Mike Jones trained as a wildlife ecologist in Zimbabwe and was employed by Zimbabwe's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management. Much of his work over a period of 25 years was focused on large mammal population monitoring, sport hunting management, rangeland ecology, protected area management planning, community-based natural resource management and environmental assessment.
Mike began a second career in conservation in 1995, leading community-based natural resource management programs for different small US-based non-profit organisations, working with farmers, foresters and fishermen in a number of countries within southern and eastern Africa. This work also entailed engagement with farmers and ranchers in the United States in various projects that enabled peer-to-peer learning among natural resource practitioners on two continents. The purpose of this work was to improve the capacity of natural resource managers on private land and enable them to share authority to manage natural resources with central government agencies. The work was founded on experience with Zimbabwe's wildlife devolutionary wildlife policy that had demonstrated the ability of farmers and ranchers to manage their wildlife effectively and develop wildlife production as a sustainable form of land use and livelihood.
In 2009 Mike moved to Sweden where, as an associate of the Resilience Alliance, he had an unpaid position at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, developing networks of practitioners willing to experiment with the application of social-ecological system science to natural resource stewardship. With its holistic view of nature in the context of complex adaptive systems, models based on the social-ecological system framework provide a new and more useful way of understanding and managing change in living systems than previous approaches based on linear models.
Mike Jones led the Resilience Thematic Group in IUCN's Commission on Ecosystem Management from 2012 to 2020 and was a visiting scholar at the Wallowa Mountain Institute in Oregon, US, until 2016. There, he worked as a facilitator and trainer with various agricultural universities and land management agencies on applying resilience science to planning and policy processes.
Mike's work at CBM includes teaching complex systems and social-ecological systems thinking in the Society and Environment course of the Master's in Sustainable Development programme; linking CBM scientists to opportunities for international collaborative research; developing an interdisciplinary network of scientists interested in applying social-ecological system thinking to landscape scale action research projects; and enhancing teaching methods for sustainable development. Mike's research is focused on synthesising scientific papers for policy audiences.
2015 - ongoing. Society and Environment Course of the Masters in Sustainable Development Program Course 2015 - 2021. Co-leader and lecturer providing a series of lectures, seminars and practical sessions on the application of Complex Systems tools for solving sustainable development problems.
2018 – ongoing. Introduction to Sustainable Development Course in the Masters in Sustainable Program at Uppsala University. Lecture: History of Development and its Environmental Impacts.
2018 - 2019. Introduction to Sustainable Development Course in the Masters in Sustainable Program at Uppsala University. Lecture and practical: Wicked Problems: Social Complexity in Sustainable Development
2018 - ongoing. Our Natural Resources Course in the Masters in Sustainable Program at Uppsala University. Lectures:
Forest Ecosystems and Resources
Soils and Sustainable Development
Agriculture and Food Security
2019 – ongoing. Animal Welfare and the UNSDGs PhD Summer School. Course co-leader and lecturer.
2020 – ongoing. Naturresursförvaltning Undergraduate Course at SoL. Lectures on Natural Resource Management and Climate Change
2021 Rural Development in the Global South PhD Course 2021. Lecture: Wildlife and rural development in Zimbabwe: a systems-based reflection on 60 years of change.
2021 - ongoing Animal Welfare and the Complexity of Sustainable Development for the Advanced Animal Welfare Course.
2024 Sustainable Development Goals and the Planetary Boundaries. CEMUS, Uppsala University.
2024 An Introduction to Systems Thinking for Sustainable Development. CEMUS, Uppsala University.
2024 A Systems Perspective on Future One Health and Sustainability. A PhD course on One Health, concepts, cases and methodology at SLU.
My research involves transdisciplinary engagement with international communities of scientists and practitioners. Current work includes:
The EU Horizon 2020 project eNaBlS, which develops educational material for higher education and vocational training institutions, and living laboratories for the application of Nature-based Solutions.
Support to IUCN for the development and application of Nature-based Solutions
Support to IUCN for the work of the Social-Ecological Systems and Transformation theme group in the Commission of Ecosystem Management https://iucn.org/our-union/commissions/commissions-ecosystem-management/our-work/our-work/social-ecological-resilience-and-transformation-thematic-group-sert
Teresa Dizon 2025 Assessing Community-Based Mangrove Conservation: Lessons and Insights from Local Stakeholders in the Municipality of San Enrique, Negros Occidental, Philippines.
Ella Björkman 2024 Implementing Nature-based Solutions in the City of Stockholm: A case study on the sustainability profiled area of Stockholm Royal Seaport.
Gwnedelien Blanken 2024 The Impacts of Hydropower Development on Ecosystem Services in Northern Sweden: A case study of the Lule River using a Social-Ecological System Assessment.
Félicie Jamme 2024 How Does the Presence of Natural Habitat Patches in a Large-Scale Coconut Plantation in Ivory Coast Influence Pest Control: A study using soundscape analysis and artificial prey.
Anika Sjöberg 2024 Exploring Effective Environmental Education: A multi-stakeholder investigation of facilitators and barriers of Swedish environmental education.
Tess Marie Burroughs 2022 Changing the Stories We Live By: Revolutionizing the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation Through Transformative Conservation. Masters Thesis in Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.
Emma Stickball Carlsson 2021 Farmers perspective’s on the frictions and tractions of regenerative agriculture in Sweden. Masters Thesis in Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.
Giulia Rossi 2021 Agroecology and assessment of Campi Aparti transformative potential. Masters Thesis in Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.
Margaret Ojochide Aligbe 2021. Use of plastic bags in Lagos, Nigeria. Master Thesis in Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.
Yuru Yang 2021 Securing lithium supply for a cleaner energy consumption pathway: A systems thinking on supply disruptions. Masters Thesis in Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.
Ester Renkel 2019 Textiles from Ethiopia: Applying Sida's market system approach M4P for sustainable Swedish sourcing. Masters Thesis in Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University.
Guy Finkil 2019 Paradoxical Permaculture? – The mainstreaming of permaculture in Sweden. An analysis of discursive practices in the niche-regime interaction. Masters Thesis in Environmental Science, Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment.
Ninja Tunbjer 2019 From being worried about the climate crisis, to reducing or quitting traveling by air and what Tågsemester and Vi håller oss på jorden has meant for this behavior change. Independent Project in Environmental Science - Master’s thesis, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
