The governance of UNESCO's transboundary biosphere reserves, social network analysis for resilience

Abstract

Resilience emphasizes the capacities of a social-ecological system to deal with change, to recover, to adapt and to transform the system. Grounded by the work of Biggs et al., 2015, the resilience of a systems can be assessed and enhanced by the performance of seven principles. Environmental governance is one of resilience’s stepping stones, a provider of insights in conservation, sustainable livelihoods and local values. Social-ecological systems often encompass the frontiers between nations and UNESCO’s transboundary biosphere reserves may be examples of testing sites for sustainability, of environmental integrity and frameworks committed to transboundary cooperation. In this study, it has been chosen to focus on the governance of transboundary biosphere reserves with the scrutiny of their social networks and the performance of a social network analysis (SNA). This thesis assumes that with a SNA technique it is possible to recognize in the governance structures the importance of some resilience principles, such as connectivity, enhanced learning and polycentric governance systems. This theory is, hence, supported by qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with biosphere managers and quantitative data from a social network analysis of the involved institutions in two transboundary biosphere reserves.