A framework for analyzing, comparing, and diagnosing social-ecological systems

INTRODUCTION Between the years 1337 and 1339, the artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti adorned the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, Italy, with frescoes depicting allegories of good government and bad government and their effects on city and country (see Fig. 1). His imagery is lucid and effective. The “good government” fresco depicts a wise monarch surrounded by personifications of virtues such as justice, restraint, magnanimity, prudence, fortitude, and peace. The “effects” fresco shows the city of Siena and its surrounding countryside as a serene yet dynamic society: craftsmen bent to their work, women celebrating, merchants doing business, men building houses, and farmers tending their thriving fields. In sharp contrast, the “bad government” fresco shows a horned figure clad in black surrounded by epitomes of vices like perfidy, cruelty, avarice, fraud, tyranny, and war; the effects are depicted as an urban and a rural landscape dominated by ruins, fallow fields, and scenes of violence and robbery.