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Actors’ diversity and the resilience of social-ecological systems to global change

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 290–297 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Biological diversity is known to enhance the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change. It is, however, unclear whether a high diversity of social actors analogously increases the capacity of social-ecological systems to maintain the provision of ecosystem services while undergoing socio-economic and climate changes. Here, using an empirically informed agent-based modelling approach, we demonstrate that both the number of actors (actors richness) and the diversity of the abilities and skills that characterize their management capabilities (actors’ functional diversity) are key determinants of the resilience of social-ecological systems to global change. A high complementarity of the actors’ functional diversity helps to buffer vulnerable mountain systems against socio-economic and climate change. Actors’ response diversity can mediate an abrupt shift in the social-ecological system, leading to new trade-offs in ecosystem services. Our results highlight the importance of considering both the diversity and the complementarity of actors’ management capabilities to ensure the provision of ecosystem services in the face of uncertain global change.

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Fig. 1: Actors’ functional richness and actors richness highly correlate with the flow of demanded ecosystem services.
Fig. 2: Socio-economic and climatic presses and pulses impact actors’ functional divergence and provision of ecosystem services.
Fig. 3: Relationship between presses and pulses and response diversity.

Data availability

The data used for this study and the ALUAM agent-based model code35 are available in the ETH Research Collection with the identifier https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000221406.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Competence Centre Environment and Sustainability of the ETH Domain, Switzerland, and the project “MntPaths – Pathways for global change adaptation of mountain socio-ecological systems”, grant no. 20521L_169916, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We acknowledge the work of all researchers involved in the inter- and transdisciplinary research project MOUNTLAND, which provided input to this study. We thank R. Sonderegger for his graphical support, U. Fink for proofreading and B. Weibel for editorial support and proofreading.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Adrienne Grêt-Regamey & Sibyl H. Huber

  2. Agricultural Economics and Policy, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Robert Huber

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  1. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey
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A.G.-R. designed the research and wrote the manuscript. S.H.H. and R.H. reviewed the literature, performed the simulation runs, analysed the data and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Adrienne Grêt-Regamey.

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Grêt-Regamey, A., Huber, S.H. & Huber, R. Actors’ diversity and the resilience of social-ecological systems to global change. Nat Sustain 2, 290–297 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0236-z

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