. Matching CBRM to known resource management ideas or other social problems in the community, developing legitimate institutions and decision-making processes, strong continual interactions between key actors and the rest of the community (not necessarily NGO actors), and community members witnessing benefits of CBRM, all contributed to the emergence and diffusion of CBRM in the communities, and helped to overcome barriers to transformative change.

Many scenarios for limiting global warming to 1.5(degrees)C assume planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal sufficient to exceed anthropogenic emissions, resulting in radiative forcing falling and temperatures stabilizing. However, such removal technology may prove unfeasible for technical, environmental, political, or economic reasons, resulting in continuing greenhouse gas emissions from hard-to-mitigate sectors. This may lead to constant concentration scenarios, where net anthropogenic emissions remain non-zero but small, and are roughly balanced by natural carbon sinks. Such a situation would keep atmospheric radiative forcing roughly constant. Fixed radiative forcing creates an equilibrium committed warming, captured in the concept of equilibrium climate sensitivity. This scenario is rarely analyzed as a potential extension to transient climate scenarios. Here, we aim to understand the planetary response to such fixed concentration commitments, with an emphasis on assessing the resulting likelihood of exceeding temperature thresholds that trigger climate tipping points. We explore transients followed by respective equilibrium committed warming initiated under low to high emission scenarios. We find that the likelihood of crossing the 1.5(degrees)C threshold and the 2.0(degrees)C threshold is 83% and 55%, respectively, if today's radiative forcing is maintained until achieving equilibrium global warming. Under the scenario that best matches current national commitments (RCP4.5), we estimate that in the transient stage, two tipping points will be crossed. If radiative forcing is then held fixed after the year 2100, a further six tipping point thresholds are crossed. Achieving a trajectory similar to RCP2.6 requires reaching net-zero emissions rapidly, which would greatly reduce the likelihood of tipping events.

The linkage between ecosystems and human well-being is a focus of the conceptualization of ecosystem services as promoted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. However, the actual nature of connections between ecosystems and the well-being of individuals remains complex and poorly understood. We conducted a series of qualitative focus groups with five different stakeholder groups connected to a small-scale Kenyan coastal fishery to understand (1) how well-being is understood within the community, and what is important for well-being, (2) how people's well-being has been affected by changes over the recent past, and (3) people's hopes and aspirations for their future fishery. Our results show that people conceive well-being in a diversity of ways, but that these can clearly map onto the MA framework. In particular, our research unpacks the freedoms and choices element of the framework and argues for greater recognition of these aspects of well-being in fisheries management in Kenya through, for example, more participatory governance processes.

This study explored the shift in land use from livestock farming to game farming in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, from a social-ecological regime shift perspective. A regime shift can be defined as a large, persistent change in the structure and function of the intertwined social and ecological components of a landscape. This research focused on the Amakhala game reserve as a case study to understand how the shift affected the provision of ecosystem services and human wellbeing. We used remote sensing techniques to quantify changes in vegetation and found evidence of vegetation recovery following the shift. We then conducted interviews with both landowners and farmworkers and used participatory mapping to understand their perceptions of the main drivers and social-ecological impacts of the shift in land use. Social narratives revealed stark differences in different stakeholders' perceptions, highlighting that the change in land use had varied implications for, and were perceived differently by, different stakeholders. Farmworkers emphasized changes in social structures that weakened community bonds and erased valued connections to the land. At the same time, they increased employment of women, skills development, and increased wages as benefits of the new game farming regime. Landowners, on the other hand, indicated financial gains from the land use change. The transition therefore resulted in trade-offs that surfaced as social, economic, and cultural losses and gains. These changes, especially in social relationships and community structures, have implications for resilience and possible future pathways of development in the region.

Effective natural resource management (NRM) often depends on collaboration through formal and informal relationships. Social network analysis (SNA) provides a framework for studying social relationships; however, a deeper understanding of the nature of these relationships is often missing. By integrating multiple analytical methods (including SNA, evidence ratings, and perception matrices), we were able to investigate the nature of relationships in NRM social networks across five service types (e.g., technical advice, on-ground support) in our case study region, Daly catchment Australia. Only one service type was rated as highly associated with free choice in establishing relationships: technical advice/knowledge. Beneficial characteristics of NRM organizations, such as collaborative and transparent, were associated with the presence of freely chosen relationships between organizations. Our results suggest a need to improve our understanding of organizational roles and characteristics, in particular for use in applied NRM contexts, such as network weaving or disseminating information.

Researchers, policymakers and practitioners alike look to alternative and innovative farming systems as mechanisms for changing, and potentially transforming, unsustainable agricultural practices. Organic agriculture has steadily emerged as a policy option for bringing about this change. However, organic farming systems are diverse in practice, and organic agriculture as a concept has evolved significantly, from marginal farming movement to codified and certified production system, over time. This thesis explores the development of organic agriculture and certification in the context of food system transformation. It does so with an exploratory empirical study concerning how organic farmers change and develop their practices, in particular practices concerning soil health, in the context of organic certification in Sweden. In employing an interpretive approach to explore the shifting perceptions and practices of organic farmers, the study highlights how meaning shapes action (i.e., practice), and can in turn have tangible impacts for the way agroecosystems function. Further, it uses a practice perspective, grounded in a relational ontology, to capture social-ecological change as a patchwork of dynamic, non-linear and holistic processes. Concretely, the study develops a conceptual framework to analyse farmers’ experiences regarding 1) converting to organic; 2) developing organic practices and practices to improve soil health; and 3) adapting to certification rules, including new rules to enhance soil health practices. The results illustrate the different mechanisms at work in farmers’ experiences as they change their on-farm practices, as well as how the social-ecological systems farmers are embedded in influence these change processes. This thesis provides an enabling perspective on change and transformation, focusing on the capacity of individuals to change how they see and act, as a complement to systemic and structural perspectives. 

Given the increasing demand for high-quality food and protein, global food security remains a challenge, particularly in the face of global change. However, since agriculture, food and water security are inextricably linked, they need to be examined via an interdisciplinary lens. Sociohydrology was introduced from a post-positivist perspective to explore and describe the bidirectional feedbacks and dynamics between human and water systems. This review situates sociohydrology in the agricultural domain, highlighting its contributions in explaining the unintended consequences of water management interventions, addressing climate change impacts due to/on agriculture and incorporating human behaviour into the description of agricultural water systems. Sociohydrology has combined social and psychological insights with novel data sources and diverse multi-method approaches to model human behaviour. However, as agriculture and agriculturalists face global change, sociohydrology can better use concepts from resilience thinking more explicitly to identify gaps in terms of desirable properties in resilient agricultural water systems, potentially informing more holistic climate adaptation policy.

Despite receiving relatively little traction in climate change discussions among scholars and policymakers in the early 1990s, the term ‘climate resilience’ is now moving rapidly into prominent policy arenas and academic fora. However, how useful is the term in enabling normative aspirations to reduce net losses to climate change impacts? In this chapter, we first take stock of this seemingly rapid rise in the use of the term by presenting an overview of the progress and ongoing discussions on ‘climate resilience.’ This chapter illustrates these trends based on evidence of the terms’ growth and evolution over the years in two realms: within academia and in public policy. In both cases, we find an increasing trend in the way ‘climate resilience’ is conceptualized and used in academia and in public policy, yet these trends present different challenges and consequences for each case. Taking a problem-oriented approach, we conclude that despite the term’s popularity and growth, a critical review of its measurable effectiveness and pragmatic utility is still needed. Evaluating the terms utility in application is particularly important in light of recent conceptualizations of the climate resilience imperative as ‘transformation’ in a changing climate. We recommend some possible avenues for further research to address this deficit.

The involvement of non-state organizations in global governance is widely seen as an important step toward global democracy. Proponents of "stakeholder democracy" argue that stakeholder organizations, such as civil society groups and other non-state actors, may represent people significantly affected by global decisions better than elected governments. In this article we identify a particularly promising sociological variant of this argument, test it against new evidence from a large-scale survey among stakeholder organizations with varying levels of involvement in international organizations (IOs), and find that the suggested stakeholder mechanism for producing democratic legitimacy in global governance does not work. Stakeholder involvement is unproductive for democratic legitimacy in IOs as perceived by stakeholders themselves. We suggest alternative explanations of this finding and argue that empirical analysis is useful for adjudicating normative arguments on the viability of stakeholder democracy in global governance.

The United Nations 2030 Agenda catalysed the development of global target-seeking sustainability-oriented scenarios representing alternative pathways to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Implementing the SDGs requires connected actions across local, national, regional, and global levels; thus, target-seeking scenarios need to reflect alternative options and tensions across those scales. We argue that the design of global sustainability-oriented target-seeking scenarios requires a consistent process for capturing multiple and contrasting perspectives on how to reach the goals, including the perspectives from multiple scales (e.g. local, national, regional) and geographic regions (e.g. the Global South). Here we propose a novel approach to co-design global target-seeking scenarios, consisting of (a) capturing global perspectives on pathways to the SDGs through a review of existing global scenarios; (b) a multi-stakeholder process to obtain multiple sub-global perspectives on pathways to sustainability; (c) an analysis of convergences, and crucially, divergences between global and regional perspectives on pathways to reach the SDGs, feeding into the design of new target-seeking scenario narratives. As a case study, we use the results of the 2018 African Dialogue on The World in 2050, discussing the future of agriculture and food systems. The identified divergent themes emerging from our analysis included urbanization, population growth, agricultural practices, and the roles of different actors in the future of agriculture. The results challenge some of the existing underlying assumptions of the current sustainability-oriented global scenarios (e.g. population growth, urbanisation, agricultural practices), indicating the relevance and timeliness of the proposed approach. We suggest that similar approaches can be replicated in other contexts to better inform the process of sustainability-oriented scenario co-design across scales, regions and cultures. In addition, we highlight the implications of the approach for scenario quantification and the evolution of modeling tools.

Despite an increased interest from the global change and resilience community, there is limited knowledge about the features and outcomes of polycentric governance. Moreover, there are few examples from the literature explaining transitions from lower to higher degrees of polycentric order. This seriously limits the explanatory power and application potential of the theory. The present study addresses this gap by investigating the global governance of nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) cycles. Those biophysical flows are two of the identified Earth-system processes in the “planetary boundaries” framework. This study explores governance challenges associated to these processes by analysing present institutional structures and actor collaborations. This is done by studying the network structures among all relevant multilateral agreements, EU (-level) Directives, and agreements on trade, combined with a more in-depth analysis of one global partnership initiative as a means to assess a possible emerging structure of polycentric order. The present study provides insights into how the current governance regimes in place for regulating the issues related to N and P flows look like, as well as issues and synergies of having a global partnership in place. The study suggests a global structure of polycentricity, which has the possibility to evolve into a better “match” with the dynamics of those biophysical flows through a larger governance context. 

Global change and governance scholars frequently highlight polycentricity as a feature of resilient governance, but both theoretical and empirical knowledge about features and outcomes of the concept are lacking at the global scale. Here we investigate the structural properties of governance of global nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles, two processes in the 'planetary boundaries' framework. We have used a mixed-methods approach to institutional analysis, integrating polycentric theory with social network theory in environmental policy and legal studies. We include an actor collaboration case study, the Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPNM), to explore governance challenges associated with global N and P cycles. We set the scope for selection of relevant legal instruments using an overview of global N and P flows between Earth system 'components' (land, water, atmosphere, oceans, biosphere) and the major anthropogenic N and P perturbations. Our network analysis of citations of global N and P governance exposes the structural patterns of a loose network among the principal institutions and actors, in which legal instruments of the European Union serve as key cross-scale and cross-sectoral 'gateways'. We show that the current international regimes in place for regulating N- and P-related issues represent a gap in governance at the global level. In addition, we are able to show that the emergence of GPNM provides synergies in this context of insufficient governance. The GPNM can be viewed as a structure of polycentric governance as it involves deliberate attempts for mutual adjustments and self-organised action.

The global hydrological cycle is characterized by complex interdependencies and self-regulating feedbacks that keep water in an ever-evolving state of flux at local, regional, and global levels. Increasingly, the scale of human impacts in the Anthropocene is altering the dynamics of this cycle, which presents additional challenges for water governance. Earth system law provides an important approach for addressing gaps in governance that arise from the mismatch between the global hydrological cycle and dispersed regulatory architecture across institutions and geographic regions. In this article, we articulate the potential for Earth system law to account for core hydrological problems that complicate water governance, including delay, redistribution, intertwinements, permanence, and scale. Through merging concepts from Earth system law with existing policy and legal principles, we frame an approach for addressing hydrological problems in the Anthropocene and strengthening institutional fit between established governance systems and the global hydrological cycle. We discuss how such an approach can be applied, and the challenges and implications for governing water as a cycle and complex social-hydrological system, both in research and practice.

Small-scale fisheries in low and middle-income countries lag significantly behind in access to trustworthy, consistent, and easily available fisheries data. Empirical studies on the effectiveness of mobile apps for transparent data sharing to address gender disparities and women's engagement in small-scale fisheries remain limited. Data is important because it identifies the reporting source, facilitates the evaluation of fishing activities, and ensures accountability within the fishing sector. This study examines the potential of mobile apps for increasing the visibility of women's contributions to small-scale fisheries using Mexico as a case study. Current research on the role of apps in promoting equitable and sustainable fisheries is insufficient, as it lacks detailed information on who is reporting the data and its impact on the fishing sector. The primary method for this study is Q-methodology, a participatory mixed-methods approach appropriate for extracting patterns of opinions held in common within a group. Ten representative fishers from different communities and villages in Mexico participated in the study, and the analysis highlighted two key perspectives. First, mobile apps facilitate increased visibility of women within the fishing community, promoting collaboration and partnership between male and female fishers; this builds a sense of trust and group identity within the community, leading to stronger collective action. Second, collective action in the community leads to male fishers entrusting women with more fishing tasks like reporting catch data on their behalf– a task traditionally performed only by male fishers. This results in women using mobile apps to take a more active role in reporting both community solutions and catch data which leads to increased compliance to marine reserves in the fishing community. The findings are important because the study explores the potential of technology, specifically mobile apps, in recognizing women's transformative roles in reporting fishing data for equitable and sustainable small-scale fisheries.

The extensive alteration of global ecosystems, especially the changes caused by globalized and industrialized economic development activities over the last fifty years, have urged for a better understanding of the human-in-nature management system. Bangladesh, a densely populated developing country, is witnessing rapid environmental degradation while passing through different phases of industrial growth. Leather, one of the oldest industries in this country, provides a very positive picture in the country’s national economy and at the same time produces severe ecological and social crisis in a mutually reinforcing way. At first sight, it seems to fit the SES concept of social ecological trap. The previous scientific studies on ‘Hazaribagh’ leather processing unit in Bangladesh have investigated social, economic, ecological and stakeholder’s perspectives but did not address the pathway that has shaped the present situation. The objective of this case study was therefore to explore the reasons why change of this ‘Hazaribagh system’ has been impeded for so long and if the social-ecological trap concept could help to clarify the reasons for the chronic delay of the relocation of ‘Hazaribagh’ leather processing unit. This study has observed, through a historical investigation that a path dependent social ecological trap situation is persisting in the ‘Hazaribagh system’ where the economic opportunity is playing the role as a juncture between the phases of the process; and power mechanism and the disconnected SES has influenced and strengthened the claim. This study has also addressed some other underlying substantial social issues, which are influencing the process and might contribute to outline further research, and consequently provide insight to escape from the trap situation.

Currently there is a demand for practical ways to integrate ecological insights into practices of design, which previously have lacked a substantive empirical basis. In the process of developing the Albano Resilient Campus, a transdisciplinary group of ecologists, design scholars, and architects pioneered a conceptual innovation, and a new paradigm of urban sustainability and development: Social-Ecological Urbanism.  Social-Ecological Urbanism is based on the frameworks of Ecosystem Services and Resilience thinking. This approach has created novel ideas with interesting repercussions for the international debate on sustainable urban development. From a discourse point of view, the concept of SEU can be seen as a next evolutionary step for sustainable urbanism paradigms, since it develops synergies between ecological and socio-technical systems. This case study collects ‘best practices’ that can lay a foundational platform for learning, innovation, partnership and trust building within the field of urban sustainability. It also bridges gaps in existing design approaches, such as Projective Ecologies and Design Thinking, with respect to a design methodology with its basis firmly rooted in Ecology.

Governance networks can facilitate coordinated action and shared opportunities for learning among conservation scientists, policy makers, and communities. However, governance networks that link local, regional, and international actors just as often reflect social relationships and arrangements that can undermine conservation efforts, particularly those concerning community-level priorities. Here, we identify three waypoints or navigational guides to help researchers and practitioners explore these networks, and to inspire them to consider in a more systematic manner the social rules and relationships that influence conservation outcomes. These waypoints encourage those engaged in community-based conservation (CBC) to: (1) think about the networks in which they are embedded and the constellation of actors that influence conservation practice; (2) examine the values and interests of diverse actors in governance, and the implications of different perspectives for conservation; and (3) consider how the structure and dynamics of networks can reveal helpful insights for conservation efforts. The three waypoints we highlight synthesize an interdisciplinary literature on governance networks and provide key insights for conservation actors navigating the challenges of CBC at multiple scales and levels.

Most MPA networks are designed only with ecological processes in mind to increase their conservation utility. However, since MPA networks often involve large geographic areas, they also affect and involve multiple actors, institutions, and policy sectors. A key challenge when establishing an effective MPA network is to align the social system' with the biophysical MPA network (the ecological system'). This challenge is often denoted as social-ecological fit'. Facilitating collaborative social interactions among various actors and stakeholders (social connectivity) is equally as important as accomplishing ecological connectivity. New analytical approaches are required to effectively examine this social' dimension of fit. An emerging marine reserve network in Jamaica and the recent invasion of Indo-Pacific lionfish are used as a case study to: (1) examine the extent to which horizontal and vertical social ties bring local and national actors together to collaborate, coordinate, and share knowledge; and (2) assess the extent to which different attributes and features of such multilevel social networks may enhance or inhibit particular aspects of social-ecological fit. Findings suggest that multilevel linkages have played the greatest role in relation to enhancing fit in the marine reserve network in the context of the recent lionfish invasion. However, the long-term propensity of the multi-actor and multilevel networks to enhance social-ecological fit is uncertain given the prevalence of weak social ties, lack of a culture of information sharing and collaboration, and limited financial resources.

Sustainable fisheries require strong management and effective governance. However, small-scale fisheries (SSF) often lack formal institutions, leaving management in the hands of local users in the form of various governance approaches (e.g. local, traditional, or co-management). The effectiveness of these approaches inherently relies upon some level of cohesion among resource users to facilitate agreement on common policies and practices regarding common pool fishery resources. Understanding the factors driving the formation and maintenance of community cohesion in SSF is therefore critical if we are to devise more effective participatory governance approaches and encourage and empower decentralized, localized, and community-based resource management approaches. Here, we adopt a social relational network perspective to propose a suite of hypothesized drivers that lead to the establishment of social ties among fishers that build the foundation for community cohesion. We then draw on detailed data from Jamaica's small-scale fishery to empirically test these drivers by employing a set of nested exponential random graph models (ERGMs) based on specific structural building blocks (i.e. network configurations) theorized to influence the establishment of social ties. Our results demonstrate that multiple drivers are at play, but that collectively, gear-based homophily, geographic proximity, and leadership play particularly important roles. We discuss the extent to which these drivers help explain previous experiences, as well as their implications for future and sustained collective action in SSF in Jamaica and elsewhere.

Biodiversity conservation is often limited by inadequate investments in monitoring and enforcement. However, monitoring and enforcement problems may be overcome by encouraging resource users to develop, endorse, and subsequently enforce conservation regulations. In this article, we draw upon the literature on common-pool resources and social networks to assess the impacts of participation and network ties on the decisions of fishers to voluntarily report rule violations in two Jamaican marine reserves. Data was collected using questionnaires administered through personal interviews with fishers (n = 277). The results suggest that local fishers are more likely to report illegal fishing if they had participated in conservation planning and if they are directly linked to community-based wardens in information sharing networks. This research extends well-established findings regarding the role and impacts of participation on biodiversity conservation by highlighting the importance of synergies between participation and social networks for voluntary monitoring of conservation regulations.

Opportunities, challenges and recommended targeted actions to accelerate qualitative data sharing to address complex socio-environmental problems Socio-environmental synthesis as a research approach contributes to broader sustainability policy and practice by reusing data from disparate disciplines in innovative ways. Synthesizing diverse data sources and types of evidence can help to better conceptualize, investigate and address increasingly complex socio-environmental problems. However, sharing qualitative data for re-use remains uncommon when compared to sharing quantitative data. We argue that qualitative data present untapped opportunities for sustainability science, and discuss practical pathways to facilitate and realize the benefits from sharing and reusing qualitative data. However, these opportunities and benefits are also hindered by practical, ethical and epistemological challenges. To address these challenges and accelerate qualitative data sharing, we outline enabling conditions and suggest actions for researchers, institutions, funders, data repository managers and publishers.

Small-scale fisheries often involve weak management regimes with limited top-down enforcement of rules and minimal support from legal institutions, making them useful model systems for investigating the role of social influence in determining economic and environmental outcomes. In such regimes, interpersonal relationships are expected to have a strong effect on a fisher's catch portfolio, the set of fish species targeted by an individual fisher. Here, we test three competing hypotheses about social influence using belief propagation network models and show that a peer-to-peer information-sharing social network is key to explaining catch portfolios at a small-scale fishery in Jamaica. We find that experience dictates the direction of influence among fishers in the social network, with older fishers and information brokers having distinct roles in shaping catch patterns for large- and small-sized fish species, respectively. These findings highlight concrete opportunities for harnessing social networks in natural resource management. Our new approach to modelling social influence is applicable to many social-ecological systems with minimal legal and institutional support or those that rely heavily on bottom-up participatory processes.

Child health is taking the back seat in development strategies. In summarising a newly released collaborative report, this paper calls for a novel conceptual model where child health takes centre stage in relation to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. It lays out five principles by which renewed effort and focus would yield the most benefit for children and adolescents. These include: re-defining global child health in the post-2015 era by placing children and adolescents at the centre of the Sustainable Development Goals; striving for equity; realising the rights of the child to thrive throughout the life-course; facilitating evidence informed policy-making and implementation; and capitalising on interlinkages within the SDGs to galvanise multisectoral action. These five principles offer models that together have the potential of improving design, return and quality of global child health programs while re-energising the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.

1. Anthropogenic stressors affect the ecosystems upon which humanity relies. In some cases when resilience is exceeded, relatively small linear changes in stressors can cause relatively abrupt and nonlinear changes in ecosystems. 2. Ecological regime shifts occur when resilience is exceeded and ecosystems enter a new local equilibrium that differs in its structure and function from the previous state. Ecological resilience, the amount of disturbance that a system can withstand before it shifts into an alternative stability domain, is an important framework for understanding and managing ecological systems subject to collapse and reorganization. 3. Recently, interest in the influence of spatial characteristics of landscapes on resilience has increased. Understanding how spatial structure and variation in relevant variables in landscapes affects resilience to disturbance will assist with resilience quantification, and with local and regional management. 4. Synthesis and applications. We review the history and current status of spatial resilience in the research literature, expand upon existing literature to develop a more operational definition of spatial resilience, introduce additional elements of a spatial analytical approach to understanding resilience, present a framework for resilience operationalization and provide an overview of critical knowledge and technology gaps that should be addressed for the advancement of spatial resilience theory and its applications to management and conservation.

Despite having approximately 100,000 lakes, Sweden has limited continuous gauged lake water level data. Although satellite radar altimetry (RA) has emerged as a popular alternative to measure water levels in inland water bodies, it has not yet been used to understand the large-scale changes in Swedish lakes. Here, we quantify the changes in water levels in 144 lakes using RA data and in situ gauged measurements to examine the effects of flow regulation and hydroclimatic variability. We use data from several RA missions, including ERS-2, ENVISAT, JASON-1,2,3, SARAL, and Sentinel-3A/B. We found that during 1995–2022, around 52% of the lakes exhibited an increasing trend and 43% a decreasing trend. Most lakes exhibiting an increasing trend were in the north of Sweden, while most lakes showing a decreasing trend were in the south. Regarding the potential effects of regulation, we found that unregulated lakes had smaller trends in water level and dynamic storage than regulated ones. While the seasonal patterns of water levels in the lakes in the north are similar in regulated and unregulated lakes, in the south, they differ substantially. This study highlights the need to continuously monitor lake water levels for adaptation strategies in the face of climate change and understand the downstream effects of water regulatory schemes.

Study region: Selenga River Delta (SRD), Russia.

Study focus: How is water occurrence changing in the SRD, and what are the hydroclimatic drivers behind these changes? The presence of water on the surface in river deltas is governed by land use, geomorphology, and the flux of water to and from the Delta. We trained an accurate image classification of the Landsat satellite imagery during the last 33 years to quantify surface water occurrence and its changes in the SRD. After comparing our estimations with global-scale data sets, we determined the hydrological drivers of these changes.

New hydrological insights for the region: We find mild decreases in water occurrence in 51% of the SRD's surface area from 1987-2002 to 2003-2020. Water occurrence in the most affected areas decreased by 20% and in the most water-gaining areas increased by 10%. We find a significant relationship between water occurrence and runoff (R-2 = 0.56) that does not exist between water occurrence and suspended sediment concentration (SSC), Lake Baikal's water level, and potential evapotranspiration. The time series of water occurrence follows the peaks in the runoff but not its long-term trend. However, the extremes in SSC do not influence surface water occurrence (R-2 < 0.1), although their long-term trends are similar. Contrary to expected, we find that the Delta has a relatively stable long-term water availability for the time being.

Lakes are important sources of freshwater for human activities and provide critical ecosystem services. However, despite having approximately 100,000 lakes, Sweden has limited continuous gauged water level data. Although satellite radar altimetry has emerged as a popular alternative to measure water levels in inland water bodies, it is yet to be exploited to understand large-scale changes in inland water bodies in Sweden. Here, we quantify the changes in water levels of 144 lakes using satellite altimetry data and in-situ gauged measurements and examine the effects of flow regulation and hydroclimatic variability. Data from multiple altimetry missions, including ERS-2, ENVISAT, JASON-1,2,3, SARAL, and Sentinel-3A/B, are employed to estimate the variability and yearly and seasonal trends of water levels in two periods, 1995-2022 and 2013-2022. Our study finds that water levels significantly increased in 52% of the lakes during 1995-2022. The increasing trends primarily occurred in northern Sweden and are potentially attributed to earlier snowmelt. On the other hand, 43% of the lakes exhibited a significant decreasing trend, which was mostly concentrated in Southern Sweden. Dividing the set of lakes into regulated and unregulated groups shows how lake regulation in Sweden can partly explain the spatial patterns of water levels and their variability. This study highlights the need to continuously monitor lake water levels for adaptation strategies in the face of climate change and understand the downstream effects of water regulatory schemes.

It is essential to track lake water level fluctuations, however, the number of conventional gauging stations is declining worldwide due to impractical installation and maintenance procedures. Satellite altimetry is a substitute for traditional gauges. Nevertheless, altimetry sensors cannot identify small lakes owing to poor spatial coverage. Their application is limited to lakes falling exactly below the path of the altimeter. Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (D-InSAR) is commonly used to track land deformation and water surface changes, with the latter being comparatively limited and focused mainly on wetlands. We here explore the potential of D-InSAR to track water level changes in two Swedish lakes, focusing on the shoreline in search of potential double-bounce backscattering and analyzing pixel phase changes and coherence. We use Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B data from 2019, generate six-day interferograms, and exclude those when corresponding to in-situ water level changes exceeding one phase cycle. We find that D-InSAR is sensitive to minor water level changes, obtaining Lin's correlations of up to 0.63 and 0.89 (RMSE = 9 & 4 mm, respectively). These results evidence the potential of future L-band SAR missions with larger wavelengths, such as NISAR, to track water level changes in lakes and aid water tracking missions such as the SWOT.

Lakes are valuable water resources that support aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and supply fresh water for the agricultural, industrial, and urban sectors worldwide. Although water levels should be tracked to monitor these services, conventional gauging is unfeasible in most lakes. This study explores the potential, advantages, and limitations of using Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (D-InSAR) to estimate small water level changes in lakes (i.e., less than the full cycle of the SAR signal) and overall long-term direction of change. We validated the method across the shores of 30 Swedish lakes with gauged observations during 2019. We used Sentinel-1A/B images with a six-day temporal separation to construct consecutive interferograms and accumulated the phase changes in pixels of high coherence to build time series of water levels. We find that the accumulated phase change replicates the magnitude of water levels in seven lakes in Southern Sweden, where water level changes seldom exceed a complete SAR phase (i.e., 1.8 cm in the vertical direction), evident from the Concordance Correlation Coefficients (0.30 < CCC < 0.55). Furthermore, D-InSAR can estimate the long-term direction of water level change (i.e., increase or decrease) in all 30 lakes. We elaborate on the possible explanation for this last finding. The novel methodology could be used to validate future altimetry missions such as SWOT in lakes worldwide and can be improved with upcoming SAR missions with longer wavelengths.

Lakes are valuable water resources that support aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and supply fresh water for the agricultural, industrial, and urban sectors worldwide. Although water levels should be tracked to monitor these services, conventional gauging is unfeasible in most lakes. This study applies Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (D-InSAR) to estimate small water level changes, less than 2 cm, in Swedish lakes over 6-day intervals. We validated the method across the shores of 30 Swedish lakes with gauged observations in 2019. We used Sentinel-1A/B images with a 6-day temporal separation to construct consecutive interferograms and accumulated the phase changes in pixels of high coherence to build a time series of water levels. We find that the accumulated phase change obtained by D-InSAR replicates the magnitude of water levels in seven lakes in Southern Sweden, where water levels change slowly, less than 2 cm per 6-day period, as validated by in-situ gauges. In addition, this study demonstrates the application of D-InSAR to estimate the long-term direction of water level change (i.e., increase or decrease) in all 30 lakes. This work reveals the utility of high temporal resolution water level observations in support of other satellite water level instruments such as conventional altimeters and the recently launched Surface Water and Ocean Topography Mission.

Human activities are shaping the Earth system and creating novel properties in the intertwined Social-Ecological Systems (SES). Although novelty is acknowledged in SES theories, the concept of novelty is not well understood, and little mathematical formalization and empirical foundations have been made. Building on the theoretical frameworks of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and concepts of novelty in ecology, this licentiate thesis suggests a first attempt to quantify novelty in a marine ecosystem, in a SES context. Here, I focus on the past emergence of novelty in a marine SES to better understand when and where novelty has emerged and which drivers affect this emergence. Novelty emerges in a CAS when it has moved beyond its historical range of variation. The historical state depends on the temporal and spatial scale as well as the context of the study. Building on the characteristics of CAS, novelty is multidimensional, emerges on a continuum, can be nonlinear, and follows baseline specific trajectories. It has been quantified as the degree of dissimilarity of a system relative to a specific baseline. I used the case of the Baltic Sea SES, where long-term data exists, and many ecological, political, and economic changes have been recorded. Here, I focus on structural changes of the system rather than interactions and feedbacks. Paper 1 focuses on the ecological novelty in the Baltic Sea and contributes as the first study that quantifies novelty in marine ecosystems and across different trophic levels. Results reveal that over the 35-year study-period (1980-2015), novelty has emerged following the pattern of change, but at a slower pace. It has emerged in complex temporal and spatial pattern of the tested abiotic and biotic components. Both abiotic and biotic novelty showed a higher rate of novelty in confined northern basins than in the Central Baltic Sea, which indicated that some areas are more susceptible to the rise of novelty than others. Temperature and salinity were identified as the main abiotic drivers of biotic novelty in the Baltic Sea. Paper 2 contributes as the first study to quantify socio-economic novelty in a marine SES. Socio-economic novelty in the Baltic Sea showed a change in the contribution to novelty from factors linked to local and regional management levels, i.e., fishing gears and commercial groups, to trades which are linked to international level. A high increase in imports and exports in recent years marked the fastest increase in novelty over the period studied. In the latter, novelty in terms of economic value of fishery products was higher than their novelty in quantity. Sweden, Denmark, and Poland have been the countries contributing most to the emergence of novelty in the studied period. This paper illustrates that understanding socio-economic novelty together with ecological novelty, may provide a better understanding of the complexity of marine SES. Although not all the characteristics of CAS could be captured by the methodological approach used in Paper 1 and 2, many have been identified and considered. However, this highlights the need for more methods that can capture different characteristics of CAS, such as interactions and feedbacks, and more knowledge on the emergence of novelty in SES. Understanding how novelty emerges, its processes in different SES components and across-scales, may reduce the risk of missing opportunities for biodiversity conservation, and of unintended management outcomes for long-term sustainability.

Humans have become the major driving force of change, deeply affecting the Earth system and the biosphere. In marine ecosystems specifically, climate-related environmental changes and anthropogenic pressures (e.g., fishing, the introduction of new species, nutrient load) have altered the structures and functioning of social-ecological systems (SES). These changes have created novel, never encountered before, SES dynamics. Novelty, a natural process of SES dynamics, has accelerated due to human activities. On the one hand, novelty allows SES to adapt to change, including maintaining their functions and resilience. On the other hand, the fast-emerging novelty in the Anthropocene epoch is unpredictable and increases the uncertainty related to management and predicting models. Despite consensus on the need for acknowledging novelty in SES, there is much confusion associated with this concept. This thesis provides a unifying conceptualization of novelty in SES by linking Complex Adaptive Systems theories and ecological novelty concepts. The papers that make up this thesis are an empirical contribution to understanding novelty in marine SES in the past and future. Novelty was measured in multiple social and ecological components of the Baltic Sea SES across different temporal and spatial scales. Although novelty is important for SES adaptation to change, it can be a problem or a solution - depending on its rate, drivers, and scale. There is a need to foster novelty that could enhance SES resilience and sustainability, in order to achieve good environmental status in marine ecosystems and for human wellbeing.

Global environmental changes have accelerated at an unprecedented rate in recent decades due to human activities. As a consequence, the incidence of novel abiotic conditions and biotic communities, which have been continuously emerging in the Earth system, has rapidly risen. Despite growing attention to the incidence and challenges posed by novelty in terrestrial ecosystems, novelty has not yet been quantified in marine ecosystems. Here, we measured for the rate of novelty (RoN) in abiotic conditions and community structure for three trophic levels, i.e., phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish, in a large marine system - the Baltic Sea. We measured RoN as the degree of dissimilarity relative to a specific spatial and temporal baseline, and contrasted this with the rate of change as a measure of within-basin change over time. We found that over the past 35 years abiotic and biotic RoN showed complex dynamics varying in time and space, depending on the baseline conditions. RoN in abiotic conditions was smaller in the open Central Baltic Sea than in the Kattegat and the more enclosed Gulf of Bothnia, Gulf of Riga, and Gulf of Finland in the north. We found a similar spatial pattern for biotic assemblages, which resulted from changes in composition and stock size. We identified sea-surface temperature and salinity as key drivers of RoN in biotic communities. Hence, future environmental changes that are expected to affect the biogeochemistry of the Baltic Sea, may favor the rise of biotic novelty. Our results highlighted the need for a deeper understanding of novelty development in marine ecosystems, including interactions between species and trophic levels, ecosystem functioning under novel abiotic conditions, and considering novelty in future management interventions.

Marine ecosystems worldwide are under unprecedented pressure from the impacts of climate change and human activities. Such pressure increased novelty in species assemblages, i.e., assemblages increasingly outside their historical range of variation. It may further rise in the future, and whether it will unfold and influence resilience remains unclear. Using the adaptive cycle, we explore the relationship between resilience and novelty under the compound effect of climate, nutrient load, and fishing management scenarios in the Finnish Archipelago Sea (FAS) future food web model. Novelty was measured as the minimum dissimilarity over time relative to a specific baseline. Ecological Network Analysis indices associated to the model: ascendancy, capacity, and overhead flow, were used as indicators of connectedness, potential, and resilience axes of the adaptive cycle. A model-based clustering method distinguished four regimes determined by the impact of the nutrient load and climate on the bottom-up dynamic of the FAS food web. Resilience decreased in regimes where higher and faster novelty emerged in response to warmer climate pathways. The number of reorganization phases of the adaptive cycle, characterized by the generation of novelty, was greater in regimes under low nutrient load management scenarios. We highlight the importance of understanding ecosystem reorganization and resilience in a growing Anthropogenic novelty to inform future management. 

Socio-economic development has shaped fisheries social-ecological systems (SES) worldwide across different scales. No work has yet undertaken how this development led to novel, not experienced before, systems structure in marine SES. Here, we quantify socio-economic novelty as the degree of dissimilarity relative to a specific spatiotemporal baseline in the Baltic Sea fisheries SES between 1975 and 2015. We used catch by "gears," catch by "commercial groups" and trade ("import" and "export") as respective indicators of novelty at national, regional and international governance levels. We found that socio-economic novelty increased over time nonlinearly in relation to the 1975–1979 baseline. The contribution to total novelty shifted from the dominance of “gears” and “commercial groups” in the late 1990s and early 2000s to “import” and “export” after the mid-2000s, i.e. from national and regional levels to the international level. The fastest increase in novelty occurred with the trade dominance shift, primarily related to monetary value rather than quantity. Spatially, novelty emerged with a large difference across countries, and a major contribution by Sweden, Denmark and Poland. We identified the influence of different management interventions and governance actions on the emergence of novelty in the Baltic SES. The decreasing socio-economic novelty at national and regional levels could indicate reduced variability due to management intervention in recent years which might decrease SES resilience to shocks. Calculating socio-economic novelty and studying its drivers at different scales could provide a better understanding of SES complexity and inform urgently needed adaptation and transformation towards sustainable future pathways. 

Agent-based modeling (ABM) has been widely used in numerous disciplines and practice domains, subject to many eulogies and criticisms. This article presents key advances and challenges in agent-based modeling over the last two decades and shows that understanding agents' behaviors is a major priority for various research fields. We demonstrate that artificial intelligence and data science will likely generate revolutionary impacts for science and technology towards understanding agent decisions and behaviors in complex systems. We propose an innovative approach that leverages reinforcement learning and convolutional neural networks to equip agents with the intelligence of self-learning their behavior rules directly from data. We call for further developments of ABM, especially modeling agent behaviors, in the light of data science and artificial intelligence.

Humanity is facing many grand challenges at unprecedented rates, nearly everywhere, and at all levels. Yet virtually all these challenges can be traced back to the decision and behavior of autonomous agents that constitute the complex systems under such challenges. Agent-based modeling has been developed and employed to address such challenges for a few decades with great achievements and caveats. This article reviews the advances of ABM in social, ecological, and socio-ecological systems, compare ABM with other traditional, equation-based models, provide guidelines for ABM novice, modelers, and reviewers, and point out the challenges and impending tasks that need to be addressed for the ABM community. We further point out great opportunities arising from new forms of data, data science and artificial intelligence, showing that agent behavioral rules can be derived through data mining and machine learning. Towards the end, we call for a new science of Agent-based Complex Systems (ACS) that can pave an effective way to tackle the grand challenges.

DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2021.109685. The authors regret that the following references are missing from the original article's online supplementary information: Box, P., 2001. Kenge GIS-CA class template for Swarm. Nat. Resour. Environ. Issues 8, 31–35. Minar, A., Burkhart, R., Langton, C.G., Manor, A., 1996. The Swarm simulation system: A toolkit for building multi-agent simulations (SFI Working paper No. 96- 06–042). Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM. Wilensky, U., Rand, W., 2015. An introduction to agent-based modeling: modeling natural, social, and engineered complex systems with NetLogo. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused. 

Residents of informal settlements (slums) are vulnerable to various disturbances; e.g. diseases spreading and fluctuations in food prices and local access to credits. The lack of credits derives from the continuous outflow of money from communities. This study examines a financial innovation called Sarafu-credits (SC) implemented in Kenyan informal settlements by the organization Grassroots Economics (GE). SC is a community currency (CC), more particularly vouchers only used within a network of micro-businesses, which aim to complement scarcity of conventional money. In addition, GE have initiated community activities, e.g. tree planting, trash collection, food gardens and cultural events, where residents can be paid in SC to improve the community socially and environmentally. This study examines the design and practice of SC, and the activities, using mainly semi-structured interviews with SC-network-members and GE key persons, to understand how a CC can contribute to sustainable livelihood. The concepts specified and general resilience are used to understand the links between SC and the various social-ecological disturbances facing slum-dwellers. The results suggest that SC-members who are actively trading with SC are able to increase their sales, savings and access to basic goods and services thanks to SC. The results also suggest the networks and community activities are strengthening social contacts in the neighbourhood, and constitute examples of how a CC can help finance management of local environmental problems, where SC paid for community services also support local trade. The identified challenges are related to local leadership, where trust, communication and consistency of rules are lacking. In one of the networks, the confidence in the usefulness of the currency is lacking, due to these challenges. GE have experimented with different designs where one successful innovation is the ability to exchange SC to conventional money at certain occasions, which seem to strengthen the confidence in SC.

We present a minimal model of land use and carbon cycle dynamics and use it to explore the relationship between non-linear dynamics and planetary boundaries. Only the most basic interactions between land cover and terrestrial, atmospheric, and marine carbon stocks are considered in the model. Our goal is not to predict global carbon dynamics as it occurs in the actual Earth System. Rather, we construct a conceptually reasonable heuristic model of a feedback system between different carbon stocks that captures the qualitative features of the actual Earth System and use it to explore the topology of the boundaries of what can be called a 'safe operating space' for humans. The model analysis illustrates the existence of dynamic, non-linear tipping points in carbon cycle dynamics and the potential complexity of planetary boundaries. Finally, we use the model to illustrate some challenges associated with navigating planetary boundaries.

As conservation biology has matured, its scope has expanded from a primarily ecological focus to recognition that nearly all conservation problems involve people. At the same time, conservation actions have been increasingly informed by ever more sophisticated quantitative models. These models have focused primarily on ecological and geographic elements of conservation problems, such as mark-recapture methods, predicting species occurrences, and optimizing the placement of protected areas. There are many off-the-shelf ecological models for conservation managers to draw upon, but very few that describe human-nature interactions in a generalizable manner. We address this gap by proposing a minimalistic modeling framework for human-nature interactions, combining well-established ideas in economics and social sciences (grounded in Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework) and accepted ecological models. Our approach begins with a systems breakdown consisting of an ecosystem, resource users, public infrastructure, and infrastructure providers; and interactions between these system elements, which bring together the biophysical context, the relevant attributes of the human society, and the rules (institutions, such as protected areas) currently in use. We briefly review the different disciplinary building blocks that the framework could incorporate and then illustrate our approach with two examples: a detailed analysis of the social-ecological dynamics involved in managing South African protected areas and a more theoretical analysis of a general system. We conclude with further discussion of the urgent need in conservation biology for models that are genuinely designed to capture the complexities of human socioeconomic behavior, rather than the more typical approach of trying to adapt an ecological model or a stochastic process to simulate human agency and decision-making. Our framework offers a relatively simple but highly versatile way of specifying social-ecological models that will help conservation biologists better represent critical linkages between social and ecological processes when modeling social-ecological dynamics. 

Much of the discourse around climate change and the situation of diverse human societies and cultures in the Anthropocene focuses on responding to scientific understanding of the dynamics of the biosphere by adjusting existing institutional and organizational structures. Our emerging scientific understanding of human behaviour and the mechanisms that enable groups to achieve large-scale coordination and cooperation suggests that incrementally adjusting existing institutions and organizations will not be sufficient to confront current global-scale challenges. Specifically, the transaction costs of operating institutions to induce selfish rational actors to consider social welfare in their decision-making are too high. Rather, we highlight the importance of networks of shared stories that become real—imagined orders—that create context, meaning and shared purpose for framing decisions and guiding action. We explore imagined orders that have contributed to bringing global societies to where they are and propose elements of a science-informed imagined order essential to enabling societies to flourish in the Anthropocene biosphere.

The Anthropocene is characterized by the strengthening of planetary-scale interactions between the biophysical Earth system (ES) and human societies. This increasing social-ecological entanglement poses new challenges for studying possible future World-Earth system (WES) trajectories and World-Earth resilience defined as the capacity of the system to absorb and regenerate from anthropogenic stresses such as greenhouse gas emissions and land-use changes. The WES is currently in a non-equilibrium transitional regime of the early Anthropocene with arguably no plausible possibilities of remaining in Holocene-like conditions while sheltering up to 10 billion humans without risk of undermining the resilience of the ES. We develop a framework within which to conceptualize World-Earth resilience to examine this risk. Because conventional ball-and-cup type notions of resilience are hampered by the rapid and open-ended social, cultural, economic and technological evolution of human societies, we focus on the notion of 'pathway resilience', i.e. the relative number of paths that allow the WES to move from the currently occupied transitional states towards a safe and just operating space in the Anthropocene. We formalize this conceptualization mathematically and provide a foundation to explore how interactions between ES resilience (biophysical processes) and World system (WS) resilience (social processes) impact pathway resilience. Our analysis shows the critical importance of building ES resilience to reach a safe and just operating space. We also illustrate the importance of WS dynamics by showing how perceptions of fairness coupled with regional inequality affects pathway resilience. The framework provides a starting point for the analysis of World-Earth resilience that can be extended to more complex model settings as well as the development of quantitative planetary-scale resilience indicators to guide sustainable development in a stabilized ES.

Globalization, the process by which local social-ecological systems (SESs) are becoming linked in a global network, presents policy scientists and practitioners with unique and difficult challenges. Although local SESs can be extremely complex, when they become more tightly linked in the global system, complexity increases very rapidly as multi-scale and multi-level processes become more important. Here, we argue that addressing these multi-scale and multi-level challenges requires a collection of theories and models. We suggest that the conceptual domains of sustainability, resilience, and robustness provide a sufficiently rich collection of theories and models, but overlapping definitions and confusion about how these conceptual domains articulate with one another reduces their utility. We attempt to eliminate this confusion and illustrate how sustainability, resilience, and robustness can be used in tandem to address the multi-scale and multi-level challenges associated with global change.

In this study we explore species richness and traits across two urban gradients in the City of Cape Town. The first is the natural-urban boundary and the second is a socio-economic gradient informed by historical race-based apartheid planning. Plant species and cover were recorded in 156 plots sampled from conservation areas, private gardens, and public open green space. The socio-economic gradient transitioned from wealthier, predominantly white neighbourhoods to poorer, predominantly black neighbourhoods. The socio-economic gradient was selected to fall within one original vegetation type to ensure a consistent biophysical template. There is a marked shift between the natural and urban plant communities in the City of Cape Town, with little structural affinity. Urban landscapes are dominated by grass, with low diversity compared to natural counterparts. A significant ecological gradient of reduced biodiversity, traits, and in turn functionality, was found across the socio-economic gradient. Wealthier communities benefit from more private green space, more public green space, and a greater plant diversity. Poorer communities have limited green space on all fronts, and lower plant and trait diversity. Plant communities with limited diversity are less resilient and if exposed to environmental perturbation would lose species, and associated ecosystem services faster than a species rich community. These species-poor plant communities mirror historical apartheid planning that is resistant to change. Based on how biodiversity, functionality, and associated ecosystem services and ecosystem stability are linked, the results of this study suggests how significant environmental injustice persists in the City of Cape Town.

A pressing challenge for coming decades is sustainable and just management of large-scale common-pool resources including the atmosphere, biodiversity and public services. This poses a difficult collective action problem because such resources may not show signs that usage restraint is needed until tragedy is almost inevitable. To solve this problem, a sufficient level of cooperation with a pro-conservation behavioural norm must be achieved, within the prevailing sociopolitical environment, in time for the action taken to be effective. Here we investigate the transient dynamics of behavioural change in an agent-based model on structured networks that are also exposed to a global external influence. We find that polarisation emerges naturally, even without bounded confidence, but that for rationally motivated agents, it is temporary. The speed of convergence to a final consensus is controlled by the rate at which the polarised clusters are dissolved. This depends strongly on the combination of external influences and the network topology. Both high connectivity and a favourable environment are needed to rapidly obtain final consensus.

Human enterprise and endeavour increasingly influence global processes of change, from the planetary scale down to the very local. Cities are hubs of human activity, and as the places where the majority of the world's population live we must, when looking into an uncertain future, consider how we think about urban design. Cities are densely inhabited, lived-in landscapes where human presence and perceptions are deeply enmeshed with biophysical and built infrastructures. As such, they present complex mosaics of different habitats and competing uses, ever changing in response to human and physical drivers. If designed properly, green infrastructure can contribute many important functions to a city. Efforts to strategically make use of green infrastructure can benefit considerably from a systems perspective where linkages and cross-boundary dynamics are at the very least as important as individual components. Design, planning and governance of requirements for green infrastructure also extend far beyond biophysical elements and components. Recognition of interconnections between individual green spaces, green infrastructure and the built environment, the physical environment and diverse actors, and formal and informal governance arrangements-as outlined in the four design principles in this article-is a first important step towards a more comprehensive and inclusive approach, not least to green infrastructure planning and design.

History matters, and can be an active and dynamic component in the present. We explore social-ecological memory as way to diagnose and engage with urban green space performance and resilience. Rapidly changing cities pose a threat and a challenge to the continuity that has helped to support biodiversity and ecological functions by upholding similar or only slowly changing adaptive cycles over time. Continuity is perpetuated through memory carriers, slowly changing variables and features that retain or make available information on how different situations have been dealt with before. Ecological memory carriers comprise memory banks, spatial connections and mobile link species. These can be supported by social memory carriers, represented by collectively created social features like habits, oral tradition, rules-in-use and artifacts, as well as media and external sources. Loss or lack of memory can be diagnoses by the absence or disconnect between memory carriers, as will be illustrated by several typical situations. Drawing on a set of example situations, we present an outline for a look-up table approach that connects ecological memory carriers to the social memory carriers that support them and use these connections to set diagnoses and indicate potential remedies. The inclusion of memory carriers in planning and management considerations may facilitate preservation of feedbacks and disturbance regimes as well as species and habitats, and the cultural values and meanings that go with them.

Within-city green infrastructure can offer opportunities and new contexts for people to become stewards of ecosystem services. We analyze cities as social-ecological systems, synthesize the literature, and provide examples from more than 15 years of research in the Stockholm urban region, Sweden. The social-ecological approach spans from investigating ecosystem properties to the social frameworks and personal values that drive and shape human interactions with nature. Key findings demonstrate that urban ecosystem services are generated by social-ecological systems and that local stewards are critically important. However, land-use planning and management seldom account for their role in the generation of urban ecosystem services. While the small scale patchwork of land uses in cities stimulates intense interactions across borders much focus is still on individual patches. The results highlight the importance and complexity of stewardship of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services and of the planning and governance of urban green infrastructure.