TY - JOUR
T1 - Cross-scale cooperation enables sustainable use of a common-pool resource
AU - Ringsmuth, Andrew K.
AU - Lade, Steven J.
AU - Schlüter, Maja
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/10/23
Y1 - 2019/10/23
N2 - In social-ecological systems (SESs), social and biophysical dynamics interact within and between the levels of organization at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Cross-scale interactions (CSIs) are interdependences between processes at different scales, generating behaviour unpredictable at single scales. Understanding CSIs is important for improving SES governance, but they remain understudied. Theoretical models are needed that capture essential features while being simple enough to yield insights into mechanisms. In a stylized model, we study CSIs in a two-level system of weakly interacting communities harvesting a common-pool resource. Community members adaptively conform to, or defect from, a norm of socially optimal harvesting, enforced through social sanctioning both within and between communities. We find that each subsystem's dynamics depend sensitively on the other despite interactions being much weaker between subsystems than within them. When interaction is purely biophysical, stably high cooperation in one community can cause cooperation in the other to collapse. However, even weak social interaction can prevent the collapse of cooperation and instead cause collapse of defection. We identify conditions under which subsystem-level cooperation produces desirable system-level outcomes. Our findings expand evidence that collaboration is important for sustainably managing shared resources, showing its importance even when resource sharing and social relationships are weak.
AB - In social-ecological systems (SESs), social and biophysical dynamics interact within and between the levels of organization at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Cross-scale interactions (CSIs) are interdependences between processes at different scales, generating behaviour unpredictable at single scales. Understanding CSIs is important for improving SES governance, but they remain understudied. Theoretical models are needed that capture essential features while being simple enough to yield insights into mechanisms. In a stylized model, we study CSIs in a two-level system of weakly interacting communities harvesting a common-pool resource. Community members adaptively conform to, or defect from, a norm of socially optimal harvesting, enforced through social sanctioning both within and between communities. We find that each subsystem's dynamics depend sensitively on the other despite interactions being much weaker between subsystems than within them. When interaction is purely biophysical, stably high cooperation in one community can cause cooperation in the other to collapse. However, even weak social interaction can prevent the collapse of cooperation and instead cause collapse of defection. We identify conditions under which subsystem-level cooperation produces desirable system-level outcomes. Our findings expand evidence that collaboration is important for sustainably managing shared resources, showing its importance even when resource sharing and social relationships are weak.
KW - Common-pool resource
KW - Cooperation
KW - Cross-scale interactions
KW - Multiscale analysis
KW - Resource management
KW - Social-ecological system
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85073745879&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1098/rspb.2019.1943
DO - 10.1098/rspb.2019.1943
M3 - Article
SN - 0962-8452
VL - 286
JO - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
JF - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
IS - 1913
M1 - 20191943
ER -