As the end of 2016 draws near, we’d like to take a moment to highlight the research of three newly-minted Doctors working on social-ecological systems in South Africa. These three female scientists have pushed the boundaries of knowledge to enhance our understanding of resilience, sense of place, and ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes, in regions as varied as the Garden Route, Wild Coast, and the Drakensberg mountains. Their work presents a fascinating cross-section of the diverse research undertaken within the SAPECS network, and we are excited to see what their futures hold!   Rebecka Malinga used a multi-method approach to [...]

The Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) was launched in 2011. The principal approach of PECS research is an in-depth understanding of the social-ecological dynamics at landscape scale in a wide variety of situations. PECS uses a broadly set of conceptual frameworks and tools that eventually leads to comparisons of place-based, long-term social-ecological case studies, and reveals general principles for sustainable resource management. Since 2014, PECS is officially part of Future Earth, the newly created global research platform that aims to provide the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world. The Conference: PECS 2017 PECSII- [...]

At a recent “scoping dialogue” held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS) and the Sustainability Institute, more than thirty leading thinkers and practical users of “resilience” were brought together to reflect on, interrogate and explore the concept of resilience, how it is being practically applied in a range of settings to advance sustainability, and how resilience thinking and practice can be supported and advanced in the southern African region in future.   Building resilience of communities, cities, landscapes and systems is increasingly seen as one substantive way of enhancing our capacity to deal with change – especially unexpected change – [...]

Deadline for applications: 30 July 2016 We live in a new planetary era – the Anthropocene - where human activities have become a major driver of ecosystem dynamics at local to global scales. There is growing evidence that anthropogenic impacts are increasing the risk of transgressing tipping points that could trigger catastrophic environmental regime shifts, such as the collapse of an important fishery or the Greenland ice sheet. Such regime shifts threaten the supply of essential ecosystem services on which human societies depend - including provisioning (e.g. crops), regulating (e.g. flood regulation), and cultural (e.g. recreation) services - and can [...]

SAPECS-affiliated researchers Jessica Cockburn and Mathieu Rouget, together with a team of researchers and practitioners working in the eThekwini Municipal Area (Durban, South Africa), recently published a paper on bridging the science-action gap in the journal Ecology and Society. Through presenting empirical insights and lessons learnt from a local collaboration between a university (University of KwaZulu-Natal) and a municipality (eThekwini Municipality), the paper contributes to a growing body of research on the role of transdisciplinary research in bridging the gap between science and society. The paper uses the Durban Research Action Partnership (D’RAP) as a case study to test and [...]

Recently, SAPECS teamed up with CGIAR’s programme on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) and the Natural Capital Project (NatCap) to run a workshop on the NatCap’s approach and tools for modelling ecosystem services.  In recent years, NatCap’s modelling platforms, particularly INVEST and RIOS, have become indispensable communication, scoping and scenario development tools for social-ecological projects globally. Although anyone can download and use their software, NatCap pride themselves on iteratively developing tools through a deep engagement with on-the-ground projects.  The main objective of our training was to foster such an engagement between NatCap and various SAPECS and WLE projects, and to [...]

"Scenarios" are descriptions and visualizations of the potential future of a social-ecological system. In participatory scenario planning different groups of people use their local and scientific knowledge to develop sets of scenarios that provide multiple perspectives on real-world problems. A recent study by SAPECS researchers and a diverse group of international colleagues compares and contrasts 23 examples of participatory scenario planning. The study, published in Ecology and Society, aims to improve the rigor, inclusiveness and effectiveness of scenario planning exercises in place-based research. This is increasingly important as global initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) are [...]