Considering weed management as a social dilemma bridges individual and collective interests.

Weeds pose severe threats to agricultural and natural landscapes worldwide. One major reason for the failure to effectively manage weeds at landscape scales is that current Best Management Practice guidelines, and research on how to improve such guidelines, focus too narrowly on property-level management decisions. Insufficiently considered are the aggregate effects of individual actions to determine landscape-scale outcomes, or whether there are collective practices that would improve weed management outcomes. Here, we frame landscape-scale weed management as a social dilemma, where trade-offs occur between individual and collective interests. We apply a transdisciplinary system approach-integrating the perspectives of ecologists, evolutionary biologists and agronomists into a social science theory of social dilemmas-to four landscape-scale weed management challenges: (i) achieving plant biosecurity, (ii) preventing weed seed contamination, (iii) maintaining herbicide susceptibility and (iv) sustainably using biological control. We describe how these four challenges exhibit characteristics of 'public good problems', wherein effective weed management requires the active contributions of multiple actors, while benefits are not restricted to these contributors. Adequate solutions to address these public good challenges often involve a subset of the eight design principles developed by Elinor Ostrom for 'common pool social dilemmas', together with design principles that reflect the public good nature of the problems. This paper is a call to action for scholars and practitioners to broaden our conceptualization and approaches to weed management problems. Such progress begins by evaluating the public good characteristics of specific weed management challenges and applying context-specific design principles to realize successful and sustainable weed management.

Opportunities for better use of collective action theory in research and governance for invasive species management.

Controlling invasive species presents a public-good dilemma. Although environmental, social, and economic benefits of control accrue to society, costs are borne by only a few individuals and organizations. For decades, policy makers have used incentives and sanctions to encourage or coerce individual actors to contribute to the public good, with limited success. Diverse, subnational efforts to collectively manage invasive plants, insects, and animals provide effective alternatives to traditional command-and-control approaches. Despite this work, there has been little systematic evaluation of collective efforts to determine whether there are consistent principles underpinning success. We reviewed 32 studies to identify the extent to which collective-action theories from related agricultural and environmental fields explain collaborative invasive species management approaches; describe and differentiate emergent invasive species collective-action efforts; and provide guidance on how to enable more collaborative approaches to invasive species management. We identified 4 types of collective action aimed at invasive species-externally led, community led, comanaged, and organizational coalitions-that provide blueprints for future invasive species management. Existing collective-action theories could explain the importance attributed to developing shared knowledge of the social-ecological system and the need for social capital. Yet, collection action on invasive species requires different types of monitoring, sanctions, and boundary definitions. We argue that future government policies can benefit from establishing flexible boundaries that encourage social learning and enable colocated individuals and organizations to identify common goals, pool resources, and coordinate efforts.

Oportunidades para un Mejor Uso de la Teoría de Acción Colectiva en la Investigación y el Control del Manejo de Especies Invasoras Resumen El control de especies invasoras es un dilema para el bien público. Aunque los beneficios ambientales, sociales y económicos del control se acoplan a la sociedad, los costos los resuelven unos cuantos individuos y organizaciones. Durante décadas, los legisladores han utilizado incentivos y sanciones para alentar y forzar a los actores individuales a contribuir con el bien público, aunque con un éxito limitado. Los diversos esfuerzos sub-nacionales para manejar colectivamente plantas, insectos y otros animales proporcionan alternativas efectivas a las estratégicas tradicionales de comando y control. A pesar de esta labor, ha habido una evaluación sistemática mínima de los esfuerzos colectivos para determinar si hay principios congruentes que estén respaldando el éxito. Revisamos 32 estudios para identificar la extensión a la cual las teorías de acción colectiva a partir de los campos agrícolas y ambientales relacionados explican las estrategias colaborativas de manejo de especies invasoras; describen y diferencian los esfuerzos de acción colectiva para especies invasoras emergentes; y proporcionan una guía sobre cómo posibilitar estrategias más colaborativas para el manejo de especies invasoras. Identificamos cuatro tipos de acción colectiva enfocada en las especies invasoras - guiada externamente, guiada por la comunidad, co-manejada, y coaliciones organizacionales - que proporcionan los planos para el manejo futuro de especies invasoras. Las teorías existentes de acción colectiva podrían explicar la importancia que se le atribuye al conocimiento compartido en desarrollo sobre los sistemas socio-ecológicos y la necesidad de capital social. Aun así, la acción colectiva sobre las especies invasoras requiere de diferentes tipos de monitoreo, sanciones y definición de los límites. Argumentamos que las próximas políticas gubernamentales pueden beneficiarse del establecimiento de límites flexibles que alientan el aprendizaje social y permiten que individuos y organizaciones colocadas identifiquen objetivos en común, acumulen y compartan recursos y coordinen esfuerzos.