Publications

Galaz, V., J. Tallberg, A. Boin, C. Ituarte-Lima, E. Hey, P. Olsson, F. Westley. 2017. Global governance dimensions of globally networked risks: the state of the art in social science research. Risk Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy 8(1): 4-27.

Global risks are now increasingly being perceived as networked, and likely to result in large‐scale, propagating failures and crises that transgress national boundaries and societal sectors. These so called “globally networked risks” pose fundamental challenges to global governance institutions. A growing literature explores the nature of these globally networked or “systemic” risks. While this research has taught us much abou...

Galaz, V., A.M. Mouazen. 2017. 'New Wilderness' requires algorithmic transparency: a Response to Cantrell et al. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 32(9): 628-629.

Can rapid advances in robotics, increasingly sophisticated algorithms, and exponential increases in data availability help us create and maintain wild places? In their recent Opinion article, Cantrell and colleagues explore the ‘potential for fully automated systems to create and sustain new forms of wild places without ongoing direct human intervention’. They also elaborate how these systems could contribute to new ways of au...

Mathias, J.D., Lade, S. and V. Galaz. 2017. “Multi-level policies and adaptive social networks–a conceptual modeling study for maintaining a polycentric governance system”, International Journal of the Commons, 11 (1).

Information and collaboration patterns embedded in social networks play key roles in multilevel and polycentric modes of governance. However, modeling the dynamics of such social networks in multilevel settings has been seldom addressed in the literature. Here we use an adaptive social network model to elaborate the interplay between a central and a local government in order to maintain a polycentric governance. More specifica...

Galaz, V., & Mouazen, A. M. 2017. “New Wilderness” Requires Algorithmic Transparency: A Response to Cantrell et al. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, (Letter) http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2017.06.013

Can rapid advances in robotics, increasingly sophisticated algorithms, and exponential increases in data availability help us create and maintain wild places? In their recent Opinion article, Cantrell and colleagues [1] explore the ‘potential for fully automated systems to create and sustain new forms of wild places without ongoing direct human intervention’ (p. 1). They also elaborate how these systems could contribute to new...

Galaz, V., Pierre, J. 2017. complexity; financial markets; algorithmic trade; governance; network governance. Complexity, Governance & Networks – Vol. 3, No 2 (2017), p. 12-28. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20377/cgn-55 12

Increased trading with financial instruments, new actors and novel technologies are changing the nature of financial markets making trade faster, more information dense and more globalized than ever. These changes in financial markets are not incremental and linear, but transformative with the emergence of a new “machine-ecology” with intricate system behavior and new forms of systemic financial risks. We argue that the nature...

Keys, P., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Gordon, L.J., Galaz, V., Ebbesson, J. 2017. Approaching moisture recycling governance. Global Environmental Change Volume 45, July 2017, Pages 15–23, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.04.007

The spatial and temporal dynamics of water resources are a continuous challenge for effective and sustainable national and international governance. The watershed is the most common spatial unit in water resources governance, which typically includes only surface and groundwater. However, recent advances in hydrology have revealed ‘atmospheric watersheds’ – otherwise known as precipitationsheds. Water flowing within a precipit...

Daume, S., V. Galaz. 2016. “Anyone know what species this is?”: Twitter conversations as embryonic citizen science communities. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0151387.

Social media like blogs, micro-blogs or social networks are increasingly being investigated and employed to detect and predict trends for not only social and physical phenomena, but also to capture environmental information. Here we argue that opportunistic biodiversity observations published through Twitter represent one promising and until now unexplored example of such data mining. As we elaborate, it can contribute to real...

Galaz, V., A de Zeeuw, H. Shiroyama, D. Tripley. 2016. Planetary Boundaries: Governing emerging risks and opportunities. Solutions 7(3): 46 – 54.

The climate, ecosystems and species, ozone layer, acidity of the oceans, the flow of energy and elements through nature, landscape change, freshwater systems, aerosols, and toxins—these constitute the planetary boundaries within which humanity must find a safe way to live and prosper. These are thresholds that, if we cross them, we run the risk of rapid, non-linear, and irreversible changes to the environment, with severe cons...

Galaz, V., M. Leach, I. Scoones. 2016. Global narratives: The political economy of one health. In K. Bardosh (Ed.), One Health: Science, Politics and Zoonotic Disease in Africa. Taylor and Francis Inc. pp. 21 – 37.

Bennett EM, Solan M, Biggs R, McPhearson T, Norström AV, Olsson P, Pereira L, Peterson GD, Raudsepp-Hearne C, Biermann F, Carpenter SR, Ellis EC, Hichert T, Galaz V, Lahsen M, Milkoreit M, López BM, Nicholas KA, Preiser R, Vince G, Vervoort JM, Xu J. 2016. Bright spots: seeds of a good Anthropocene. Frontiers in Ecology, published online October 05, 2016. doi: 10.1002/fee.1309

The scale, rate, and intensity of humans’ environmental impact has engendered broad discussion about how to find plausible pathways of development that hold the most promise for fostering a better future in the Anthropocene. However, the dominance of dystopian visions of irreversible environmental degradation and societal collapse, along with overly optimistic utopias and business-as-usual scenarios that lack insight and innov...