DISES: Governance across Space: Discovering Principles of Equity and Sustainability to Conserve Migratory Species within Telecoupled Social Environmental Systems

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Birds and bats often migrate over very long distances crossing international boundaries and countries with differing regulations and policies affecting their migrations. With the significant decline in migratory species it is important to understand the potential social and environmental factors that impact their journey and evaluate potential means to mitigate these declines. It is increasingly recognized that social and ecological processes in one place can systematically affect societies and ecosystems in distant locations. Connections that link these processes among such locations are known as telecouplings, and all connected locations are part of a telecoupled system. Such systems have influenced human societies throughout history. For example, in the late 1800s Austrian hunters protested when Italian farmers drained wetland habitats for migratory waterfowl, thereby impacting hunting in Austria. Recently, Asian demand for soybeans has led to deforestation and the disruption of Indigenous livelihoods in the Amazon. Many of the world’s environmental problems are now understood as phenomena of telecoupled systems, and the scientific tools now exist to quantify them. Because telecoupled systems often span vast distances, and cross multiple international boundaries, today’s major challenge is in developing appropriate governance systems. Addressing telecoupled environmental problems may require governance that links ecological and societal phenomena in one location with management in other locations (i.e., telecoupled governance). This award addresses this need through studying telecoupled systems of migratory birds and bats and the associated governance systems. The research will identify the conditions that lead to telecoupled governance. Then the research will explore if and when telecoupled governance results in more ecologically sustainable and societally equitable outcomes. Finally, the award will engage governmental and nongovernmental entities to develop practical approaches for incorporating the principles of equity and sustainability into conservation of migratory species. Students will be trained using week-long, immersive Science Communication Workshops at Biosphere 2. Researchers will engage local stakeholders, resource managers, and decision- makers through surveys and in-person and online interviews, focus groups and panels. The project outcomes will produce design principles for telecoupled governance with decision-makers and stakeholders at an interactive workshop in Mexico City at the conclusion of the project.The award uses a strong theoretical framework based on teleconnections and socio-ecological systems concepts as a foundation for convergence science that merges social science theory with applied environmental sciences and advances the new discipline of social-environmental systems. The award integrates current approaches to evaluate the governance of local socio-environmental systems with approaches that fully describe how these systems are socially and ecologically connected across space. In so doing, the investigators overcome weaknesses in existing social and environmental science research approaches and enable: (i) social science research that more accurately accounts for the teleconnected ecological structure of many socio-environmental systems, and (ii) environmental science research that more powerfully accounts for the cross-scale institutional and socio-economic factors that shape ecological and equity outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.