Highlights: 1) There is a need for positive visions of the future to counteract the negative narratives that surround us every day and influence our actions 2) Based on "Seeds of Good Anthropocenes", a diverse mix of scientists, artists and changemakers created hopeful future scenarios for southern Africa at a creative visioning workshop held in Cape Town 3) Participants described the process as deeply transformative, and developed a set of radical scenarios with a strong emphasis on engaged citizenry, decentralized power and local, small-scale production systems   The Anthropocene, or literally the “Age of Man”, is the name [...]

In collaboration with GRAID (Guidance for Resilience in the Anthropocene: Investments for Development, a collaborative project between the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden, the CSIR and Centre for Complex Systems in Transition in Stellenbosch, and other international partners) SAPECS held its second colloquium in Johannesburg on the 8-10th of May 2017, focusing on ‘Resilience for Development’. The event brought together over 150 students, researchers and practitioners from South Africa, Africa, Sweden and elsewhere interested in resilience as an emerging approach towards sustainability. The colloquium was designed to maximize opportunities for dialogue and critical discussions structured around the following research themes: [...]

This article by SAPECS Researcher Jessica Cockburn reflects on a recent workshop held with practitioners working on collaborative landscape-scale stewardship initiatives across South Africa. We came from all different corners of South Africa to find common ground: ...all the way from the West Coast: fynbos vegetation, commercial potato farmers and precious estuaries... all the way from the Marico Bosveld: thorny country with precious water resources, fiercely proud locals and the ever-present threat of mining… all the way from the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal:  hard-working farmers and agricultural landscapes covered in plantation forestry and dairy … all the way from pastoral grasslands: [...]

Areas with high levels of direct ecosystem service use among households coincides with areas characterized by relatively low levels of human well-being Ecosystem services and human well-being are closely interlinked. After all, ecosystem services are benefits that nature provides to humans, and human well-being is dependent on natural provisions such as clean drinking water. While these two concepts clearly overlap, many questions remain unanswered. For example, do patterns of ecosystem service use in a landscape correspond with particular patterns in human well-being? A study by SAPECS researchers Maike Hamann, Oonsie Biggs and Belinda Reyers, addresses this question. More specifically, the study, recently [...]

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 – [...]