Visualizing stakeholder perspectives for reflection and dialogue on scale dynamics in social–ecological systems

An understanding among societal actors of how social–ecological systems interact across multiple levels and scales contributes to better governance of those systems. This paper introduces a tool, Scale Perspectives, developed to help societal actors share their perspectives on issues of social–ecological systems governance in a multilevel framework. A first version showed that participants in a local and European case study associated a diverse range of levels and time frames with the same issues, but the version was not able to capture cross-level dynamics. A second version of the tool did allow for the visualization of cross-level dynamics, and was tested in live workshops where more opportunities for individual and group reflection were offered. The tool proved useful for sharing perspectives and strategic dialogue among the participants. The results show the potential of such tools to help societal actors tackle challenges related to scale dynamics in social–ecological systems governance.