Social-ecological innovation in remote mountain areas: Adaptive responses of forest-dependent communities to the challenges of a changing world.

To better understand how constantly changing human-environment interactions could be better organized to respond to current challenges, we examined the Ukrainian Carpathians as an example case of complex forest social-ecological systems (FSES). We did it by interviewing diverse and relevant local stakeholder (N=450). In particular, we strived to: i) outline how people and nature are linked and interact in coupled FSES; ii) examine the preferences of stakeholders on the forests and associated ecosystem services (ES); iii) map key drivers threatening well-being of FSES and iv) identify potential responses to address the challenges at a local scale. To answer these questions we followed a mixed method route by integrating qualitative (participatory) and quantitative data collection and analyses, with further application of a Driving Force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework in combination with the ES approach in order to assess benefits, threats to these benefits, and responses regarding the studied FSES. We found that the key benefit from FSES is timber and non-wood forest products (like berries and mushrooms), but also various regulating services were ranked highly by respondents. To explore social-ecological innovation, with potential responses of forest-dependent communities to challenges they face, we employed a commonly used assumption that governance must fit to the particular characteristics of FSES in order to enable sustainability. For the particular case of the Ukrainian Carpathians, we identified and discussed the following five nonconformities or "misfits" threatening sustainability: 1) Spatial misfit in legislation; 2) Poor contextualization; 3) Trap of the single ES; 4) Participatory misfit; and 5) Robbing the commons. By conceptualizing those key threats, we proposed responses for sustainability. The findings contributed to an advanced understanding of complex FSES, their key challenges and potential solutions in order to secure well-being of people and nature in coupled social-ecological systems, in the conditions of a changing world.

[1]  Georgina M. Mace,et al.  Creating win-wins from trade-offs? Ecosystem services for human well-being: A meta-analysis of ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies in the real world , 2014 .

[2]  Anja Nygren,et al.  Political Ecology Revisited: Integration of Politics and Ecology Does Matter , 2008 .

[3]  C. Folke,et al.  The problem of fit between ecosystems and institutions , 2007 .

[4]  C. Pahl-Wostl,et al.  Research, part of a Special Feature on A Framework for Analyzing, Comparing, and Diagnosing Social-Ecological Systems Comparison of Frameworks for Analyzing Social-ecological Systems , 2013 .

[5]  K. Mcafee,et al.  Payments for Ecosystem Services in Mexico: Nature, Neoliberalism, Social Movements, and the State , 2010 .

[6]  B. N. Prof.  Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons , 2010 .

[7]  W. Keeton,et al.  Forest carbon projects in the Ukrainian Carpathians: an assessment of potential community impacts and benefits , 2017 .

[8]  Elizabeth R. DeSombre,et al.  The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale , 2002 .

[9]  Klaus Leidorf.  Environmental Governance, , 2007 .

[10]  Eugene A. Rosa,et al.  The environmental efficiency of well-being: A cross-national analysis , 2011 .

[11]  R. Costanza,et al.  Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[12]  J. Ribot,et al.  Democratic Decentralization of Natural Resources , 2003 .

[13]  Carl Folke,et al.  Transformations in Ecosystem Stewardship , 2009 .

[14]  T. Moss,et al.  Spatial Fit, from Panacea to Practice: Implementing the EU Water Framework Directive , 2012 .

[15]  M. Nijnik,et al.  Sustaining Multifunctional Forestry Through the Developing of Social Capital and Promoting Participation: A Case of Multiethnic Mountain Communities , 2012, Small-scale Forestry.

[16]  Karsten Grunewald,et al.  Social equity in governance of ecosystem services : synthesis from European treeline areas , 2017 .

[17]  G. Gereffi,et al.  Regulation and economic globalization: Prospects and limits of private governance , 2010 .

[18]  M. Nijnik,et al.  Forestry in the Ukraine: the road ahead? , 2000 .

[19]  T. Beckley.  The nestedness of forest dependence: A conceptual framework and empirical exploration , 1998 .

[20]  Survival of commons? Institutions for robust forest social – ecological systems , 2016 .

[21]  M. Nijnik,et al.  Governance in Ukrainian forestry: trends, impacts and remedies , 2004 .

[22]  M. Spierenburg.  Getting the message across biodiversity science and policy interfaces: A review , 2012 .

[23]  P. Robbins.  Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction , 2004 .

[24]  M. Inoue,et al.  Identifying salient forest SES attributes for sustainability: A multi-country study , 2017 .

[25]  E. Oteros‐Rozas,et al.  Assessing, mapping, and quantifying cultural ecosystem services at community level , 2013 .

[26]  F. Kalaba.  A conceptual framework for understanding forest socio-ecological systems , 2014, Biodiversity and Conservation.

[27]  Terry P. Dawson,et al.  A conceptual framework to assess the effects of environmental change on ecosystem services , 2010, Biodiversity and Conservation.

[28]  Graeme Auld,et al.  Certification Schemes and the Impacts on Forests and Forestry , 2008 .

[29]  Unai Pascual,et al.  Social Equity Matters in Payments for Ecosystem Services , 2014 .

[30]  Timothy F. Smith,et al.  Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure? , 2017 .

[31]  A. Villamagna,et al.  Adapting Human Well-being Frameworks for Ecosystem Service Assessments across Diverse Landscapes , 2014 .

[32]  C. Holling,et al.  Command and Control and the Pathology of Natural Resource Management , 1996 .

[33]  T. Karjalainen,et al.  Fit between Conservation Instruments and Local Social Systems: Cases of Co-management and Payments for Ecosystem Services , 2015 .

[34]  K. Mcafee.  Selling Nature to save It? Biodiversity and Green Developmentalism , 1999 .

[35]  C. Wamsler,et al.  Research, part of a Special Feature on Education and Differential Vulnerability to Natural Disasters Climate Change, Adaptation, and Formal Education: the Role of Schooling for Increasing Societies' Adaptive Capacities in El Salvador and Brazil , 2012 .

[36]  G. Brady.  Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action , 1993 .

[37]  P. Wisse,et al.  a comparison of frameworks , 2006 .

[38]  Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts,et al.  Research, part of a Special Feature on New Methods for Adaptive Water Management Managing Change toward Adaptive Water Management through Social Learning , 2007 .

[39]  M. Nijnik,et al.  Identifying and understanding attitudinal diversity on multi-functional changes in woodlands of the Ukrainian Carpathians , 2017 .

[40]  M. Dennis,et al.  Social-ecological innovation: adaptive responses to urban environmental conditions , 2016, Urban Ecosystems.

[41]  A. Hofgaard,et al.  Assessing the resilient provision of ecosystem services by social-ecological systems: introduction and theory , 2017 .

[42]  Maria Nijnik,et al.  Analysing the Development of Small-Scale Forestry in Central and Eastern Europe , 2009, Small-scale Forestry.

[43]  R. Costanza,et al.  An Overarching Goal for the UN Sustainable Development Goals , 2014 .

[44]  Viktoriia Baidala.  IMPACT OF THE BIOECONOMY ON FOOD SECURITY IN UKRAINE , 2016 .

[45]  M. Nijnik,et al.  Forestry in the Ukraine: the road ahead? reply , 2006 .

[46]  Millenium Ecosystem Assessment.  Ecosystems and human well-being: synthesis , 2005 .

[47]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Adaptive Capacity and Traps , 2008 .

[48]  Liliana B. Andonova,et al.  The Rescaling of Global Environmental Politics , 2010 .

[49]  James C. Scott,et al.  Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. , 1985, The Journal of Asian Studies.

[50]  Youn Yeo-Chang,et al.  Traditional knowledge for sustainable forest management and provision of ecosystem services , 2016 .

[51]  W. Keeton,et al.  Forest cover change and illegal logging in the Ukrainian Carpathians in the transition period from 1988 to 2007 , 2009 .

[52]  J. Löffler,et al.  Ecosystem services in coupled social–ecological systems: Closing the cycle of service provision and societal feedback , 2015, Ambio.

[53]  J. Wandel,et al.  Institutional Fit and Interplay in a Dryland Agricultural Social–Ecological System in Alberta, Canada , 2010 .

[54]  J. Hiedanpää.  Research, part of a Special Feature on Nudging Evolution? Critical Exploration of the Potential and Limitations of the Concept of Institutional Fit for the Study and Adaptive Management of Social-Ecological Systems Institutional Misfits: Law and Habits in Finnish Wolf Policy , 2013 .

[55]  M. Stokes,et al.  Public Participation and Institutional Fit: A Social–Psychological Perspective , 2013 .

[56]  M. Nijnik,et al.  Targeting Sustainable Provision of Forest Ecosystem Services with Special Focus on Carbon Sequestration , 2013 .

[57]  J. Golub.  The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale. By Oran R. Young. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. 221p. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper , 2003, Perspectives on Politics.

[58]  G. Hardin,et al.  The Tragedy of the Commons , 1968, Green Planet Blues.

[59]  K. Grunewald,et al.  Benefits from and threats to European treeline ecosystem services: an exploratory study of stakeholders and governance , 2016, Regional Environmental Change.

[60]  E. Ostrom.  A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems , 2009, Science.

[61]  F. Cubbage,et al.  Forest policy in aroused society: Ukrainian post-Orange Revolution challenges , 2007 .

[62]  E. Huber‐Sannwald,et al.  Navigating challenges and opportunities of land degradation and sustainable livelihood development in dryland social–ecological systems: a case study from Mexico , 2012, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[63]  M. Nijnik.  To an economist's perception on sustainability in forestry-in-transition , 2004 .

[64]  F. Berkes,et al.  Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems for Community Conservation , 2016 .

[65]  Torgeir Ericson,et al.  Mindfulness and sustainability , 2014 .

[66]  P. Angelstam,et al.  Implementing sustainable forest management in Ukraine's Carpathian Mountains: The role of traditional village systems , 2007 .

[67]  N. Hanley,et al.  Valuing enhancements to forest recreation using choice experiment and contingent behaviour methods , 2007 .

[68]  E. Ostrom.  Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change , 2010 .