Moving beyond panaceas: a multi-tiered diagnostic approach for social-ecological analysis

SUMMARY Disturbances to key aspects of ecological systems, including biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution and natural resource degradation, have become a major concern to many policy analysts. Instead of learning from the study of biological complexity however, social scientists tend to recommend simple panaceas, particularly government or private ownership, as ‘the’ way to solve these problems. This paper reviews and assesses potential solutions for such overly simplified institutional prescriptions, referred to here as the ‘panacea problem’. In contrast to these simple prescriptions, recent research efforts are now illustrating the diversity of institutions around the world related to environmental…