Publications

Galappaththi, E., Falardeau, M., Harris, L., Rocha, J., Moore, J., Berkes, F.. 2022. Resilience-based steps for adaptive co-management of Arctic small-scale fisheries. Environmental Research Letters. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac7b37

Arctic small-scale fisheries are essential for the livelihoods, cultures, nutrition, economy, and food security of Indigenous communities. Their sustainable management in the rapidly changing Arctic is thus a key priority. Fisheries management in complex systems such as the Arctic would benefit from integrative approaches that explicitly seek to build resilience. Yet, resilience is rarely articulated as an explicit goal of Ar...

Österblom, H., Folke, C., Rocha, J. et al. Scientific mobilization of keystone actors for biosphere stewardship. Sci Rep 12, 3802 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07023-8

The biosphere crisis requires changes to existing business practices. We ask how corporations can become sustainability leaders, when constrained by multiple barriers to collaboration for biosphere stewardship. We describe how scientists motivated, inspired and engaged with ten of the world’s largest seafood companies, in a collaborative process aimed to enable science-based and systemic transformations (2015–2021). CEOs face...

Economy and Finance for a Just Future on a Thriving Planet

Rocha, J.C. & Daume, S. 2021. Data mining and pattern recognition. In: Biggs et al. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems, Taylor & Francis Group, pp.241–251.

This chapter is part of The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems which provides a synthetic guide to the range of methods that can be employed in social-ecological systems (SES) research. The book is primarily targeted at graduate students, lecturers and researchers working on SES, and has been written in a style that is accessible to readers entering the field from a variety of different disci...

Calderon-Contreras, R., Balvanera, P., Trimble, M., Langle-Flores, A., Jobbagy, E., Maass Moreno, M., Marcone, J., Mazzeo, N., Munoz Anaya, M.M., Ortiz-Rodriguez, I.A., Perevochtchikova, M., Avila-Foucat, S., Bonilla-Moheno, M., Clark, L.B., Equihua, M., Ayala-Orozco, B., Bueno, I., Hensler, L., Leyva Aguilera, J.C., Martinez Ramos, M., Mercon, J., Azahara Mesa-Jurado, M., Osterblom, H., Pacheco-Vega, R., Perez Alcantara, B., Perez-Maqueo, O., Porter-Bolland, L., Quijas, S., Quiroz Rosas, L.E., Rios Patron, E., Rocha-Gordo, J.C., Rojo Negrete, I.A., Piedad Romero-Duque, L., Rosell, J.A., Scheffer, M., Vazquez, L.-B., Villada Canela, M. & Velazquez, M. 2021. A regional PECS node built from place-based social-ecological sustainability research in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ecosystems and People doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2021.2000501

Sustainability requires a combination of meaningful co-production of locally relevant solutions, synthesis of insights gained across regions, and increased cooperation between science, policy and practice. The Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) has been coordinating Place-Based Social-Ecological Sustainability Research (PBSESR) across the globe and emphasizes the need for regional scientific nodes from diverse b...

Folke, C., Haider, L., Lade, S., Norström, A., Rocha, J.. 2021. Resilience and social-ecological systems: A handful of frontiers. Global Environmental Change. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102400

Fifteen years have passed since the publication in Global Environmental Change of the article Resilience: the emergence of a perspective of social-ecological systems analyses (Folke 2006). Resilience of social-ecological systems, now widely spread, is found in many academic fields, contributing exciting work and novel insights. Social-ecological resilience thinking has become part of practice, policy, and business, ranging fr...

Rocha, J., Lanyon, C., Peterson, G.. 2021. Upscaling the resilience assessment through comparative analysis. SocArXiv. July 8. doi:10.31235/osf.io/9ju2z.

Resilience is the capacity of any system to maintain its function, structure and identity despite disturbances. Assessing resilience has been elusive due to high levels of abstraction that are difficult to empirically test, or the lack of high quality data required once appropriate proxies are identified. Most resilience assessments are limited to specific situation arenas, making comparision one of the unresolved challenges. ...

Lade, S.J., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Staal, A. & Rocha, J.C. 2021. Empirical pressure-response relations can benefit assessment of safe operating spaces. Nature Ecology & Evolution 5(8), 1078–1079

In a recent study, Hillebrand et al. tested ecosystem pressure-response data from multiple meta-analyses for multimodality and changing variance, both indicators of ‘tipping point’ thresholds that lead to discontinuous responses such as regime shifts. They found that such thresholds were difficult to detect and argued that threshold and safe operating space concepts are therefore not suitable for environmental management and ...

Rockström, J., Gupta, J., Lenton, T.M., Qin, D., Lade, S.J., Abrams, J.F., Jacobson, L., Rocha, J.C., Zimm, C., Bai, X., Bala, G., Bringezu, S., Broadgate, W., Bunn, S.E., DeClerck, F., Ebi, K.L., Gong, P., Gordon, C., Kanie, N., Liverman, D.M., Nakicenovic, N., Obura, D., Ramanathan, V., Verburg, P.H., van Vuuren, D.P. & Winkelmann, R. 2021. Identifying a safe and just corridor for people and the planet. Earths Future 9(4), e2020EF001866.

Keeping the Earth system in a stable and resilient state, to safeguard Earth's life support systems while ensuring that Earth's benefits, risks, and related responsibilities are equitably shared, constitutes the grand challenge for human development in the Anthropocene. Here, we describe a framework that the recently formed Earth Commission will use to define and quantify target ranges for a “safe and just corridor” that meet...

Rocha, J., Mazzeo, N., Piaggio, M. and Carriquiry, M., 2020. Seeking sustainable pathways for land use in Latin America. Ecology and Society, 25(3).

Achieving sustainable development goals in Latin America, and doing resilience research for that matter, has its own challenges. The Global South is faced with different types of problems, and therefore solutions, in achieving global sustainability ambitions (Nagendra 2018, Nagendra et al. 2018). Although each country has its own particularities, the region shares a recent colonial past that focused on natural resource extract...