Michele Barnes

The University of Sydney · School of Project Management

Significance Understanding how social dynamics drive outcomes in environmental systems is critical to advancing global sustainability. We link comprehensive data on fishers’ information-sharing networks and observed fishing behaviors to demonstrate that social networks are tied to actions that can directly impact ecological health. Specifically, we...

Coral reefs support immense biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services to many millions of people. Yet reefs are degrading rapidly in response to numerous anthropogenic drivers. In the coming centuries, reefs will run the gauntlet of climate change, and rising temperatures will transform them into new configurations, unlike anything obse...

Identifying the right stakeholders to engage with is fundamental to ensuring conservation information and initiatives diffuse through target populations. Yet this process can be challenging, particularly as practitioners and policy makers grapple with different conservation objectives and a diverse landscape of relevant stakeholders. Here we draw o...

Harvesting common-pool fishery resources is often a competitive activity and important questions remain about the costs and benefits of engaging in cooperative behavior. Here, we link comprehensive data on fisher's information exchange networks and economic productivity to test hypotheses about when it pays to cooperate by exchanging different type...

Climate change impacts on the social–ecological conditions that communities depend on may increase the vulnerabilities to new conflicts. Yet, the communities that will be most impacted by climate change, as noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are already conflict‐affected communities. Here, we present the results of a sys...

Knowledge about adaptive capacity and its determinants has increased significantly over the last decade. However, most research on adaptive capacity has been static, not considering how adaptive capacity might change over time, particularly after severe disturbances. We studied the adaptive capacity dynamics of Asian-Pacific reef tourism operators...

Global estimates of the economic value of coral reefs have been made using benefit transfer and other valuation methods, but it is unclear whether these estimates match actualized values (e.g. market values of reef fish and reef tourism) or how they scale to specific regions. Here we empirically estimated the (actualized) direct economic contributi...

Multispecies coral reef fisheries are typically managed by local communities who often lack research and monitoring capacity, which prevents estimation of well-defined sustainable reference points to perform locally relevant fishery assessments. Recent global advances in modelling coral reef fisheries have developed pathways to use environmental in...

Natural resources are widely managed through collaborative governance arrangements (e.g., co-management) which often result in the uneven distribution of costs and benefits among fishers. Discrepancies in how a fisher is impacted by co-management relative to other fishers or others in the community (i.e., disparity) can negatively affect fishers’ w...

Nearly a billion people depend on tropical seascapes. The need to ensure sustainable use of these vital areas is recognised, as one of 17 policy commitments made by world leaders, in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 (‘Life below Water’) of the United Nations. SDG 14 seeks to secure marine sustainability by 2030. In a time of increasing social-...

Advocates, practitioners and policy‐makers continue to use and advocate for marine protected areas (MPAs) to meet global ocean protection targets. Yet many of the worlds MPAs, and especially no‐take MPAs, are plagued by poaching and ineffective governance. Using a global dataset on coral reefs as an example, we quantify the potential ecological gai...

Policies designed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted food systems worldwide. How impacts played out in local food systems, and how these affected the lived experiences of different people is only just coming to light. We conducted a structured analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 containment policies on the food systems of small-scale fi...

Coral reefs are increasingly affected by climate-induced disturbances that are magnified by increasing ocean temperatures. Loss of coral reefs strongly affects people whose livelihoods and wellbeing depend on the ecosystem services reefs provide. Yet the effects of coral loss and the capacity of people and businesses to adapt to it are poorly under...

Extreme climatic events trigger changes in ecosystems with potential negative impacts for people. These events may provide an opportunity for environmental managers and decision-makers to improve the governance of social-ecological systems, however there is conflicting evidence regarding whether these actors are indeed able to change governance aft...

Climate change is expected to have increasing impacts on marine ecosystems which will threaten the livelihoods and wellbeing of millions of people. Drawing on social-ecological network and sociodemographic data collected via face-to-face interviews with 404 small-scale commercial fishers from 9 Galician communities (Spain), we empirically examine t...

Complex networks of relationships among and between people and nature (social‐ecological networks) play an important role in sustainability; yet, we have limited empirical understanding of their temporal dynamics. We empirically examine the evolution of a social‐ecological network in a common‐pool resource system faced with escalating social and en...

Actors across all economic sectors of society will need to adapt to cope with the accelerating impacts of climate change. However, little information is currently available about how microeconomic actors are adapting to climate change and how best to support these adaptations. We reviewed the empirical literature to provide an overview of (1) the c...

Feedbacks between people and ecosystems are central to the study of social–ecological systems (SES) but remain poorly understood. It is commonly assumed that changes in ecosystems leading to a reduction in ecosystem services will trigger human responses that seek to restore service provision. Other responses are possible, however, but remain less s...

A dramatic escalation of extreme climate events is challenging the capacity of environmental governance regimes to sustain and improve ecosystem outcomes. It has been argued that actors within adaptive governance regimes can help to steer environmental systems toward sustainability in times of crisis. Yet there is little empirical evidence of how a...

Environmentally focused social network analysis (Env. SNA) has increasingly benefited from engagement, which refers to the process of incorporating the individuals, organizations, actors, stakeholders or other study participants into the research process. Research about engagement in the wider field of environmental management shows that successful...

Social–ecological networks (SENs) represent the complex relationships between ecological and social systems and are a useful tool for analyzing and managing ecosystem services. However, mainstreaming the application of SENs in ecosystem service research has been hindered by a lack of clarity about how to match research questions to ecosystem servic...

COVID-19 is continuing to have far-reaching impacts around the world, including on small-scale fishing communities. This study details the findings from 39 in-depth interviews with community members, community leaders, and fish traders in five communities in Kenya about their experiences since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, 2020....

Environmentally focused social network analysis (Env. SNA) has increasingly benefited from engagement, which refers to the process of incorporating the individuals, organizations, actors, stakeholders or other study participants into the research process. Research about engagement in the wider field of environmental management shows that successful...

Markets are increasingly being incorporated into many aspects of daily life and are becoming an important part of the conservation solution space. Although market‐based solutions to environmental problems can result in improvements to conservation, a body of social science research highlights how markets may also have unforeseen consequences by cro...

To cope effectively with the impacts of climate change, people will need to change existing practices or behaviours within existing social–ecological systems (adaptation) or enact more fundamental changes that can alter dominant social–ecological relationships and create new systems or futures (transformation). Here we use multilevel network modell...

A complex landscape for reef management Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse systems in the ocean, and they provide both food and ecological services. They are also highly threatened by climate change and human pressure. Cinner et al. looked at how best to maximize three key components of reef use and health: fish biomass, parrotfish grazing,...

Attempts to better understand the social context in which conservation and environmental decisions are made has led to increased interest in human social networks. To improve the use of social‐network analysis in conservation, we reviewed recent studies in the literature in which such methods were applied. In our review, we looked for problems in r...

Efforts to confront the challenges of environmental change and uncertainty include attempts to adaptively manage social-ecological systems. However, critical questions remain about whether adap-tive management can lead to sustainable outcomes for both ecosystems and society. Here, we make a contribution to these efforts by presenting a 16-y analysi...

Resilience is generally considered the capacity to tolerate, absorb, cope with, and adjust to changing social or environmental conditions while retaining key elements of structure, function, and identity. The social dimensions of resilience are vital to understanding the impacts of environmental changes, such as climate change, on social-ecological...

Achieving effective, sustainable environmental governance requires a better understanding of the causes and consequences of the complex patterns of interdependencies connecting people and ecosystems within and across scales. Network approaches for conceptualizing and analysing these interdependencies offer one promising solution. Here, we present t...

Complex social-ecological interactions underpin many environmental problems. To help capture this complexity, we advance an interdisciplinary network modeling framework to identify important relationships between people and nature that can influence environmental conditions. Drawing on comprehensive social and ecological data from five coral reef f...

Policies to conserve sharks have generally struggled to gain broad public support. Ecotourism programs have been suggested as a way to promote support for conservation by increasing participants’ knowledge of ecology, fostering positive environmental attitudes, and driving increases in conservation behaviour. Yet the evidence is mixed, and some arg...

Poaching renders many of the world’s marine protected areas ineffective. Because enforcement capacity is often limited, managers are attempting to bolster compliance by engaging the latent surveillance potential of fishers. However, little is known about how fishers respond when they witness poaching. Here, we surveyed 2,111 fishers living adjacent...

Significance Marine reserves that prohibit fishing are a critical tool for sustaining coral reef ecosystems, yet it remains unclear how human impacts in surrounding areas affect the capacity of marine reserves to deliver key conservation benefits. Our global study found that only marine reserves in areas of low human impact consistently sustained t...

The natural environment plays an integral role in the culture of all people. Although the cultural services provided by ecosystems are often acknowledged, these abstract qualities are difficult to capture and are rarely incorporated into environmental strategic planning. We propose an approach for decision makers to weigh different cultural values...

Sustainable fisheries require strong management and effective governance. However, small-scale fisheries (SSF) often lack formal institutions, leaving management in the hands of local users in the form of various governance approaches (e.g. local, traditional, or co-management). The effectiveness of these approaches inherently relies upon some leve...

To minimize the impacts of climate change on human wellbeing, governments, development agencies, and civil society organizations have made substantial investments in improving people’s capacity to adapt to change. Yet to date, these investments have tended to focus on a very narrow understanding of adaptive capacity. Here, we propose an approach to...

Social networks are frequently cited as vital for facilitating successful adaptation and transformation in linked social-ecological systems to overcome pressing resource management challenges. Yet confusion remains over the precise nature of adaptation vs. transformation and the specific social network structures that facilitate these processes. He...

Hunting is one of the greatest threats to tropical vertebrates. Examining why people hunt is crucial to identifying policy levers to prevent excessive hunting. Overhunting is particularly relevant in Southeast Asia, where a high proportion of mammals and birds are globally threatened. We interviewed hunters in Southwest China to examine their socia...

There is a growing body of literature positively linking dimensions of social capital to economic benefits. Yet recent research also points to a potential “dark side” of social capital, where over-embeddedness in networks and the pressures associated with brokerage are hypothesized to constrain actors, having a negative effect on economic outcomes....

Coral reefs are increasingly threatened despite being essential to coastal and island economies, particularly in the Pacific. The diving industry relies on healthy reefs and can be positively and/or negatively impacted by ecological change. Quantifying divers' ecological preferences that influence economic outcomes can help inform managers and just...

Dynamic ocean management, or management that uses near real-time data to guide the spatial distribution of commercial activities, is an emerging approach to balance ocean resource use and conservation. Employing a wide range of data types, dynamic ocean management can be used to meet multiple objectives—for example, managing target quota, bycatch r...

This study investigated if Hawaii chefs use wild seafood products over farm-raised and local over imports. Chefs were asked to estimate their purchases for shrimp, tuna, mahimahi, and salmon. Chefs were also asked to choose products within conjoint choice experiments to indirectly determine their preferences. Price is the most important attribute f...

Social capital is an important ecosystem service, yet we lack common understanding of how it fits, and can be operationalized, within the ecosystem services framework. We review the literature to clarify the role of social capital in this context, establishing it as a multidimensional concept and a fundamental constituent of human well-being that i...

Social capital is an important resource that can be mobilized for purposive action or competitive gain. The distribution of social capital in social-ecological systems can determine who is more productive at extracting ecological resources and who emerges as influential in guiding their management, thereby empowering some while disempowering others...

Perhaps the most understudied ecosystem services are related to socio-cultural values tied to non-material benefits arising from human–ecosystem relationships. Bequest values linked to natural ecosystems can be particularly significant for indigenous communities whose livelihoods and cultures are tied to ecosystems. Here we apply a discrete choice...

Amid declining shark populations because of overfishing, a burgeoning shark watching industry, already well established in some locations, generates benefits from shark protection. We compile reported economic benefits at shark watching locations and use a meta-analytical approach to estimate benefits at sites without available data. Results sugges...

2013. The influence of ethnic diversity on social network structure in a common-pool resource system: implications for collaborative management. Ecology and Society 18(1): 23. ABSTRACT. Social networks have recently been identified as key features in facilitating or constraining collaborative arrangements that can enhance resource governance and ad...

Expanded polystyrene (EPS), a petroleum based plastic polystyrene, has an immense environmental impact with a deg-radation rate of over 500 years, and is a possible human carcinogen that may cause cancer in humans. Nonetheless, EPS is the most commonly used material to produce takeout food containers, a single use item that is quickly discarded. Wi...