Carlos Garcia-Quijano

Engage key social concepts for sustainability

Social indicators, both mature and emerging, are underused With humans altering climate processes, biogeochemical cycles, and ecosystem functions (1), governments and societies confront the challenge of shaping a sustainable future for people and nature. Policies and practices to address these challenges must draw on social sciences, along with natural sciences and engineering (2). Although various social science approaches can enable and assess progress toward sustainability, debate about such concrete engagement is outpacing actual use. To catalyze uptake, we identify seven key social concepts that are largely absent from many efforts to pursue sustainability goals. We present existing and emerging well-tested indicators and propose priority areas for conceptual and methodological development.

Coastal Resource Foraging, Life Satisfaction, and Well-Being in Southeastern Puerto Rico

Based on ethnographic work in coastal southeastern Puerto Rico, we explore the empirical observation that people who make a significant part of their living from fishing and exploitation of other coastal resources are more satisfied with their lives, their work, and their enjoyment of community life than their fellow community members. Coastal resource foraging (CRF) denotes a set of economic activities and social relations related to making a living by the capture and selling of local coastal resources (primarily fish and shellfish). We argue that CRF in southeastern Puerto Rico can be understood as a separate mode of production within the region’s rural, coastal communities and use this framework to make intracultural comparisons between individuals and households. Coastal resource foragers report higher overall life satisfaction than their non-foraging neighbors.

Evaluating indicators of human well-being for ecosystem-based management

ABSTRACT Introduction: Interrelated social and ecological challenges demand an understanding of how environmental change and management decisions affect human well-being. This paper outlines a framework for measuring human well-being for ecosystem-based management (EBM). We present a prototype that can be adapted and developed for various scales and contexts. Scientists and managers use indicators to assess status and trends in integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs). To improve the social science rigor and success of EBM, we developed a systematic and transparent approach for evaluating indicators of human well-being for an IEA. Methods: Our process is based on a comprehensive conceptualization of human well-being, a scalable analysis of management priorities, and a set of indicator screening criteria tailored to the needs of EBM. We tested our approach by evaluating more than 2000 existing social indicators related to ocean and coastal management of the US West Coast. We focused on two foundational attributes of human well-being: resource access and self-determination. Outcomes and Discussion: Our results suggest that existing indicators and data are limited in their ability to reflect linkages between environmental change and human well-being, and extremely limited in their ability to assess social equity and justice. We reveal a critical need for new social indicators tailored to answer environmental questions and new data that are disaggregated by social variables to measure equity. In both, we stress the importance of collaborating with the people whose well-being is to be assessed. Conclusion: Our framework is designed to encourage governments and communities to carefully assess the complex tradeoffs inherent in environmental decision-making.