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Necessary but not sufficient: Tools for analysing multiscale integrated eco-social systems

Abstract:

This paper describes the application of the DECOIN toolkit to a UK regional level case study. DECOIN is a set of three tools to help us understand the social metabolism of multi-level systems. The overall purpose of the study is to use the toolkit to assess trends in sustainability at national, sectoral and regional levels within six European case studies and to assess the utility of such assessments to policy makers. The DECOIN tools are advanced methods for bio-economic accounting at multiple levels over time, to illustrate trajectories of development. It focuses on the concept of social metabolism that draws attention to how energy, material, money and ideas are utilised by society, drawing on natural capital and generating material, waste and social outputs. This paper will focus on the required first step in the application of the toolkit to illustrate the relationship between the impact of using tools, the meaning associated with tool results and the formalisms within the tools themselves. These inter-relationships illustrate the problem of letting the tools drive the analysis and measuring what we can measure, rather than the actual issues that matter to the wider society. The steps for the application of the tools as outlined by their proponents focus on how to integrate the three formal models with less explicit emphasis on agreeing the problem orientation for the application of the tool or the normative interpretations of why we should do these analyses and what the results might mean. However, without agreeing these normative aspects, the tools are likely to lack salience, relevance and cbkp_redibility with their potential end users. Therefore, we recognised that we had to establish the semantic approach that would frame the way that the formalisms can be applied for the case study. We used participatory system diagramming to establish what were perceived to be the main elements of the system and their important inter-relationships. This was particularly important for our case study, a National Park, whose statutory basis is to enable sustainable development whilst safeguarding natural and cultural heritage, providing a complex set of interactions within the Park and also the flows into and out of the Park to the surrounding region. This was done three times, once within the scientific study team itself, once with members of the National Park Authority Staff and once from a content analysis of documents that reflect a normative vision based on consultation processes. The paper will illustrate how the outcomes of the diagrams made many aspects of sustainable development visible that the formal models cannot, or do not, measure. These elements in turn have helped shape the trade-offs and synergies that the toolkit has been designed to calculate, demonstrating the importance of this semantic step in the process.