Collaboration in social-ecological systems: talk or action?

Collaboration among and between different actors and stakeholders is often put forward as the solution to environmental problem. Achieving collaborations leading to outputs that go beyond just talking when confronted with complex environmental problems is however a daunting task. One way to better understand this challenge is through the lenses of the participating actors and the ways in which they engage in collaborative networks.

Through a synthesizing effort bridging across different scientific disciplines, Örjan Bodin will show that quite much is known about collaborative networks and how they tend to be formed and shaped. He will also show that much less is known in relation to their abilities in addressing environmental problems, in particular how these abilities relate to specific characteristics of the underlying ecosystems. Bodin will demonstrate some early attempt to address that gap. A deeper understanding of if, when, and how collaboration is effective, and when other means of addressing environmental problems are better suited is needed.

About Örjan Bodin

Örjan Bodin is an Associate Professor at Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. His interdisciplinary research on social-ecological systems span a range of scientific disciplines, theories and methods, and involve both conceptual/theoretical as well as empirical work. Bodin has been with Stockholm Resilience Centre since 2008, but he has also spent several longer research visits abroad, e.g. in the USA, South Africa, and Australia. He is actively engaged in numerous collaborations with scholars with a broad spectrum of scientific backgrounds.

Read more about Örjan Bodin here