Unpacking social-ecological transformations: Conceptual, ethical and methodological insights (original) (raw)

2018, The Anthropocene Review

Social-ecological systems contribute to environmental change and, in turn, face its corresponding shocks and disturbances. As scholarship on resilience and social-ecological transformations grows, researchers from various disciplines continue to debate how major transitions and environmental change can be anticipated, studied or guided towards just and ethical outcomes. To this end, we apply an interdisciplinary perspective to describing key aspects of social-ecological transformations scholarship around three pressing questions: (1) What features or criteria distinguish transformations from other forms of change?; (2) What are the political, ethical, and normative concerns associated with transformations?; and (3) How can we better track, measure, and evaluate such transformations? Our insights, which emerged from a workshop with early-career interdisciplinary scholars, highlight questions of justice, equity and ethics in transformations research, and suggest that more precise indi...

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