A conceptual framework for understanding forest socio-ecological systems

Globally, there is increasing attention among academics, policymakers and development agencies in understanding interactions within forest socio-ecological systems to provide insights on human-environment interactions and how forest ecosystems contribute to human well-being. This is particularly important for biologically diverse dry and sub-humid forest ecological systems where livelihoods are heavily dependent on benefits derived directly from forests, yet human-environmental interactions remain poorly understood. In many developing countries, forests provide various services that significantly contribute to livelihood portfolios’ and generally to human well-being. Although it is widely acknowledged that benefits that humans obtain from ecosystems are fundamentally dependent on ecosystem functions and processes, the role of transforming structures and processes in converting ecological potential benefits into actual benefits utilised by people has not been addressed. This paper presents a conceptual framework for forest ecosystem services which shows the interactions between ecological and social components of forest socio-ecological systems, and provides steps through which ecosystem properties produce benefits to livelihoods. It argues that transforming structures have the potential to promote or hinder people from utilising ecosystems and therefore improved forest management requires in-depth understanding of transforming structures within spatially explicit forest socio-ecological systems. This paper then applies the proposed framework to Africa’s Miombo forest systems.