Applied research for enhancing human well-being and environmental stewardship: using complexity thinking in Southern Africa

Palmer, Carolyn G., Biggs, Reinette, and Cumming, Graeme S. (2015) Applied research for enhancing human well-being and environmental stewardship: using complexity thinking in Southern Africa. Ecology and Society, 20 (1). 53.

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Abstract

[Extract] Humans all over the planet are struggling and aspiring to engage with the scale and scope of the challenge of achieving human well-being and environmental stewardship for all. This special feature presents the products of processes in Southern Africa that have explored the potential use of complexity approaches to tackling the substantial social-ecological challenges in the region. Although the papers composing the special feature draw mainly on South African case studies, the thinking and participation in development processes were inclusive of the broader region.

A concept that emerges through the papers is the inevitable conflation of human well-being and justice, and together they point toward social and ecological justice as an expression of human well-being, founded on environmental stewardship. Over the time the constituent papers have emerged, Mark Swilling and Eve Annecke have produced a most elegantly written and argued book Just Transitions (Swilling and Annecke 2012) that foregrounds the justice theme, deepens and complements several of the perspectives collectively presented in this feature, particularly complexity-based research, and adds an important economics lens.

Item ID: 40882
Item Type: Article (Editorial)
ISSN: 1708-3087
Keywords: complexity, relational, stewardship, sufficiency, well-being
Funders: South African National Research Foundation
Projects and Grants: The Akili Complexity and Integration Initiative within Applied Research and Innovation
Date Deposited: 28 Oct 2015 03:51
FoR Codes: 05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050202 Conservation and Biodiversity @ 50%
05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0501 Ecological Applications > 050199 Ecological Applications not elsewhere classified @ 50%
SEO Codes: 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9613 Remnant Vegetation and Protected Conservation Areas > 961308 Remnant Vegetation and Protected Conservation Areas at Regional or Larger Scales @ 50%
97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences @ 50%
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