Understanding human-nature systems through complexity: the case of mediterranean pastoral systems

• Autores: Graeme Dean
• Directores de la Tesis: Marta G. Rivera Ferré (dir. tes.), Feliu López Gelats (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya ( España ) en 2022
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Tobías Plieninger (presid.), Albert Palou Vilar (secret.), Elsa Varela Redondo (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencias Experimentales y Tecnologías / Experimental Sciences and Technology por la Universidad de Vic-Universidad Central de Catalunya
• Materias:
  • Antropología
    • Etnografía y etnología
      • Agricultura
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• Resumen

  • This thesis has been developed to help cover the complexity of human nature systems such as pastoral systems by recognizing the multiple goods and services they provide and how the creation of these goods and services is affected by the drivers of change. This is important because systems of human nature or socio-ecological systems are found all over the world and are defined by the complex and multifunctional adaptive interactions between people and their environment. Pastoral systems have a rich history of influencing landscapes, with archaeological evidence dating back pastoralism 7,000 years ago in Europe and up to 9,000 years in Northeast Africa. Recent estimates have shown that there are between 200 and 500 million shepherds in the world, who use 25% of the world's land. Despite their inherent complexity, pastoral systems suffer from a lack of interdisciplinary thinking, as the natural and social sciences are rarely truly integrated. Researchers tend to focus on the human or natural element of systems through the use of biological, economic, or social methodologies and narratives, which means that the compensations and multifunctional synergies of human nature systems are not appreciated. In this thesis, pastoral systems have been used as an example of a human nature system, adding to the debate on the role of human nature systems and examining what goods and services pastoral systems provide, as well as their drivers. change and its place in global debates. This was done in three distinct phases. The first phase involves examining pastoral literature on a global scale to identify the goods and services produced by pastoral systems and their drivers of change. This was done using a relatively new framework of nature’s contributions to people (NCP) to classify the goods and services produced by pastoral systems. This resulted in the identification of the most common NCP studied by researchers, as well as the relationship between the NCP and the drivers of change. This phase also validated the NCP framework as useful for the study of pastoral systems and established the lack of attention that researchers give to non-material NCPs. Phase 2 required the analysis of pastoral literature at the regional level, in the Mediterranean basin. This was done using the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) to analyze the Ecosystem Services (SE) established in the literature and to determine whether researchers of the pastoral systems of the Mediterranean basin use a multisectoral and multiscale analysis in when analyzing pastoral systems, as prescribed by the MEA. This analysis led to the demonstration that pastoral systems in the Mediterranean basin are studied in terms of only a few dominant ecosystem services, mainly support services, and are still addressed through individual disciplines rather than a combination of disciplines, although interdisciplinarity can better capture the multidimensional nature of Mediterranean pastoralism and the interactions between the different temporal and spatial scales it entails. Therefore, more examinations of this kind are needed to give full meaning to the true contribution of the Mediterranean pastoral systems. The third phase of this doctoral thesis involved the analysis of how policies, as drivers of change in the pastoral system identified in the first phase of this thesis, affect the ability of Mediterranean pastoral systems to produce NCP. . Policies affecting pastoral systems were determined through semi-structured interviews conducted by project partners with expert informants from each Mediterranean region. This thesis found that the ability of pastoral systems to produce NCPs through the impact of policies on them was affected by three main factors: i) The dominance of policies; ii) The geographical region of pastoral systems, and ii) The level of government that leads the policies. Meanwhile, it was also discovered that material and non-material NCPs were usually affected by policy design, while non-material NCPs were rarely, if ever, the main focus of policies affecting pastoral systems, and instead they were indirectly affected as an accidental consequence of the policy. These combined results highlighted that the complexity of pastoral systems is rarely recognized by policymakers and shows a tendency to be considered only in terms of a few dimensions, such as food production and landscape maintenance. This simplified way of considering pastoral systems could, in turn, require that pastoral systems be simplified.