Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Studies
The Q approach to consensus building: integrating diverse perspectives to guide decision-making
Published: 2022-11-10
Subjects: Communication, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Geography, Models and Methods, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Political Science, Social and Behavioral Sciences
1. Decision-making processes are complex and time-intensive, particularly when a consensus needs to be achieved amongst more than two parties. Discussions and negotiations must consider all relevant stakeholders and their individual perspectives on the decision to be taken. Methods for identifying, understanding, and acknowledging divergent perspectives can support successful consensus building. [...]
Realising the potential of real-time online monitoring for conservation culturomics
Published: 2022-09-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Environmental monitoring is increasingly shifting towards a set of systems that describe changes in real-time. In ecology specifically, a series of challenges have prevented the roll-out of real-time monitoring for features such as biodiversity change or ecosystem service provision. Conservation culturomics, a field concerned with interactions between people and nature, is well-placed to [...]
The courage of hopelessness: a transformative change for conservation sciences
Published: 2022-07-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
As the twenty-first century unfolds, the human-driven decline of life on Earth is of greater concern and, despite tremendous growth in the volume of conservation science and many local successes, shows no clear signs of improvement. As a matter of fact, the reversal of nature’s ongoing decline is only possible with urgent “transformative change” However, no transformative changes are viable [...]
The Global Forest Health Crisis: A Public Good Social Dilemma in Need of International Collective Action
Published: 2022-03-10
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Behavioral Economics, Biodiversity, Biology, Biosecurity, Botany, Economics, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, International Relations, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Science and Technology Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Society is confronted by interconnected threats to ecological sustainability. Among these is the devastation of forests by destructive non-native pathogens and insects introduced through global trade, leading to the loss of critical ecosystem services and a global forest health crisis. We argue that the forest health crisis is a public good social dilemma and propose a response framework that [...]
Portrayal of the nitrogen debate in Dutch newspapers
Published: 2022-02-21
Subjects: Communication, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
How sustainability challenges are relayed to the public is paramount to tackling such issues timely. However, there is still a lot to learn about the communication system between sustainability experts and the public. We looked at how Dutch newspapers portrayed the Dutch nitrogen debate that has been going on since 2019. 160 articles from four Dutch national daily newspapers were analyzed for [...]
The role of non-English-language science in informing national biodiversity assessments
Published: 2022-01-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Communication, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Publishing, Scholarly Publishing, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Consulting the best available evidence is key to successful conservation decision-making. While much scientific evidence on conservation continues to be published in non-English languages, a poor understanding of how non-English languages science contributes to conservation decision-making is causing global assessments and studies to practically ignore non-English-language literature. By [...]
For the few, not the many: local economic conditions constrain the large-scale management of invasive mosquitoes
Published: 2022-01-06
Subjects: Economics, Entomology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Systems Biology
Invasive mosquitoes are an emerging ecological and sanitary issue. Many factors have been suggested as drivers or barriers to their control, still no study quantified their influence over mosquito management by local authorities, nor their interplay with local economic conditions. We assessed how multiple environmental, sanitary, and socio-economic factors affected the engagement of [...]
Direct Economic Inputs from Internationally Funded Science Projects to the Abaco Islands, The Bahamas
Published: 2021-12-06
Subjects: Communication, Environmental Studies, International and Intercultural Communication, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
International expenditures for scientific research are important for small island developing nations, especially for those local communities that directly support research activities. We used the Abaco Islands, The Bahamas, as a case study to quantify the direct monetary inputs to a local economy via internationally-funded scientific research. We found that over two years the external monetary [...]
The Emergence and Persistence of Payments for Watershed Services Programs in Mexico
Published: 2021-11-18
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Payments for watershed services programs (PWS) have become a prominent tool to protect ecosystems and hydrological services but little is known about where these innovative financing tools and governance systems emerge and persist. In 2008, the Mexican government started a program where they match funding from local partners to establish user-financed PWS programs, leading to the creation of 145 [...]
Why understanding stakeholder perspectives and emotions is important in upland woodland creation – a case study from Cumbria, UK
Published: 2021-10-15
Subjects: Community-based Research, Environmental Studies, Human Ecology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology
Upland regions in the United Kingdom (UK) are increasingly under consideration as potential areas for the creation of woodlands. This is driven by a combination of factors, including the aims of UK forestry and environmental policy to increase woodland cover, meeting international greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, agro-environment schemes in national and international policy, and an [...]
Impacts of woodland planting on nature-based recreational tourism in upland England – a case study
Published: 2021-10-06
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Upland landscapes provide important ecosystem services (ES) to society. One cultural ES - nature-based recreational tourism (NBR) - is a growing industry in upland regions that provides an important revenue to areas where other industries are often in decline. NBR tourism is a service that relies partly on the aesthetic appearance of the landscape. Changes in land management, such as increasing [...]
Make natures role visible to achieve the SDGs
Published: 2021-09-07
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Economics, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Central to the premise of the Sustainable Development Goals is the concept that the environment underpins the economic and social dimensions of development, yet the language and structure of the SDG framework are largely blind to these environment-development relationships beyond the "nature" Goals (14 and 15). As a result, ecosystem health continues to decline, development milestones lag, and [...]
Recognize diverse approaches to area-based conservation of nature
Published: 2021-08-24
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
To conserve nature globally, policies and practices must recognize the contribution of diverse environmental governance systems to nature stewardship.
Nature’s contributions in coping with a pandemic in the 21st century: A narrative review of evidence during COVID-19
Published: 2021-08-10
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Geography, Medicine and Health Sciences, Mental and Social Health, Nature and Society Relations, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
While COVID-19 lockdowns have slowed coronavirus transmission, such structural measures also have unintended consequences on mental and physical health. Growing evidence shows that exposure to the natural environment (e.g., blue-green spaces) can improve human health and wellbeing. In this narrative review, we synthesized the evidence about natures contributions to health and wellbeing during the [...]
Social Equity Outcomes in Ethiopia
Published: 2021-06-10
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Community-based conservation (CBC), albeit lauded as a more just alternative than command-and-control conservation approaches, is riddled by equity concerns. This study measures perceptions of equity and examines how household, institutional, and program design characteristics affect multiple dimensions of equity in a CBC program in the Bale Mountains, Ethiopia. Informed by a prior in-depth [...]