Karma Norman

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.

Developing conservation targets in social-ecological systems

The development of targets is foundational in conservation. Although progress has been made in setting targets, the diverse linkages among ecological and social components make target setting for coupled social-ecological systems extremely challenging. Developing integrated social-ecological targets is difficult because it forces policy makers to consider how management actions propagate throughout social-ecological systems, and because ultimately it is society, not scientists, that defines targets. We developed an interdisciplinary approach for identifying management targets and illustrate this approach using an example motivated by Puget Sound, USA. Our approach blends ecological modeling with empirical social science to articulate trade-offs and reveal societal preferences for different social-ecological states. The framework aims to place information in the hands of decision makers and promote discussion in the appropriate forums. Our ultimate objective is to encourage the informed participation of citizens in the development of social-ecological targets that reflect their values while also protecting key ecosystem attributes.

Environmental Awareness and Public Support for Protecting and Restoring Puget Sound

In an effort to garner consensus around environmental programs, practitioners have attempted to increase awareness about environmental threats and demonstrate the need for action. Nonetheless, how beliefs about the scope and severity of different types of environmental concerns shape support for management interventions are less clear. Using data from a telephone survey of residents of the Puget Sound region of Washington, we investigate how perceptions of the severity of different coastal environmental problems, along with other social factors, affect attitudes about policy options. We find that self-assessed environmental understanding and views about the seriousness of pollution, habitat loss, and salmon declines are only weakly related. Among survey respondents, women, young people, and those who believe pollution threatens Puget Sound are more likely to support policy measures such as increased enforcement and spending on restoration. Conversely, self-identified Republicans and individuals who view current regulations as ineffective tend to oppose governmental actions aimed at protecting and restoring Puget Sound. Support for one policy measure—tax credits for environmentally-friendly business practices—is not significantly affected by political party affiliation. These findings demonstrate that environmental awareness can influence public support for environmental policy tools. However, the nature of particular management interventions and other social forces can have important mitigating effects and need to be considered by practitioners attempting to develop environment-related social indicators and generate consensus around the need for action to address environmental problems.

Conceptualization of Social-Ecological Systems of the California Current: An Examination of Interdisciplinary Science Supporting Ecosystem-Based Management

ABSTRACT Improved understanding and management of social-ecological systems (SES) requires collaboration between biophysical and social scientists; however, issues related to research philosophy and approaches, the nature of data, and language hinder interdisciplinary science. Here, we discuss how we used conceptual models to promote interdisciplinary dialogue in support of integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs) in the California Current ecosystem. Initial con-ceptualizations of the California Current IEA were based on the Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response framework. This initial framing was biophysically centered, with humans primarily incorporated as impacts on the system. We wished to move from a conceptualization that portrayed an antagonistic relationship between humans and nature to one that integrated humans and social systems into the IEA framework. We propose a new conceptualization of the California Current that functions across temporal and spatial scales, captures the diverse relationships that typify SESs, and highlights the need for interdisciplinary science. The development of this conceptualization reveals how our understanding of the place and role of people in the ecosystem changed over the course of the history of the California Current IEA. This conceptual model is adaptive and serves to ensure that interdisciplinarity will now be the standard for the California Current IEA and, perhaps, beyond.

Planning Salmon Recovery: Applying Sociological Concepts to Spawn New Organizational Insights

Restoring salmon is a complex organizational as well as technical endeavor. The Washington Salmon Recovery Planning Act has played a key role in these efforts by stimulating the creation of local planning organizations known as lead entities. This study utilizes conceptual and theoretical tools from organizational sociology to analyze regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutional forces shaping the structure and behavior of lead entity organizations in the Puget Sound region. Findings demonstrate that the regulative influence of the act only partly explains the distinct structure and behavior of lead entities. Other institutional influences such as the normative importance of technically driven salmon recovery approaches and the culture of localism embedded in these multiparty groups are equally important in explaining the organization of lead entity planning. Results from this study illustrate how research built upon theoretical insights from organizational sociology may provide planners with novel insights into the organization of natural resource management.

Fishing off the Dock and Under the Radar in Los Angeles County: Demographics and Risks

Abstract The research presented here represents an analysis of pier-based subsistence fishing in Los Angeles County. The researchers conducted surveys and participant observation at 4 field sites on Los Angeles piers. Subsistence fishing among populations in the mainland United States has been neglected as a significant activity of research interest. This may be in part because individuals engaged in subsistence fishing are often members of long established poor, indigenous or diasporic communities. With this project, we analyzed particular marine cultural phenomena, otherwise invisible in a highly bureaucratized system of fisheries management and risk analysis, by researching and describing some of the fishing practices and fishers of Los Angeles Countys piers. Ethnographic survey research reports on the unique demographics, risk perceptions, and sociocultural aspects of distinct pier-based fishing communities in Southern California.

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.

Impacts of Climate Change on Human uses of the Ocean and Ocean Services

The biophysical impacts of climate change on oceans described in Sections 2 and 3 also affect humans and human systems that interact with the ocean. For example, fishing-dependent communities and the national economy are affected by climate-related impacts on populations of marine resources and understanding climate impacts to fish and shellfish stocks enables improved assessment of the impacts of those changes on fishing behaviors, industries, infrastructure, and communities. This leads to one of the limitations in our current ability to assess these socio-economic impacts: uncertainty regarding the rate and magnitude of change in biophysical aspects of marine resources attributable to climate change. The direction of these changes may be clear but the rate and extent, as well as synergistic, antagonistic, or cumulative impacts that result, are less clear.

At the Confluence of Data Streams: Mapping Paired Social and Biophysical Landscapes on the Puget Sound's Edge

ABSTRACT We seek to expand interdisciplinary insights into coastal management by pairing survey data from the general public with attendant landscape data in the Puget Sound region. Our social survey gathered information regarding attitudes and perceptions of changing social and environmental conditions in the Puget Sound Basin as well as views regarding possible management interventions. We mapped the survey data to US zip code regions and spatially overlaid the survey response data with existing geospatial data layers of biophysical conditions. Using mixed-effects logistic regression we examine the relationships between urban development trajectories and individual views about both environmental problems and possible policy responses. We found significant relationships between peoples responses and the physical conditions within their residence zip code, as well as social variables, which illustrated the importance of developing new analytical approaches that consider the relationships between both biophysical and social features and individual attitudes about coastal environmental concerns.