Ecology and Society | 04-14

The global nature of climate change and the globalization of environmental governance have highlighted the challenges of enabling justice and equity across diverse societies and multiple levels of governance. At the center of these challenges are ongoing debates over the distribution of rights and responsibilities for environmental and social impacts...

Forests provide a wealth of public services and private goods, yet forested land is being steadily converted to other uses, including cropland, pasture, mining, and urban areas, which can generate greater private economic returns. Public concern over the benefits of forests lost due to deforestation has led to a variety of deliberate policies intended to slow the rate of deforestation.

  

"Wicked" problems,for which there is no clear path to an optimal solution, no consensus on what an optimal solution would look like, and not even a clear definition of the boundary of the problems to be confronted (Rittel and Webber 1973), are unfortunately widespread in the management of social-ecological systems (Chapin et al. 2008, Jentoft and Chuenpagdee 2009, Peterson 2009). Prins and Rayner (2007) see climate change as a wicked problem because it is open, complex, and imperfectly understood.