Our working group aims to connect the domains of evolutionary theory and social-ecological systems change to improve our collective ability to understand and influence the complex processes of change in social-ecological systems for the better. Our working group has been very successful. The first meeting was a wide ranging exploration of the intellectual and disciplinary challenges of bringing the two domains closer together. The second meeting refined that work and produced a research paper now in revision at Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, which maps the conceptual connections between evolutionary theory and social-ecological systems (SES) change and builds motivation for using evolutionary theory in studying SES change. 

Our third and final meeting of the working group will take the next step in integrating evolutionary theory and social-ecological systems change. Specifically, we will develop a small set of follow-on projects focused on more specific applications of evolutionary methods, theory for understanding social-ecological systems change, each to become a separate output. Current work includes a mathematical and simulation model of a classic SES model on poverty traps, rebuilt to include cultural evolution of human behavior. A second emerging project includes a synthetic approach to understanding the evolution of social-ecological systems in a holistic fashion. We are excited to share the outcomes of our working group. We hope they will be of use in both the SES and sustainability sciences and the evolutionary sciences.

In April we will host our third and final meeting at the KLI in Klosterneuburg, Austria.

https://kli.ac.at/en/events/event_calendar/view/657