Publications

Nyborg, K., Anderies, J.M., Dannenberg, A., Lindahl, T., Schill, C., Schlüter, M., Adger, W.N., Arrow, K.J., Barrett, S., Carpenter, S., et. al. 2016. Social norms as solutions. Science 354, 42–43.

Climate change, biodiversity loss, antibiotic resistance, and other global challenges pose major collective action problems: A group benefits from a certain action, but no individual has sufficient incentive to act alone. Formal institutions, e.g., laws and treaties, have helped address issues like ozone depletion, lead pollution, and acid rain. However, formal institutions are not always able to enforce collectively desirable...

Folke, C., R. Biggs, A. V. Norström, B. Reyers, and J. Rockström. 2016. Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science. Ecology and Society 21(3):41. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08748-210341

Humanity has emerged as a major force in the operation of the biosphere. The focus is shifting from the environment as externality to the biosphere as precondition for social justice, economic development, and sustainability. In this article, we exemplify the intertwined nature of social-ecological systems and emphasize that they operate within, and as embedded parts of the biosphere and as such coevolve with and depend on it...

Sundin, A., C. Folke, F. Moberg, A. Wall. 2015. Patterns of the Biosphere (Biosfärens mönster). Exhibition catalogue. Svenskt Tenn and the Beijer Institute, Stockholm.

Defeo, O., M. Castrejón, R. Pérez-Castañeda, J.-C. Castilla, N.L. Gutiérrez, T. Essington, C. Folke. Co-management in Latin American small-scale shellfisheries: Assessment from long-term case studies. Fish and Fisheries DOI: 10.1111/faf.12101

Co-management (Co-M), defined as the sharing of management tasks and responsibilities between governments and local users, is emerging as a powerful institutional arrangement to redress fisheries paradigm failures, yet long-term assessments of its performance are lacking. A comparative analysis of five small-scale Latin American shellfisheries was conducted to identify factors suggesting success and failure. In Chile, Urugu...

Crona, B.I., T.M. Daw, W. Swartz, A.V. Norström, M. Nyström, M. Thyresson, C. Folke, J. Hentati-Sundberg, H. Österblom, L. Deutsch, M. Troell. 2015. Masked, diluted and drowned out: How global seafood trade weakens signals from marine ecosystems. Fish and Fisheries DOI: 10.1111/faf.12109

Nearly 40% of seafood is traded internationally and an even bigger proportion is affected by international trade, yet scholarship on marine fisheries has focused on global trends in stocks and catches, or on dynamics of individual fisheries, with limited attention to the link between individual fisheries, global trade and distant consumers. This paper examines the usefulness of fish price as a feedback signal to consumers a...

Schultz, L., C. Folke, H. Österblom, P. Olsson. 2015. Adaptive governance, ecosystem management, and natural capital. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 112: 7369–7374.

To gain insights into the effects of adaptive governance on natural capital, we compare three well-studied initiatives; a landscape in Southern Sweden, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and fisheries in the Southern Ocean. We assess changes in natural capital and ecosystem services related to these social-ecological governance approaches to ecosystem management and investigate their capacity to respond to change and new cha...

Scheffer, M., S. Barrett, S.R. Carpenter, C. Folke, A.J. Green, M. Holmgren, T.P. Hughes, S. Kosten, I.A. van de Leemput, D.C. Nepstad, E.H. van Nes, E.T.H.M. Peeters, B. Walker. 2015. Creating a safe operating space for iconic ecosystems. Science 347: 1317–1319.

Although some ecosystem responses to climate change are gradual, many ecosystems react in highly non-linear ways. They show little response until a threshold or tipping point isreached where even a small perturbation may trigger collapse into a state from which recovery is difficult. Increasing evidence shows that the critical climate level for such collapse may be altered by conditions that can be managed locally. These syner...

Scheffer, M., J. Bascompte, T.K. Bjordam, S.R. Carpenter, L.B. Clarke, C. Folke, P. Marquet, N. Mazzeo, M. Meerhoff, O. Sala, F.R. Westley. 2015. Dual thinking for scientists. Ecology and Society 20(2): 3.

Recent studies provide compelling evidence for the idea that creative thinking draws upon two kinds of processes linked to distinct physiological features, and stimulated under different conditions. In short, the fast system-I produces intuition whereas the slow and deliberate system-II produces reasoning. System-I can help see novel solutions and associations instantaneously, but is prone to error. System-II has other biase...

van den Bergh, J., C. Folke, S. Polasky, M. Scheffer, W. Steffen. 2015. What if solar energy becomes really cheap? A thought experiment on environmental problem shifting. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 14: 170–179.

Solving one environmental problem may often invoke or intensify another one. Such environmental problem shifting (EPS) is a neglected topic in global sustainability research. Indeed, it is difficult to study as it requires the merging of insights from various research areas. Here we identify relevant studies, and provide an illustration and guidelines for the systematic study of EPS. As a modest thought experiment to illustr...

Steffen, W., K. Richardson, J. Rockström, S.E. Cornell, I. Fetzer, E.M. Bennett, R. Biggs, S.R. Carpenter, W. De Vries, C.A. De Wit, C. Folke, D. Gerten, J. Heinke, G.M. Mace, L.M. Persson, V. Ramanathan, B. Reyers, S. Sörlin. 2015. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347: 736, 1259855

The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system. Here, we revise and update the planetary boundary framework, with a focus on the underpinning biophysical science, based on targeted input from expert research communities and on more general scientific advances over the past 5 years. Several of the boundar...