The Social Wellbeing Indicators for Marine Management (SWIMM) working group was launched in the winter of 2014 with support from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Washington Sea Grant.
Dr. Basurto is part of an international group of 16 environmental social scientists and one ecologist, with expertise in anthropology, geography, political science, international development, and ecology. The team specializes in applying and translating social science to better understand, and improve, human wellbeing related to ecosystem-based management.
Our original charge was to develop indicators of human wellbeing for the integrated ecosystem assessment of the California Current. While meeting this goal, we recognized our unique opportunity to contribute general insights from the social sciences to current thinking in environmental science, policy and management.
To date, our work includes:
- Outlining several major, yet under-represented, social science concepts important to achieving social-ecological sustainability
- Re-drawing a conceptual framework of the social-ecological system to expand its capacity to accommodate social complexity and multi-directional relationships (a collaboration of several SWIMM members and NOAA staff)
- Developing a comprehensive conceptual framework of human wellbeing, and a systematic protocol for selecting indicators of human wellbeing tailored to the needs of ecosystem-based management
- Preparing a guide to Best Available Social Science (BASS) for use in environmental decision-making.
For more on this work, see our publications.