Connecting social and ecological systems: an integrated toolbox for hierarchical evaluation of biodiversity policy implementation

摘要

Recent policies on Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) include the maintenance of biodiversity. This requires an integrated set of tools for evaluating the status of ecosystems and of the policy implementation process by society's institutions. As a way of integrating analyses of social-ecological systems in these two dimensions of the cycles of policy formation and implementation, we propose to combine methods from natural and social sciences using the term "two-dimensional gap analysis". The ecological dimension involves analyses of the networks of different types of ecosystems in actual landscapes. It includes: 1) estimation of regional gaps in the amount and representation of different ecosystems, 2) analyses of the functionality of the habitat networks in terms of hosting viable populations and ecosystem processes, and 3) understanding of how protection, management, and restoration measures can be combined in practice at different spatial scales. The social dimension concerns the implementing actors and institutions in a selected actual landscape or region and includes: 1) identification of the actors and mapping of policy networks, 2) evaluation of the implementation process to learn about the issues of concern, and 3) evaluation of policy implementation in the defined social-ecological system. We provide examples of methods to carry out all six steps in the context of the policy formation and implementation cycle. Managers and their institutions must realise that social-ecological systems are complex, self-organising, and adaptive systems with dynamics in multiple spatial and temporal scales across several levels of organisation. Only an explicit recognition of this complexity and application of transdisciplinary approaches will lead to progress in combining the efforts of managers and scientists to implement biodiversity maintenance policies.