The subject for this week was to chose a Socio-Ecological System (SES) where in I have (had) an active part. The goal is to analyse this SES according to the framework that Elinor Ostrom has constructed in her paper 'A general framework for analyzing sustainability of Socio-Ecological Systems' (2009). The framework is presented in the figure below.
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The Socio-Ecological System that I have chosen are coral coasts near the city of Nha Trang, Vietnam, that I have visited during a snorkeling trip last summer.
The resource units in this example are the corals growing in this area.
The resource system contains the warm salt water pools
and rocks on which the corals are growing.
The users are the fish that live and eat in the corals,
as well as tourists like me that make snorkeling trips around the area. Private
organizations that take tourists on their boats to the area and supply them
with snorkels are users as well. The small travel agencies in the city center
that make bookings on the boats for tourists. The norm that visiting a coral is
‘cool’ can also be seen as a user.
The governance system contains rules that tourists are not allowed to touch the corals but a strong sanctioning system is lacking. No property rights have been established, as far as I know. The taxation system is part of the governance system too. The Lonely Planet can be considered to be an actor too, because the coral is promoted in the book, expanding the network of visitors to the area.
All those subsystems and variables/actors in this system
interact with one another. Resulting in high numbers of visits to the coral
every day, partly due to the sharing of information between travelers in Vietnam
recommending each other to visit the coral. But also an increasing number of
corporations that invest in boats to host tourists because of the relatively
large profits that can be made.
Lobbying activities take place too, because all the
locals try to create an enjoying experience for visitors, trying to obtain more
awareness for the area, attracting more visitors.
A conflict occurs when tourists that cannot communicate in
a language the guides speak (English, Frensh, Vietnamese) do not understand the
explanation of the rules for visiting by the guides.
The outcomes of those interactions is mainly a conflict between
the resource unit coral and the users, tourists, in a way that more and more
visitors snorkel in the area and not all respect those rules once in the water.
This results in deterioration of the reef.
The ecological unsustainable situation may result in a decrease of private companies in the area transporting tourists, because after some time not much will be there to see for tourists. This will have a negative effect on the social performance measures.
The ecological unsustainable situation may result in a decrease of private companies in the area transporting tourists, because after some time not much will be there to see for tourists. This will have a negative effect on the social performance measures.
Externalities to other SESs can be that captains or crew on the boats become unemployed if this complete system is not changing. Unemployment may increase the safety of the country by rising criminal rates, therefore reducing the attractiveness of the country, resulting in even less visitors to other beautiful nature parks.
The detoriation of the coral decreases the biodiversity of the ecosystem, possibly influencing climate change or the threshold of the area to maintain under those conditions.
In terms of defining the actors in the system, who makes the decisions about this resource? Read over Ostrom's article again, and try use the second-level variables (marked with a * in the table) to explain whether or not this resource system could be self-organized or not. Furthermore, interesting to choose a smaller system, however it does make it harder to know who is involved, what they do and who decides what. Therefore, also harder to interpret it using Ostrom's framework. Besides my few comments, good read!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenFirst of all I want to apologize for my late feedback.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenI really enjoyed your post, it's well structured and well written.
I found your subject, a Vietnamese coral coast, very interesting. At the beginning I thought it would be a small system to analyze but eventually I completely changed my mind. In your analysis about the interactions among the subsystems and their outcomes you pointed out several good examples for both of them. And you showed how complicated this system actually is.
My only remark is about your conclusions, I had the feeling that they came out too soon. I would have really liked to read something more about at least one of the topics you introduced, the one you found more interesting for example. This way you could have draw some specific suggestions and conclusions about it, without seem too vague.