Carl Folke
Biographic Data
| ID | 92885 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carl Folke |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carl |
| FAMILY NAME | Folke |
| SIGNATURE | FOLKE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4050-3281 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 177 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5350 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 176 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 31 |
Facing backlash and derailment risks
Both adaptive and transformative capacities are necessary to navigate global polycrisis
Non-technical summary Efforts toward global sustainability transformations risks being undermined by the formation of a global polycrisis, where multiple global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, geopolitical conflict, and pandemics interact to reinforce each other. Resilience scholarship has identified multiple capacities needed for adaptation and transformation of social-ecological systems. Here, we explore the leverage and v…
Resilience and regeneration for a world in crisis
Both resilience and regeneration are relevant concepts in sustainability science. Resilience thinking has led to improved understanding of cross-scale cycles of growth and renewal, regime shifts, and planetary boundaries. Regeneration highlights the role of positive, place-based and partially self-perpetuating social-ecological dynamics and seeks to foster mutualistic relationships between human and more-than-human entities. This paper lays out s…
Welcome home! Introducing SocSES
Underpinned by systemic thinking, social-ecological systems (SES) research has emerged as a critical field for addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene, marked by a cross-scale focus, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, and a strong emphasis on place-based work. Thanks to the efforts of many networks and institutes, the field has advanced new theoretical and methodological approaches, fostered dedicated journals, and spurred educational…
Anticipating the global redistribution of people and property
Triple Bottom Line or Trilemma? Global Tradeoffs Between Prosperity, Inequality, and the Environment
A key aim of sustainable development is the joint achievement of prosperity, equality, and environmental integrity: in other words, material living standards that are high, broadly-distributed, and low-impact. This has often been called the “triple bottom line”. But instead, what if there is a “trilemma” that inhibits the simultaneous achievement of these three goals? We analysed international patterns and trends in the relationships between per-…
Malin Falkenmark
Shaping a resilient future in response to Covid-19
Response diversity as a sustainability strategy
Insurance value of biodiversity in the Anthropocene is the full resilience value
Recently two distinctly different conceptualisations of insurance value of biodiversity/ ecosystems have been developed. The ecosystem framing addresses the full resilience value without singling out subjective risk preferences. Conversely, the economic framing focuses exactly on this subjective value of risk aversion, implying that the insurance value is zero for risk neutral persons. Here we analyse the differences conceptually and empirically,…
The programme on ecosystem change and society (Pecs) – a decade of deepening social-ecological research through a place-based focus
The Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) was established in 2011, and is now one of the major international social-ecological systems (SES) research networks. During this time, SES research has undergone a phase of rapid growth and has grown into an influential branch of sustainability science. In this Perspective, we argue that SES research has also deepened over the past decade, and helped to shed light on key dimensions of SES dyna…
Earth stewardship
Transformation toward a sustainable future requires an earth stewardship approach to shift society from its current goal of increasing material wealth to a vision of sustaining built, natural, human, and social capital—equitably distributed across society, within and among nations. Widespread concern about earth’s current trajectory and support for actions that would foster more sustainable pathways suggests potential social tipping points in pub…
Aquaculture and ocean stewardship
The Anthropocene reality of financial risk
Commentary
Resilience
Coupled human and natural systems
Cities and the Biosphere
Indigenous knowledge
Rethinking resilience and development
The interdependence of social and ecological processes is broadly acknowledged in the pursuit to enhance human wellbeing and prosperity for all. Yet, development interventions continue to prioritise economic development and short-term goals with little consideration of social-ecological interdependencies, ultimately undermining resilience and therefore efforts to deliver development outcomes. We propose and advance a coevolutionary perspective fo…
Reserves, resilience and dynamic landscapes 20 years later
Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity…
The social dynamics of basins of attraction
In this paper we conceptualize transformations as societal shifts from one basin of attraction to another. Such shifts occur when a society's information processing system is no longer fit to deal with the dynamics with which the society is involved. To understand when this might be the case, we conceive of a dynamic interaction between two domains, the cognitive one (containing a society's knowledge, values, language, customs, technology etc. th…
Urbanization, Migration, and Adaptation to Climate Change
Improving Climate Change Mitigation Analysis
Resilience
Planetary Boundaries
Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F. S. Chapin, III, E. Lambin, T. M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H. Schellnhuber, B. Nykvist, C. A. De Wit, T. Hughes, S. van der Leeuw, H. Rodhe, S. Sörlin, P. K. Snyder, R. Costanza, U. Svedin, M. Falkenmark, L. Karlberg, R. W. Corell, V. J. Fabry, J. Hansen, B. Walker, D. Liverman, K. Richardson, P. Crutzen, and J. Foley. 2009. Planetary boundaries:exploring the safe operating space for humani…
The causes of land-use and land-cover change
Governance and the Capacity to Manage Resilience in Regional Social-Ecological Systems
Lebel, L., J. M. Anderies, B. Campbell, C. Folke, S. Hatfield-Dodds, T. P. Hughes. and J. Wilson. 2006. Governance and the capacity to manage resilience in regional social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 11(1): 19. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-01606-110119
Resilience Thinking
Folke, C., S. R. Carpenter, B. Walker, M. Scheffer, T. Chapin, and J. Rockström. 2010. Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15(4): 20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03610-150420
Shooting the Rapids
Olsson, P., L. H. Gunderson, S. R. Carpenter, P. Ryan, L. Lebel, C. Folke, and C. S. Holling. 2006. Shooting the rapids: navigating transitions to adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 11(1): 18. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-01595-110118
Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science
Folke, C., R. Biggs, A. V. Norström, B. Reyers, and J. Rockström. 2016. Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science. Ecology and Society 21(3):41.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08748-210341
A Theory of Transformative Agency in Linked Social-Ecological Systems
Westley, F. R., O. Tjornbo, L. Schultz, P. Olsson, C. Folke, B. Crona and Ö. Bodin. 2013. A theory of transformative agency in linked social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 18(3): 27. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05072-180327
Resilience and Vulnerability
Miller, F., H. Osbahr, E. Boyd, F. Thomalla, S. Bharwani, G. Ziervogel, B. Walker, J. Birkmann, S. Van der Leeuw, J. Rockström, J. Hinkel, T. Downing, C. Folke, and D. Nelson 2010. Resilience and vulnerability: complementary or conflicting concepts?. Ecology and Society 15(3): 11. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03378-150311
The Anthropocene
Resilience and Sustainable Development
Emerging recognition of two fundamental errors underpinning past polices for natural resource issues heralds awareness of the need for a worldwide fundamental change in thinking and in practice of environmental management. The first error has been an implicit assumption that ecosystem responses to human use are linear, predictable and controllable. The second has been an assumption that human and natural systems can be treated independently. Howe…
Resilience (Republished)
Resilience thinking in relation to the environment has emerged as a lens of inquiry that serves a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. Resilience is about cultivating the capacity to sustain development in the face of expected and surprising change and diverse pathways of development and potential thresholds between them. The evolution of resilience thinking is coupled to social-ecological systems and a truly intertwined hum…
Weaving knowledge systems in Ipbes, CBD and beyond—lessons learned for sustainability
Indigenous peoples and local communities live in, manage and own vast areas often rich in biodiversity and critical for ecosystem services. Bridging indigenous and local knowledge systems with scientific knowledge systems is vital to enhance knowledge, practice, and ethics to move towards sustainability at multiple scales. We focus on international science-policy processes and present a framework for evidence-based guidance on how tasks to mobili…
Trust-building, Knowledge Generation and Organizational Innovations
Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity…
A framework for the practical application of the concepts of critical natural capital and strong sustainability
Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research
Social–ecological memory in urban gardens—Retaining the capacity for management of ecosystem services
A Handful of Heuristics and Some Propositions for Understanding Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems
Walker, B. H., L. H. Gunderson, A. P. Kinzig, C. Folke, S. R. Carpenter, and L. Schultz. 2006. A handful of heuristics and some propositions for understanding resilience in social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 11(1): 13. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-01530-110113
Sustainability and resilience for transformation in the urban century
Coupled Human and Natural Systems
Humans have continuously interacted with natural systems, resulting in the formation and development of coupled human and natural systems (CHANS). Recent studies reveal the complexity of organizational, spatial, and temporal couplings of CHANS. These couplings have evolved from direct to more indirect interactions, from adjacent to more distant linkages, from local to global scales, and from simple to complex patterns and processes. Untangling co…
Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment
Nat iona l and international economic policy has usually ignored the environment. In areas where the environment is beginning to impinge on policy, as in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it remains a tangential concern, and the presumption is often made that economic growth and economic liberalization (including the liberalization of intemational trade) are, in some sense, good…
Tipping Toward Sustainability
Reconnecting to the Biosphere
Reconnecting Cities to the Biosphere
Within-city green infrastructure can offer opportunities and new contexts for people to become stewards of ecosystem services. We analyze cities as social-ecological systems, synthesize the literature, and provide examples from more than 15 years of research in the Stockholm urban region, Sweden. The social-ecological approach spans from investigating ecosystem properties to the social frameworks and personal values that drive and shape human int…
Life-support value of ecosystems
A systems perspective on the interrelations between natural, human-made and cultural capital
Modeling Complex Ecological Economic Systems
Robert Costanza, Lisa Wainger, Carl Folke, Karl-Göran Mäler; Modeling Complex Ecological Economic Systems: Toward an evolutionary, dynamic understanding of
Trade, environment and development
Wetlands
Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity, and the Environment
National and international economic policy has usually ignored the environment. In areas where the environment is beginning to impinge on policy, as in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it remains a tangential concern, and the presumption is often made that economic growth and economic liberalization (including the liberalization of international trade) are, in some sense, good …
Economic growth, carrying capacity, and the environment
Nat iona l and international economic policy has usually ignored the environment. In areas where the environment is beginning to impinge on policy, as in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it remains a tangential concern, and the presumption is often made that economic growth and economic liberalization (including the liberalization of intemational trade) are, in some sense, good…
Paradise Lost? The Ecological Economics of Biodiversity
Paradise Lost? The Ecological Economics of Biodiversity. Get access Paradise Lost? The Ecological Economics of Biodiversity. By (Edward B.) BArbier, BURGESS JOANNE C.) and Folke (Carl). (London: Earthscan Publications, 1994. Pp. xvi + 267 £14.95 paperback. ISBN 1 85383 181 6.)The Economic Value of Biodiversity. By Pearce (David) and Moran (Dominic). (London: Earthscan Publications, 1994. Pp. viii+ 172 £32.50 hardback, £12.95 paperback. ISBN 1 853…
Managing aquaculture for sustainability in tropical Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe
The Relations Among Threatened Species, Their Protection, and Taboos
We analyzed the role of taboos for the protection of species listed as "threatened" by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and also for species known to be endemic and keystone. The study was limited to taboos that totally avoid or prohibit any use of particular species and their populations. We call them specific-species taboos . Through a literature review, 70 currently existing examples of specific-species taboos were identified and analyzed.…
Linkages Among Water Vapor Flows, Food Production, and Terrestrial Ecosystem Services
"Global freshwater assessments have not addressed the linkages among water vapor flows, agricultural food production, and terrestrial ecosystem services. We perform the first bottom-up estimate of continental water vapor flows, subdivided into the major terrestrial biomes, and arrive at a total continental water vapor flow of 70,000 km3/yr (ranging from 56,000 to 84,000 km3/yr). Of this flow, 90% is attributed to forests, including woodlands (40,…
The ecology of ecosystem services
Ecological goods and services of coral reef ecosystems
Managing nutrient fluxes and pollution in the Baltic
Effect of aquaculture on world fish supplies
The Value of Nature and the Nature of Value
Ecosystems are capital assets: When properly managed, they yield a flow of vital goods and services. Relative to other forms of capital, however, ecosystems are poorly understood, scarcely monitored, and--in many important cases--undergoing rapid degradation. The process of economic valuation could greatly improve stewardship. This potential is now being realized with innovative financial instruments and institutional arrangements.
Rediscovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge as Adaptive Management
Indigenous groups offer alternative knowledge and perspectives based on their own locally developed practices of resource use. We surveyed the international literature to focus on the role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in monitoring, responding to, and managing ecosystem processes and functions, with special attention to ecological resilience. Case studies revealed that there exists a diversity of local or traditional practices for ecosyste…
How to Bring Ecological Services into Integrated Water Resources Management
How to Bring Ecological Services into Integrated Water Resources Management
Navigating Social-Ecological Systems
In the effort towards sustainability, it has become increasingly important to develop conceptual frames to understand the dynamics of social and ecological systems. Drawing on complex systems theory, this book investigates how human societies deal with change in linked social-ecological systems, and build capacity to adapt to change. The concept of resilience is central in this context. Resilient social-ecological systems have the potential to su…
Social Taboos
Social taboos exist in most cultures, both Western and non-Western. They are good examples of informal institutions, where norms, rather than governmental juridical laws and rules, determine human behavior. In many traditional societies throughout the world, taboos frequently guide human conduct toward the natural environment. Based on a survey of recent literature, we synthesize information on such taboos. We refer to them as “resource and habit…
Local Ecological Knowledge and Institutional Dynamics for Ecosystem Management
Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems
The causes of land-use and land-cover change
In Memory of Mavericks
Environmental resource management (101 works) · Biology (95 works) · Ecology (88 works) · Geography (86 works) · Environmental Science (73 works) · Business (65 works) · Economics (62 works) · Ecology (52 works) · Political science (52 works) · Computer Science (49 works)