Social-Ecological Systems

The created and self-organizing elements of Social-ecological Systems (SESs) have to be recognized and an analysis of how they can act together successfully should be done. Institutional frameworks that have been analyzed and confirmed facilitate how the resources, users, and public infrastructures can interact in a better manner. The framework is instrumental in detecting any possible susceptibilities of the SESs to interferences. That is, the systems are able to overcome unfavorable environments for a long time, as others are falling victim. The focus of the research was on those SESs in which the interactive part of social systems is fundamental, that is, where people have deliberately devoted their resources to some kind of physical or institutional infrastructure to deal with varied internal and external interferences. A conceptual model of a social-ecological system encompasses the resource, resource users, public infrastructure providers, and public infrastructure, which shows the symbiotic relationship between them. Several strategic factors exist that can affect the interaction between resource users and the public infrastructure providers, public infrastructure providers and the actual investments in the infrastructure, resource users and the harvesting rate, and possibly, resource users and the public infrastructure. The interactions between the ecological units are also the origin of variations that may influence the robustness of the general SES at any specific moment. Thus, the robustness of an SES can be measured by its potential to surmount any ecological distractions so that resources are fully exploited and spared from destruction. Robust social-ecological systems are those that involve many design principles that are capable of maintaining sustainable resources for an extended amount of time. The limits of the resource systems and the people or families with the right to utilize the resource should be stated very clearly. Frequent evaluation and monitoring must be done on the biophysical circumstances and user behavior is portrayed responsibly. The system should also have an effective conflict-resolution mechanism to deal with any matters arising among users and officials. These design principles and many more mechanisms can be robustly linked so that the system is successful and long-lasting.