Socio-Ecological Systems, Governance, and Behavior Change

Coupled Human and Natural Systems

Key System Dynamics

• Feedback loops: Humans ↔ nature affect each other (e.g., Emissions → climate → disasters).
• Tipping points (thresholds): Past threshold → abrupt, irreversible change (e.g., Extreme flood → city area becomes a flood plain).
• Legacy effects and time lags: Past actions shape the present; effects take decades (e.g., CFCs from fridge and spray chemicals → ozone hole).
• Resilience: The ability to recover; humans raise or lower it (e.g., Wetlands absorb floods).
• Heterogeneity: Humans make landscapes more varied or uniform (e.g., Monoculture plantations).
• Telecoupling: Interactions over long distances (e.g., trade, migration, emissions).

Historical Landscape Eras

• Preindustrial: Varied landscapes, resilient, absorbed more CO₂, community management, moral economy.
• Industrial: Market-driven, uniform landscapes, absorbed the least CO₂, least resilient, scientific management.
• Postindustrial: Recreation and rewilding, suburban, telecoupled, not resilient to fire.

System Patterns and Disturbance Regimes

• Structure (pattern): The arrangement and relations between the parts or elements of something complex.
• Function (process): An activity that is natural to or the purpose of a person or thing.
• Change (disturbance regimes): Disturbances (fires, floods, etc.) → frequency · seasonality · intensity · severity · size.
• Positive feedback loop: Secondary effects tend to reinforce the basic trend → amplifies.
• Negative feedback loop: Output opposes changes to the input → change reduced → stabilises.

Political Culture and Governance Structures

Political culture: A society’s shared values, experiences, and feelings that shape how its politics works.

• Structure: How interests are organised (pluralism vs. corporatism).
• Process: How people are persuaded (framing).
• Change: What causes big shifts (crises and disasters).

Comparative Governance Models

• USA (Pluralism): Many interest groups compete freely to influence the government.
• Europe (Neo-Corporatism): The state negotiates policy with a few big organised groups (unions and business associations).
• Developing Nations (Corporatism): The state controls these groups and decides who gets a say.

Keystone Habits and Social Movements

Keystone habits: Habits that set off a chain reaction and change other habits too (e.g., families who eat dinner together → children get better grades and more confidence). They work through small wins (small successes that make bigger change feel possible) and by creating a new culture around them.

Movements: Strong ties (friends) → weak ties (community, peer pressure) → leader gives new habits + identity.