Sustaining local commons in the face of uncertain ecological thresholds: Evidence from a framed field experiment with Colombian small-scale fishers

Schill, C. and J.C. Rocha. 2023. Sustaining local commons in the face of uncertain ecological thresholds: Evidence from a framed field experiment with Colombian small-scale fishers. Ecological Economics 207:107695.

Due to climate change abrupt and persistent changes in ecosystems, impacting millions of livelihoods, are likely but hard to predict. How people respond to such uncertain ‘regime shifts’ is poorly understood. Here, we assess the potential for local collective action to avert uncertain, yet catastrophic, regime shifts using behavioural economic experiments with 256 small-scale fishers from the Colombian Caribbean coast. With a framed, dynamic common-pool...

Digital technology and energy sustainability: Recent advances, challenges, and opportunities

Wei, C., C.Z. Li, A. Löschel, S. Managi, and T. Lundgren. 2023. Digital technology and energy sustainability: Recent advances, challenges, and opportunities. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 190:106803.

Digitalization and sustainability represent two global mainstreams, which affect many dimensions of economic activity and daily life. However, their interaction remains still underexploited with different synergies and tradeoffs between these goals. This Virtual Special Issue (VSI) entitled “Digital technology and energy sustainability: impacts and policy needs” presents recent research on the nexus between digital technology and energy sustainability. This editorial introduces seven recent studies on...

How to clean a tubewell: The effectiveness of three approaches in reducing coliform bacteria

Habib, M.A., S. Cocciolo, M.A. Haque, M.M.A. Raihan, P. Bhattacharya, and A. Tompsett. 2023. How to clean a tubewell: The effectiveness of three approaches in reducing coliform bacteria. Science of the Total Environment 872:161932.

Access to safe drinking water in rural Bangladesh remains a perpetual challenge. Most households are exposed to either arsenic or faecal bacteria in their primary source of drinking water, usually a tubewell. Improving tubewell cleaning and maintenance practices might reduce exposure to faecal contamination at a potentially low cost, but whether current cleaning and maintenance practices are effective remains uncertain, as does the extent to which best practice approaches...

Infrastructure and the energy use of human polities

Freeman, J., J.A. Baggio, L. Miranda, and J.M. Anderies. 2023. Infrastructure and the energy use of human polities. Cross-Cultural Research 57(2-3):294-322.

his paper integrates scaling theory with variation in systems of governance to help explain cross-cultural differences in the energy use of human polities. In both industrial and pre-industrial polities, systems of governance moderate the scaling of population and energy use. Polities with more inclusive governance systems display, on average, lower energy use per agent. However, as populations increase in size, the energy consumed by polities...

En tryggare och godare värld. Ett inspel till Livsmedelsstrategi 2.0. (A safer and tastier world. A contribution to Sweden’s National Food Strategy 2.0)

Gordon, L., H. Hansson, P-A. Hansson, M. Jonell, M. Hellström, T. Lindahl, and U. Sonesson. 2023. En tryggare och godare värld. Ett inspel till Livsmedelsstrategi 2.0. (A safer and tastier world. A contribution to Sweden’s National Food Strategy 2.0). Mistra Food Futures Policy Brief. Mistra Food Futures.

What factors influence the choice between fish and meat among grocery shoppers? Insights from an unsuccessful nudge intervention

Lindahl T. and N. Linder. 2023. Beijer Discussion Paper 279: What factors influence the choice between fish and meat among grocery shoppers? Insights from an unsuccessful nudge intervention. Beijer Discussion Paper Series.

Food production is the human activity with the greatest impact on the earth systems and account for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing consumption of certain meat (e.g., beef, pork and lamb) and replacing it with proteins with less environmental impact has been highlighted as one of the greatest leverage points to achieve a more sustainable food system. In this study we...

Avoiding catastrophic collapse in small-scale fisheries through inefficient cooperation: Evidence from a framed field experiment

Lindahl, T. and R. Jarungrattanapong. 2023. Avoiding catastrophic collapse in small-scale fisheries through inefficient cooperation: Evidence from a framed field experiment. Environment and Development Economics 28(2):111-129.

Small-scale fisheries (SSFs) are significant for poverty alleviation, but are threatened by over-exploitation and climate change effects such as drastic drops in regrowth rates. How will fishers adapt? To shed light on this, we ran a common-pool resource experiment with SSF fishers in Thailand. Our results show that groups confronted with a potential abrupt drop in the regrowth rate are more likely to form cooperative...

Conservation of fragility and the collapse of social orders

Anderies, J.M. and S.A. Levin. 2023. Conservation of fragility and the collapse of social orders. In: Centeno, M., P. Callahan, P. Larcey, and T. Patterson (eds.). How Worlds Collapse: What History, Systems, and Complexity Can Teach Us About Our Modern World and Fragile Future. Routledge, New York, U.S.. Pp. 282-295.

John Anderies and Simon Levin discuss the importance of studying regulatory feedback mechanisms to understand collapse, writing that these mechanisms are “extraordinarily powerful,” critical for creating and maintaining a system’s structure and dynamics and that their regulation is “ubiquitous in biological and social systems.” With the criticality of these mechanisms in mind, the authors discuss the potential usefulness of the “Coupled Infrastructure Systems” (CIS) framework,...

Understanding how governance emerges in social- ecological systems: Insights from archetype analysis

Aggarwal, R.M. and J.M. Anderies. 2023. Understanding how governance emerges in social- ecological systems: Insights from archetype analysis. Ecology and Society 28(2):2.

This paper is motivated by the question: how does governance emerge within social-ecological systems (SESs)? Addressing this question is critical for fostering sustainable transformations because it directs attention to the context specific and process intensive nature of governance as arising from the internal dynamics (i.e., interplay of feedbacks and interdependencies between the components) of SESs. This contrasts with the commonly held view of governance as...

Sustainability transitions in urban water management: Assessing the robustness of institutional arrangements

Deslatte, A., M. Garcia, E.A. Koebele, and J.M. Anderies. 2022. Sustainability transitions in urban water management: Assessing the robustness of institutional arrangements. In: Bolognesi, T., F.S. Pinto, and M. Farelli. Routledge Handbook of Urban Water Governance. Taylor & Francis, Oxon, U.K. Pp. 284-296.

Transitions toward sustainability are triggered by confluences of natural, built infrastructure, and social, economic, and political factors. As many urban water management regimes across the globe increasingly face hydrologic stress, it is critical to systematically understand how these factors interact to hasten or inhibit transitions to more sustainable states. Scholars have used many frameworks to study transitions. This chapter applies one of them, the Robustness...