The ecosystem services framework has enabled the broader public to acknowledge the benefits nature provides to different stakeholders. However, not all stakeholders benefit equally from these services. Rather, power relationships are a key factor influencing the access of individuals or groups to ecosystem services. In this paper, we propose an adaptation of the “cascade” framework for ecosystem services to integrate the analysis of ecological interactions among ecosystem services and stakeholders’ interactions, reflecting power relationships that mediate ecosystem services flows. We illustrate its application using the floodplain of the River Piedra (Spain) as a case study. First, we used structural equation modelling (SEM) to model the dependence relationships among ecosystem services. Second, we performed semi-structured interviews to identify formal power relationships among stakeholders. Third, we depicted ecosystem services according to stakeholders’ ability to use, manage or impair ecosystem services in order to expose how power relationships mediate access to ecosystem services. Our results revealed that the strongest power was held by those stakeholders who managed (although did not use) those keystone ecosystem properties and services that determine the provision of other services (i.e., intermediate regulating and final services). In contrast, non-empowered stakeholders were only able to access the remaining non-excludable and non-rival ecosystem services (i.e., some of the cultural services, freshwater supply, water quality, and biological control). In addition, land stewardship, access rights, and governance appeared as critical factors determining the status of ecosystem services. Finally, we stress the need to analyse the role of stakeholders and their relationships to foster equal access to ecosystem services.

Shared feelings of belonging and attachment held by people in relation to the place they live, and the development of collective identities that such feelings can promote, should be taken into account when seeking to understand the configuration and operation of socio-ecological systems (SES), in general, and the impact these factors have on SES adaptability, transformability and resilience, in particular. However, these topics have not been examined in enough depth in prior research. To address the effects of people’s feelings of place attachment and belonging in specific SES and the impacts they have on the aforementioned properties, in addition to theoretical instruments appropriate to the emotional and cognitive nature of this kind of phenomena, in-depth empirical qualitative studies are required to enhance understanding of the cultural and symbolic dimensions of the SES of which they are part. In this regard, the analysis of people–place connections, feelings of belonging and territorial identifications (territoriality) is strategic to understanding how the biophysical and the socio-cultural are interconnected and structured within SES. This article is based on a case study implemented through long-standing ethnographic research conducted in Pegalajar (Andalusia-Spain), which examined the struggle of the local population to recover the water system on which the landscape, as well as the ways of life that sustain their identity as a town, has been built. This case proposed a perspective on feelings and collective identifications as analytical interfaces between social and natural dimensions of SES in order to enhance understanding of their structuring and dynamics, particularly their resilience, and in order to manage them in a more sustainable way.

Resiliencia Socioecológica: aportaciones y retos desde la Antropología

Cork oak woodlands are socio-ecosystems recognized as biodiversity hotspots, a fundamental economic source for companies and local communities as well as an identitarian landscape for residents and visitors. Cork oak woodlands, however, are facing tree mortality and lack of regeneration. Considering the oak decline scenario, we present Iberian cork oak montado/dehesa as a socio-ecosystem facing climate change, management transformations, local knowledge crisis and social uncertainty. We review montados/dehesas research through time and by different scholar perspectives. We defend that from an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective, including the experience and evidence observed in terrain, debate should be stimulated, and novel conceptual approaches may contribute to finding solutions. We argue that the confluence of ecology, genetics, anthropology and local knowledge can be explored to unveil the complexities and the challenges of these socio-ecosystems and contribute to prevent and mitigate threats to it. We propose a methodological approach built together with scientists, managers and workers, that can explore oak translocations, socio-ecological interactions models, knowledge transfer and other ways to overcome Iberian cork oak woodlands socio-environmental crisis.

Although family-run micro and small businesses largely form the crux of the locally based tourism sector, either as part of a community organization or as independent units of private enterprise, in El Castillo (Nicaragua) can be found an example of how, even in the absence of a community organization to provide a structural framework, the development of local tourism has sustained practically all businesses set up and run by households, organized largely through family relationships. This structure is pivotal in stoking resilience, not only with regard to private businesses, but also to the system of tourism (specific) and, by extension, to the whole of local society and the surrounding socio-ecosystem, or socio-ecological system (SES) (general). The case study presented here, developed on the basis of long-term ethnographic fieldwork, highlights the role of the family structure within Locally-Based Tourism (LBT) in general and also in specific cases, such as the one studied here, in which it takes on a particularly central role. The confirmation of the importance of families and family relationships as key elements in the robust development of tourism in El Castillo, and of the specific characteristics that its local society presents for this, must be taken into account in order to support Community-Based Tourism projects by institutions and organizations interested in promoting sustainable local development. Indeed, once further case studies are conducted, with a view to providing comparative evidence of these findings, it might even be proven advantageous to create a distinctive subcategory within LBT: Family-Based Tourism.