Are bottom-up approaches good for promoting social-ecological fit in urban landscapes?

Bridging Actors and Their Role in Co-Managing Lakes: Cases from Greater Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (GBMR)

Co-management is seen as a means to effectively manage common-pool resources, especially collaborations based on sharing of roles and responsibilities between state and non-state actors. Collaborations depend on certain key intermediary bridging actors who facilitate and coordinate links between these actors. In this paper, we aim to understand the role of these bridging actors in shaping networks of co-management by developing a framework based on certain characteristics such as initiation, position, and facilitation of interactions whose application we illustrate for three lakes situated across a rural–urban gradient in Greater Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (GBMR). Drawing on concepts from co-management and social network analysis, we analyse data collected from documents, key informant interviews, and FGDs to identify that bridging actors play a critical role in resource gathering, enhancing mutual trust, and promoting innovation through information exchange irrespective of the social-ecological context. Beyond mere description, we highlight that state sponsorship plays an important role in establishment of bridging actors in urban and peri-urban areas due to heterogeneity in perceptions, actors, lack of trust and credibility in comparison to rural lakes where state sponsorship is less important and community engagement is stronger. We conclude that irrespective of the context, position of bridging actors plays an important role in facilitation of interactions within networks.

Urban sustainability science: prospects for innovations through a system's perspective, relational and transformations' approaches : This article belongs to Ambio's 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Urbanization

In this perspective, we present how three initial landmark papers on urban sustainability research contributed to the larger sustainability science scholarship and paved the way for the continued development of urban sustainability research. Based on this, we propose three conceptual innovation pathways to trace the progression of urban sustainability science: First, urban sustainability from a system's perspective, meaning that urban sustainability requires integrative solutions to work in the tripled social-ecological-technological system setting. Second, urban sustainability from a (people and place) relational perspective, meaning urban sustainability is a contested and dynamic social-ecological contract of cities. As a governance mission, urban sustainability requires evidence from research that can inform coordinated action to bridge people, places, meanings, visions and ecosystems. Third, urban sustainability from a transformative science perspective, meaning that for urban sustainability to be achieved and progressed, deep transformations are required in systems, relations, policies and governance approaches. Our proposal for the future of urban sustainability science centres on emphasizing the relevance and policy applicability of systems' thinking, value and place thinking and transitions/transformations thinking as fundamental to how knowledge is co-produced by research science, policy and society and becomes actionable.

A social-ecological framework and toolbox to help strengthening functional agrobiodiversity-supported ecosystem services at the landscape scale

Functional agrobiodiversity (FAB) has severely declined during the last decades. Current efforts to reinforce FAB are mainly focused on single-actor, parcel-based measures, whereas multi-actor landscape approaches are supposed to be more effective. In this paper, we propose a social-ecological framework that structures how different land users at both the parcel and landscape level interact with FAB as a natural resource. Furthermore, we introduce 1 m² FAB gardens as an interactive multipurpose measurement tool to gather data on ecosystem services in collaboration with land users. The presented action research approach provides new insights on motivations and interests of different land users in FAB and how knowledge exchange can result in a higher motivation to invest in FAB. Using a case study in Flanders, we illustrate the FAB-garden concept and highlight its strengths and necessary considerations to properly complement other research approaches in this social-ecological system.