Socioecological Systems Analysis. Social Sciences Essay

Socioecological Systems
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December 3, 2019
Operationalizing descriptions of socioecological systems poses a variety of difficulties. While there are many reasons that could contribute to this, one of the major factors is the sheer complexity of environmental, personal, and societal/cultural interactions that are happening simultaneously with one another. Nonetheless, in order to operationalize the systems description (Figure 1.) about conflicts between humans and wildlife among the city, an “unstructured approach” would be utilized in order to conduct a bottom-up analysis on the situation. Particularly, this would include two approaches such as (1) Checkland’s Soft Systems Approach (SSM) and (2) computer-based modeling systems. By using these two different models, the author believes that problems of human-wildlife interactions in the urban areas could be resolved.
Soft System Models
In the discussion provided by Bosch, et al (2007), the authors described the differences between soft systems and hard systems. Accordingly, while hard systems focus on “biophysical systems that can be modelled”, soft systems are those that “focus on the interactions between biophysical components”. In line with the problem, the understanding of the movement patterns and other behavioral aspect of racoons could easily be understood by focusing on diferrent specific component interactions (i.e., ‘recoon -feeding’ and house infestation) and building from scratch rather than using generalized structured models (i.e., biophysical systems). In other words, a soft systems approach would be utilize in order to understand and provide a grassroot solution to the problem.
Checkland’s Soft System Model (SSM)
Appropriately the soft system that would be used is SSM, which undertakes the process of problem identification, understanding, and solution-building with the help of different stakeholders. As compared to other approaches, SSM’s advantage is its ‘representativeness’ of the actual situations that are happening around the world. In doing so, some authors have integrated participatory research, development, and extension (PRDE), which aims to build a solution with the help of everyone involved. Accordingly, the steps in operationalizing this PRDE method is discussed in greater detail below.
Operationalization Process
As stated, the main issue sought to be resolved in this article is ‘how can people and wildlife live together in peace harmony in the urban setting’. From this core question, several other hypotheses have arisen, which would be addressed through the SSM Model.
Human Actions
One of the theories provided is that the human actions of feeding raccoons cause them to become less ‘afraid’ of humans, thereby increasing the likelihood of attacks to both the persons and properties of individuals. To understand if there is a causal connection between these two, a two-fold participatory research would be conducted integrating both the efforts of the community and the authorities.
First, a “raccoon infestation report” would be provided to the authorities containi...