Journal Article

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Accommodating the Challenges of Climate Change Adaptation and Governance in Conventional Risk Management: Adaptive Collaborative Risk Management (ACRM)
(2011) May, Bradley; Plummer, Ryan
"Risk management is a well established tool for climate change adaptation. It is facing new challenges with the end of climate stationarity and the need to meaningfully engage people in governance issues. The ways in which conventional approaches to risk management can respond to these challenges are explored. Conventional approaches to risk management are summarized, the manner in which they are being advanced as a tool for climate change adaptation is described, and emerging themes in risk management and climate change adaption are documented. It is argued that conventional risk management for climate change adaptation can benefit from the insights and experiences of adaptive co-management. A hybrid approach termed adaptive collaborative risk management is thus envisaged that enriches conventional risk management with the critical features of adaptive co-management, i.e., collaboration and adaptation. Adaptive Collaborative Risk Management overcomes some of the challenges with conventional risk management, builds upon and complements other approaches to community climate change adaptation, and innovatively addresses both technical and governance concerns in a single integrated process."
Adapative Management and Trial-and-Error Learning: A Response to: Lee. 1999. 'Appraising Adaptive Management'
(2003) Stansfield, Brett
"I must congradulate Kai N. Lee (1999) on her paper 'Appraising Adaptive Management.' It brings many issues to the forefront of current research. With respect to question 2 ('When an adaptive management design is not feasible, is there experience to guide trial and error learning?'), I must stress here that I believe that adaptive management includes trial-and-error learning."
Adapting Science to Adaptive Managers: Spidergrams, Belief Models, and Multi-agent Systems Modeling
(2002) Lynam, Timothy; Bousquet, François; Le Page, Christophe; d'Aquino, Patrick; Barreteau, Olivier; Chinembiri, Frank; Mombeshora, Bright
"Two case studies are presented in which models were used as focal tools in problems associated with common-pool resource management in developing countries. In the first case study, based in Zimbabwe, Bayesian or Belief Networks were used in a project designed to enhance the adaptive management capacity of a community in a semiarid rangeland system. In the second case study, based in Senegal, multi-agent systems models were used in the context of role plays to communicate research findings to a community, as well as to explore policies for improved management of rangelands and arable lands over which herders and farmers were in conflict. "The paper provides examples of the use of computer-based modeling with stakeholders who had limited experience with computer systems and numerical analyses. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the major lessons learned from the two independent case studies. Perhaps the most important lesson was the development of a common understanding of a problem through the development of the models with key stakeholders. A second key lesson was the need for research to be adaptive if it were to benefit adaptive managers. Both case study situations required significant changes in project orientation as stakeholder needs were defined. Both case studies recognized the key role that research, and particularly the development of models, played in bring different actors together to formulate improved management strategies or policies. Participatory engagement with stakeholders is a time-consuming and relatively costly process in which, in the case studies, most of the costs were born by the research projects themselves. We raise the concern that these activities may not be widely replicable if such costs are not reduced or born by the stakeholders themselves."
Adapting to Climate Change: Social-Ecological Resilience in a Canadian Western Arctic Community
(2002) Berkes, Fikret; Jolly, Dyanna
"Human adaptation remains an insufficiently studied part of the subject of climate change. This paper examines the questions of adaptation and change in terms of social-ecological resilience using lessons from a place-specific case study. The Inuvialuit people of the small community of Sachs Harbour in Canada's western Arctic have been tracking climate change throughout the 1990s. We analyze the adaptive capacity of this community to deal with climate change. Short-term responses to changes in land-based activities, which are identified as coping mechanisms, are one component of this adaptive capacity. The second component is related to cultural and ecological adaptations of the Inuvialuit for life in a highly variable and uncertain environment; these represent long-term adaptive strategies. These two types of strategies are, in fact, on a continuum in space and time. This study suggests new ways in which theory and practice can be combined by showing how societies may adapt to climate change at multiple scales. Switching species and adjusting the 'where, when, and how' of hunting are examples of shorter-term responses. On the other hand, adaptations such as flexibility in seasonal hunting patterns, traditional knowledge that allows the community to diversity hunting activities, networks for sharing food and other resources, and intercommunity trade are longer-term, culturally ingrained mechanisms. Individuals, households, and the community as a whole also provide feedback on their responses to change. Newly developing co-management institutions create additional linkages for feedback across different levels, enhancing the capacity for learning and self-organization of the local inhabitants and making it possible for them to transmit community concerns to regional, national, and international levels."
Adaptive Analysis of Locally Complex Systems in a Globally Complex World
(1999) Lynam, Timothy
"Zambezi Valley agro-ecosystems are environmentally, economically, and institutionally variable. This variability means that it is not possible to measure everything necessary to develop a predictive understanding of them. In particular, because people and their environments are constantly changing, what was measured yesterday may change by tomorrow. "Here, I describe elements of the approach that I have developed to address this problem. Called DAAWN, for Detail as and When Needed, the approach advocates an iterative and multiscaled methodology in which we first capture as broad an understanding of the system as possible and then use awareness developed at this scale to identify where to focus subsequent, more detailed, investigations. Because we cannot hope to measure or monitor everything in these complex and adaptive agro-ecosystems, the approach requires us to make judicious use of all available knowledge about the agro-ecosystem. The DAAWN approach is rooted in systems theory, but is tempered by systems and problems where boundaries are not clearly defined, where nonlinearities are the norm, and where structural and functional change is the order of the day. "I describe a few of the most important data collection tools and methods that were developed to record the knowledge of local people and to observe, monitor, and measure changes in their resources. Of particular importance is the tool that I call a 'spidergram.' This tool, which I used extensively with village informants, symbolizes the DAAWN approach and was a major stimulus for its development. Simulation models provide another very important tool; here, I offer some examples of spatially explicit, multi-agent models. Some key findings of the research on Zambezi Valley agro-ecosystems are also briefly presented."
The Adaptive Co-Management Process: An Initial Synthesis of Representative Models and Influential Variables
(2009) Plummer, Ryan
"Collaborative and adaptive approaches to environmental management have captured the attention of administrators, resource users, and scholars. Adaptive co-management builds upon these approaches to create a novel governance strategy. This paper investigates the dynamics of the adaptive comanagement process and the variables that influence it. The investigation begins by summarizing analytical and causal models relevant to the adaptive co-management process. Variables that influence this process are then synthesized from diverse literatures, categorized as being exogenous or endogenous, and developed into respective analytical frameworks. In identifying commonalities among models of the adaptive comanagement process and discerning influential variables, this paper provides initial insights into understanding the dynamic social process of adaptive co-management. From these insights conjectures for future inquires are offered in the conclusion."
Adaptive Comanagement and Its Relationship to Environmental Governance
(2013) Plummer, Ryan; Armitage, Derek; de Loë, Rob C.
"We provide a systematic review of the adaptive comanagement (ACM) literature to (i) investigate how the concept of governance is considered and (ii) examine what insights ACM offers with reference to six key concerns in environmental governance literature: accountability and legitimacy; actors and roles; fit, interplay, and scale; adaptiveness, flexibility, and learning; evaluation and monitoring; and, knowledge. Findings from the systematic review uncover a complicated relationship with evidence of conceptual closeness as well as relational ambiguities. The findings also reveal several specific contributions from the ACM literature to each of the six key environmental governance concerns, including applied strategies for sharing power and responsibility and value of systems approaches in understanding problems of fit. More broadly, the research suggests a dissolving or fuzzy boundary between ACM and governance, with implications for understanding emerging approaches to navigate social-ecological system change. Future research opportunities may be found at the confluence of ACM and environmental governance scholarship, such as identifying ways to build adaptive capacity and encouraging the development of more flexible governance arrangements."
Adaptive Comanagement: A Systematic Review and Analysis
(2012) Plummer, Ryan; Crona, Beatrice; Armitage, Derek; Olsson, Per; Tengö, Maria; Yudina, Olga
"This paper outlines the results of a systematic review of the literature on adaptive comanagement (ACM). Adaptive comanagement is an emergent governance approach for complex social–ecological systems that links the learning function of adaptive management (experimental and experiential) and the linking (vertically and horizontally) function of comanagement. Given the rapid growth of adaptive comanagement scholarship, there is value in a systematic analysis of how the concept is being conceptualized to elucidate agreement and discrepancies and to examine the challenges this presents for cross-case comparisons and the possibility of arriving at more generalizable insights. A synthesis-based methodology has been developed involving a comprehensive search and screening of academic databases and the internet. A detailed analysis of 108 documents was undertaken to characterize the state of the ACM literature, unpack the construct of ACM, and examine relationships among aspects of ACM based on accumulated experiences to date. The systematic review and analysis reveals imprecision, inconsistency, and confusion with the concept. Robust evidentiary insights into how the variables or components of ACM interrelate as well as relate to goals and outcomes are, therefore, presently not possible. These findings lead to the discussion of a series of challenges for ACM scholarship. Opportunities remain for ACM scholars to pursue theoretical development in rigorous ways that facilitate empirically based cross-site comparisons."
The Adaptive Decision-Making Process as a Tool for Integrated Natural Resource Management: Focus, Attitudes, and Approach
(2001) Lal, Padma; Lim-Applegate, Hazel; Scoccimarro, Michelle C.
"Integrated natural resource management (INRM) and its many closely related approaches are generally considered to be more effective than single-disciplinary approaches for managing the complex resource issues currently facing many countries. INRM approaches aim to integrate several disciplines and involve different stakeholders operating in their own subsystems across different spatial and temporal scales. These approaches focus on identifying management strategies for sustaining natural resource stocks and flows of goods and services as well as their underlying ecological processes. Changes in the behavior of consumers and producers and in the allocation of resources among uses, users, time, and space will be necessary to achieve sustainable development. To accomplish this, changes in focus, attitudes, and approaches to research and management will also be necessary. This paper argues that the key focus of INRM should not be the natural resource itself, but rather the interactions of humans with each other and with their natural environment, and the decisions they make about using and managing resources. Such decision-making processes aim to identify and implement action-oriented strategies and to apply economic and noneconomic instruments that motivate behavioral changes, allowing for different responses to various economic imperatives. This process should be guided by constructivist philosophy and supported by rigorous cross-disciplinary research and active stakeholder participation. It must be compatible with dialectic decision making to reflect the different views and objectives of the stakeholders, the presence of incomplete information, and, at times, the fact that researchers have only a poor understanding of the dynamics of subsystems and their interactions. There must also be iterative, regular monitoring and fine-tuning of the management strategies chosen. We prefer to call the entire process an adaptive decision-making process (ADMP). Here we propose a four-phase ADMP illustrated by projects in Fiji and Thailand, both of which are supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. The role of research, researchers, and other stakeholders in the ADMP is also discussed."
Adaptive Ecosystem Management in the Pacific Northwest: A Case Study from Coastal Oregon
(2000) Gray, Andrew N.
"Adaptive ecosystem management has been adopted as a goal for decision making by several of the land management and regulatory agencies of the U.S. government. One of the first attempts to implement ecosystem management was undertaken on the federally managed forests of the Pacific Northwest in 1994. In addition to a network of reserve areas intended to restore habitat for late-successional terrestrial and aquatic species, 'adaptive management areas' (AMAs) were established. These AMAs were intended to be focal areas for implementing innovative methods of ecological conservation and restoration and meeting economic and social goals. This paper analyzes the primary ecological, social, and institutional issues of concern to one AMA in the Coast Range in northern Oregon. Based on existing knowledge, several divergent approaches are available that could meet ecological goals, but these approaches differ greatly in their social and economic implications. In particular, approaches that rely on the natural succession of the existing landscape or attempt to recreate historical patterns may not meet ecosystem goals for restoration as readily as an approach based on the active manipulation of existing structure and composition. In addition, institutions are still adjusting to recent changes in management priorities. Although some innovative projects have been developed, adaptive management in its most rigorous sense is still in its infancy. Indeed, functional social networks that support adaptive management may be required before policy and scientific innovations can be realized. The obstacles to adaptive management in this case are similar to those encountered by other efforts of this type, but the solutions will probably have to be local and idiosyncratic to be effective."
Adaptive Governance of the Baltic Sea: Lessons from Elsewhere
(2015) Valman, Matilda; Österblom, Henrik; Olsson, Per
"Governance of marine resources is increasingly characterized by integrated, cross sectoral and ecosystem based approaches. Such approaches require that existing governing bodies have an ability to adapt to ecosystem dynamics, while also providing transparent and legitimate outcomes. Here, we investigate how the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM), the international governing body for the Baltic Sea, could improve its prospects for working with the ecosystem approach, drawing from the literature on adaptive governance. We construct an ideal type of adaptive governance to which we compare the way in which HELCOM is operating and relate these dynamics to two other international marine environment governance organizations, the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI-CFF) and the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). We conclude that HELCOM deviates from an ideal type of adaptive governance in several ways but also that the other two case studies provide empirical support for potential ways in which HELCOM could improve its adaptive capacity. Key aspects where HELCOM could improve include increasing stakeholder participation – both in information sharing and decision making. Further, HELCOM need to develop evaluation mechanisms, secure compliance to improve adaptive capacity and organizational effectiveness, which entails the development of structures for conflict resolution. Finally, HELCOM need to increase communication and harmonization between different levels of authority."
Adaptive Management and Social Learning in Collaborative and Community-Based Monitoring: A Study of Five Community-Based Forestry Organizations in the western USA
(2008) Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria E.; Ballard, Heidi; Sturtevant, Victoria E.
"Collaborative and community-based monitoring are becoming more frequent, yet few studies have examined the process and outcomes of these monitoring approaches. We studied 18 collaborative or community-based ecological assessment or monitoring projects undertaken by five community-based forestry organizations (CBFs), to investigate the objectives, process, and outcomes of collaborative ecological monitoring by CBF organizations. We found that collaborative monitoring can lead to shared ecological understanding among diverse participants, build trust internally and credibility externally, foster social learning and community-building, and advance adaptive management. The CBFs experienced challenges in recruiting and sustaining community participation in monitoring, building needed technical capacity for monitoring, and communicating monitoring results back to the broader community. Our results suggest that involving diverse and sometimes adversarial interests at key points in the monitoring process can help resolve conflicts and advance social learning, while also strengthening the link between social and ecological systems by improving the information base for management and increasing collective awareness of the interdependence of human and natural forest communities."
Adaptive Management Fitness of Watersheds
(2012) Porzecanski, Ignacio; Saunders, Lynn V.; Brown, Mark T.
"Adaptive management (AM) promises to improve our ability to cope with the inherent uncertainties of managing complex dynamic systems such as watersheds. However, despite the increasing adherence and attempts at implementation, the AM approach is rarely successful in practice. A one-size-fits-all AM strategy fails because some watersheds are better positioned at the outset to succeed at AM than others. We introduce a diagnostic tool called the Index of Management Condition (IMC) and apply it to twelve diverse watersheds in order to determine their AM 'fitness'; that is, the degree to which favorable adaptive management conditions are in place in a watershed."
Adaptive Management of the Water Cycle on the Urban Fringe: Three Australian Case Studies
(1999) Gilmour, Alistair; Walkerden, Greg; Scandol, James
"Our group at Macquarie University has run three adaptive management projects in New South Wales, Australia. Their objectives were: (1) to evaluate water cycle management strategies to minimize impacts of urban development on water quality in the Hawkesbury-Nepean basin; (2) to evaluate development planning policies to minimize water quality impacts on a series of coastal lakes; and (3) to carry out a preliminary assessment of the potential impacts of greater recreational use of Sydney water catchments. "These projects are examined to evaluate the contribution of the adaptive management approach to water cycle management on the urban fringe in New South Wales. The role of the adaptive management approach in education, as a negotiation process, and in policy formulation and evaluation, is presented. The importance of community participation, the role of an 'institutional champion,' and the need to manage the lead-up phase and the postworkshop phase with as much attention to detail as the workshop phase is underlined. Proposed prerequisites for a successful adaptive management project are developed along these lines."
Adaptive Management Planning Projects as Conflict Resolution Processes
(2006) Walkerden, Greg
"Adaptive management planning projects use multiparty, multidisciplinary workshops and simulation modeling to facilitate dialogue, negotiation, and planning. However, they have been criticized as a poor medium for conflict resolution. Alternative processes from the conflict resolution tradition, e.g.,principled negotiation and sequenced negotiation, address uncertainty and biophysical constraints much less skillfully than does adaptive management. When we evaluate adaptive management planning using conflict resolution practice as a benchmark, we can design better planning procedures. Adaptive management planning procedures emerge that explore system structure, dynamics, and uncertainty, and that also provide a strong negotiation process, grounded in principled exploration of stakeholders' interests and needs. 'Crossing' procedures in this manner is a fertile way of developing new forms of professional practice."
Adaptive Water Governance: Assessing the Institutional Prescriptions of Adaptive (Co-)Management from a Governance Perspective and Defining a Research Agenda
(2009) Huitema, Dave; Mostert, Erik; Egas, Wouter; Moellenkamp, Sabine; Pahl-Wostl, Claudia; Yalcin, Resul
"This article assesses the institutional prescriptions of adaptive (co-)management based on a literature review of the (water) governance literature. The adaptive (co-)management literature contains four institutional prescriptions: collaboration in a polycentric governance system, public participation, an experimental approach to resource management, and management at the bioregional scale. These prescriptions largely resonate with the theoretical and empirical insights embedded in the (water) governance literature. However, this literature also predicts various problems. In particular, attention is called to the complexities associated with participation and collaboration, the difficulty of experimenting in a real-world setting, and the politicized nature of discussion on governance at the bioregional scale. We conclude this article by outlining a common research agenda that invites the collaborative efforts of adaptive (co-)management and governance scholars."
Adaptive Wetland Management in an Uncertain and Changing Arid Environment
(2014) Downard, Renekah; Endter-Wada, Joanna; Kettenring, Karin M.
"Wetlands in the arid western United States provide rare and critical migratory bird habitat and constitute a critical nexus within larger social-ecological systems (SES) where multiple changing land-use and water-use patterns meet. The Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah, USA, presents a case study of the ways that wetland managers have created adaptive management strategies that are responsive to the social and hydrological conditions of the agriculture-dominated SES within which they are located. Managers have acquired water rights and constructed infrastructure while cultivating collaborative relationships with other water users to increase the adaptive capacity of the region and decrease conflict. Historically, water management involved diversion and impoundment of water within wetland units timed around patterns of agricultural water needs. In the last 20 years, managers have learned from flood and drought events and developed a long-term adaptive management plan that specifies alternative management actions managers can choose each year based on habitat needs and projected water supply. Each alternative includes habitat goals and target wetland water depth. However, wetland management adapted to agricultural return-flow availability may prove insufficient as population growth and climate change alter patterns of land and water use. Future management will likely depend more on negotiation, collaboration, and learning from social developments within the SES than strictly focusing on water management within refuge boundaries. To face this problem, managers have worked to be included in negotiations with regional water users, a strategy that may prove instructive for other wetland managers in agriculture-dominated watersheds."
Appraising Adaptive Management
(1999) Lee, Kai N
"Adaptive management is appraised as a policy implementation approach by examining its conceptual, technical, equity, and practical strengths and limitations. Three conclusions are drawn: (1) Adaptive management has been more influential, so far, as an idea than as a practical means of gaining insight into the behavior of ecosystems utilized and inhabited by humans. (2) Adaptive management should be used only after disputing parties have agreed to an agenda of questions to be answered using the adaptive approach; this is not how the approach has been used. (3) Efficient, effective social learning, of the kind facilitated by adaptive management, is likely to be of strategic importance in governing ecosystems as humanity searches for a sustainable economy."
Assessing an Adaptive Cycle in a Social System under External Pressure to Change: The Importance of Intergroup Relations in Recreational Fisheries Governance
(2011) Daedlow, Katrin; Beckmann, Volker; Arlinghaus, Robert
"The adaptive cycle constitutes a heuristic originally used to interpret the dynamics of complex ecosystems in response to disturbance and change. It is assumed that socially constructed governance systems go through similar phases (K, W [omega], a [alpha], r) as evident in ecological adaptive cycles. Two key dimensions of change shaping the four phases of an adaptive cycle are the degree of connectedness and the range of potential in the system. Our purpose was to quantitatively assess the four phases of the adaptive cycle in a social system by measuring the potential and connectedness dimensions and their different levels in each of the four phases. We assessed these dimensions using quantitative data from content analysis of magazine articles describing the transition process of East German recreational fisheries governance after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This process was characterized by the discussion of two governance alternatives amendable for implementation: a central East German and a decentralized West German approach. Contrary to assumptions in the adaptive cycle heuristic, we were unable to identify the four phases of the adaptive cycle in our governance system based on quantitatively assessed levels of connectedness and potential alone. However, the insertion of in-group (East Germans) and out-group (West Germans) dimensions representing the two governance alternatives in our analysis enabled us to identify the specific time frames for all four phases of the adaptive cycle on a monthly basis. These findings suggest that an unmodified 'figure-eight model' of the adaptive cycle may not necessarily hold in social systems. Inclusion of disciplinary theories such as intergroup relation theory will help in understanding adaptation processes in social systems."
Assessment and Management of Invasive Alien Predators
(2004) Park, Kirsty
"Although invasive alien species have been identified as the second greatest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss, characterizing and quantifying their impacts on native species and habitats remains a fundamental problem in conservation biology. Here, I review the techniques that are currently used to assess the impact of invasive alien species on biodiversity, highlighting both their uses in invasive species ecology and their limitations in establishing a causal relationship. Adopting a hypothesis-driven experimental approach to impact assessment, and to eradication efforts through adaptive management, would benefit our ecological understanding of invasive species without delaying critical management action that could reduce the spread of invasive species populations."
The Battle of Perspectives: A Multi-Agent Model with Adaptive Responses to Climate Change
(1998) Janssen, Marco A.; de Vries, Bert
"To evaluate possible futures with regard to economy, energy and climate, a multi-agent modelling approach is used. Agents hold different perspectives on how the world functions (world view) and how it should be managed (management style) and this is implemented in a simple dynamic model of the economy-energy-climate system. Each perspective is supported by a proportion of the agents, but this proportion changes in response to observations about the real world. In this way the totality of agents learn from their observations. It is concluded that this approach is a good illustration of how adaptive behavior can be included in global change modelling. Some exploratory experiments are done to address the consequences of surprises."
Biodiversity Governance and Social-Ecological System Dynamics: Transformation in the Australian Alps
(2014) Lockwood, Michael; Mitchell, Michael; Moore, Susan A.; Clement, Sarah
"Biodiversity conservation continues to be a challenging task for societies worldwide. We undertook a resilience assessment to address the following question: What are the ramifications of social-ecological system dynamics for biodiversity governance of a nationally significant landscape? Resilience assessment offers promise for guiding response strategies, potentially enabling consideration of ecological, social, economic, and governance influences on biodiversity-related activities. Most resilience assessments have, however, struggled to effectively incorporate governance influences. We applied a modified version of the Resilience Alliance workbook approach to explicitly address governance influences at each stage of an assessment of internationally significant biodiversity features in protected areas of the Australian Alps. The vulnerability of the Alps system to climate change suggests that it is moving into a release stage, with subsequent transformation hypothesized. Network governance is argued as enabling flexible, adaptive management and comprehensive engagement of stakeholders, both of which are critical to shaping how this transformation of the Alps as a valued focal system will occur. The Australian Alps Liaison Committee provides a promising governance structure for collaboration and comanagement across multiple jurisdictions. Our contribution was to demonstrate how a resilience assessment that explicitly embeds governance influences in social-ecological system dynamics can point to pathways for governance reform in the context of system transformation."
Can Properties of Labor-Exchange Networks Explain the Resilience of Swidden Agriculture?
(2010) Downey, Sean S.
"Despite the fact that swidden agriculture has been the subject of decades of research, questions remain about the extent to which it is constrained by demographic growth and if it can adapt to environmental limits. Here, social network analysis is used to analyze farmer labor-exchange networks within a chronosequence of five Q’eqchi’ Maya villages where swidden agriculture is used. Results suggest that changes in land-use patterns, network structure, reciprocity rates, and levels of network hierarchy may increase the resilience of these villages to changes in the forest’s agricultural productivity caused by ongoing agricultural activity. I analyze the suitability of subsistence- versus market-oriented agricultural labor for reciprocal labor exchange and develop a novel interpretation of labor reciprocity that highlights how unreciprocated exchanges, when they occur within the context of a network, may limit overexploitation of the forest. The variability observed in labor-exchange network structure across villages suggests that Q’eqchi’ swidden can maintain its identity under changing conditions. This important characteristic of resilient systems is explored by analyzing a village case study where a serious demographic exodus dramatically impacted their labor network. The resulting picture of Q’eqchi’ swidden agriculture is one of resilience rather than homeostasis. Reorganization of labor-exchange networks helps to maintain a village’s cohesion, and ultimately this limits pioneer settlements and may slow overall rates of deforestation."
The Capacity to Adapt? Communities in a Changing Climate, Environment, and the Economy on the Northern Andaman Coast of Thailand
(2014) Bennett, Nathan J.; Dearden, Phillip; Murray, Grant; Kadfak, Alin
"The health and productivity of marine ecosystems, habitats, and fisheries are deteriorating on the Andaman coast of Thailand. Because of their high dependence on natural resources and proximity to the ocean, coastal communities are particularly vulnerable to climate-induced changes in the marine environment. These communities must also adapt to the impacts of management interventions and conservation initiatives, including marine protected areas, which have livelihood implications. Further, communities on the Andaman coast are also experiencing a range of new economic opportunities associated in particular with tourism and agriculture. These complex and ongoing changes require integrated assessment of, and deliberate planning to increase, the adaptive capacity of communities so that they may respond to: (1) environmental degradation and fisheries declines through effective management interventions or conservation initiatives, (2) new economic opportunities to reduce dependence on fisheries, and (3) the increasing impacts of climate change. Our results are from a mixed methods study, which used surveys and interviews to examine multiple dimensions of the adaptive capacity of seven island communities near marine protected areas on the Andaman coast of Thailand. Results show that communities had low adaptive capacity with respect to environmental degradation and fisheries declines, and to management and conservation interventions, as well as uneven levels of adaptive capacity to economic opportunities. Though communities and households were experiencing the impacts of climate change, especially storm events, changing seasons and weather patterns, and erosion, they were reactinKo Sin Hi Pierg to these changes with limited knowledge of climate change pe se. We recommend interventions, in the form of policies, programs, and actions, at multiple scales for increasing the adaptive capacity of Thailands coastal communities to change. The analytical and methodological approach used for examining adaptive capacity could be easily modified and applied to other contexts and locales."
A Catalyst toward Sustainability? Exploring Social Learning and Social Differentiation Approaches with the Agricultural Poor
(2014) Shaw, Alison; Kristjanson, Patti
"Emerging sustainability challenges, such as food security, livelihood development and climate change, require innovative and experimental ways of linking science, policy and practice at all scales. This requires the development of processes that integrate diverse knowledge to generate adaptive development strategies into the future. Social learning is emerging as a promising way to make these linkages. If and how social learning approaches are being applied in practice among smallholder farming families--the bulk of the worlds food producers, requires specific attention. In this paper we use a case study approach to explore social learning among the agricultural poor. Five key evaluative factors: context assessment, inclusive design and management, facilitating learning, mobilizing knowledge and assessing outcomes, are used to analyze nine projects and programs in (or affiliated with) the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). We explore three main questions: (1) in what contexts and in what ways are socially differentiated and marginalized groups enrolled in the learning process? (2) what, if any, are the additional benefits to social learning when explicitly using strategies to include socially differentiated groups? and (3) what are the benefits and trade-offs of applying these approaches for development outcomes? The findings suggest that, in the agricultural development context, social learning projects that include socially differentiated groups and create conditions for substantive two-way learning enhance the relevance and legitimacy of knowledge and governance outcomes, increasing the potential for accelerating sustainable development outcomes."
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Monocentric and Polycentric River Basin Management
(2010) Lankford, Bruce; Hepworth, Nick
"Two contemporary theories of river basin management are compared. One is centralised 'regulatory river basin management' with an apex authority that seeks hydrometric data and nationally agreed standards and procedures in decisions over water quality and allocation. This model is commonplace and can be identified in many water training curricula and derivatives of basin management policy. The other, 'polycentric river basin management', is institutionally, organisationally and geographically more decentralised, emphasising local, collective ownership and reference to locally agreed standards. The polycentric model is constructed from the creation of appropriate managerial subunits within river basins. This model emphasises the deployment of hydrologists, scientists and other service providers as mediating agents of environmental and institutional transformation, tackling issues arising within and between the basin subunits such as water allocation and distribution, productivity improvement and conflict resolution. Significantly, it considers water allocation between subunits rather than between sectors and to do this promulgates an experimental, step-wise pragmatic approach, building on local ideas to make tangible progress in basins where data monitoring is limited, basin office resources are constrained and regulatory planning has stalled. To explore these issues, the paper employs the 'Cathedral and Bazaar' metaphor of Eric Raymond. The discussion is informed by observations from Tanzania, Nigeria and the UK."
Challenges in Adaptive Management of Riparian and Coastal Ecosystems
(1997) Walters, Carl J.
"Many case studies in adaptive-management planning for riparian ecosystems have failed to produce useful models for policy comparison or good experimental management plans for resolving key uncertainties. Modeling efforts have been plagued by difficulties in representation of cross-scale effects (from rapid hydrologic change to long-term ecological response), lack of data on key processes that are difficult to study, and confounding of factor effects in validation data. Experimental policies have been seen as too costly or risky, particularly in relation to monitoring costs and risk to sensitive species. Research and management stakeholders have shown deplorable self-interest, seeing adaptive-policy development as a threat to existing research programs and management regimes, rather than as an opportunity for improvement. Proposals for experimental management regimes have exposed and highlighted some really fundamental conflicts in ecological values, particularly in cases in which endangered species have prospered under historical management and would be threatened by ecosystem restoration efforts. There is much potential for adaptive management in the future, if we can find ways around these barriers."
Change and Identity in Complex Systems
(2005) Cumming, Graeme S.; Collier, John
"Complex systems are dynamic and may show high levels of variability in both space and time. It is often difficult to decide on what constitutes a given complex system, i.e., where system boundaries should be set, and what amounts to substantial change within the system. We discuss two central themes: the nature of system definitions and their ability to cope with change, and the importance of system definitions for the mental metamodels that we use to describe and order ideas about system change. Systems can only be considered as single study units if they retain their identity. Previous system definitions have largely ignored the need for both spatial and temporal continuity as essential attributes of identity. After considering the philosophical issues surrounding identity and system definitions, we examine their application to modeling studies. We outline a set of five alternative metamodels that capture a range of the basic dynamics of complex systems. Although Holling's adaptive cycle is a compelling and widely applicable metamodel that fits many complex systems, there are systems that do not necessarily follow the adaptive cycle. We propose that more careful consideration of system definitions and alternative metamodels for complex systems will lead to greater conceptual clarity in the field and, ultimately, to more rigorous research."
Charting the New Territory of Adaptive Co-management: A Delphi Study
(2007) Plummer, Ryan; Armitage, Derek
"Complex systems understanding implies a world characterized by dynamic, nonlinear interactions, discontinuities, and surprises. Such conditions are not amenable to conventional resource management approaches that stress command and control, and therefore, novel governance approaches more suited to complexity and uncertainty are required. Adaptive co-management has emerged as an interdisciplinary response to this need, and blends the adaptive management and collaborative management narratives. However, concepts associated with adaptive co-management are relatively new and quickly expanding from multiple perspectives. The objective of this paper is to take stock of this relatively recent concept and synthesize current thinking in terms of: (1) the core components of adaptive co-management, (2) emerging research directions, (3) the barriers to implementation of adaptive co-management, and (4) criteria for success. To explore these four areas, a three-round, classical Delphi process was administered with an expert panel of 30 individuals. All members of the expert panel initially responded to open-ended questions, and the qualitative results were analyzed using QSR NVIVO. The subsequent two rounds of the Delphi required quantitative responses in which the expert panel was asked to indicate the level of importance using a seven point likert scale associated with specific items. Results of the Delphi survey reveal a high degree of consensus on several core areas within this emerging interdisciplinary governance approach. Results of this research should foster precision with respect to employment of the term, foster scholarly discourse, and indicate areas of practical importance to adaptive co-management."
Classification of Collaborative Management Methods
(2000) Blumenthal, Dana M.; Jannink, Jean-Luc
"Collaboration among multiple stakeholders can be crucial to the success of natural resource management. In recent years, a wide variety of methods have been developed to facilitate such collaboration. Because these methods are relatively new and come from different disciplines, little attention has been paid to drawing comparisons among them. Thus, it is very difficult for potential users to sort through the increasingly large literature regarding such methods. We suggest the use of a consistent framework for comparing collaborative management methods, and develop such a framework based on five criteria: participation, institutional analysis, simplification of the natural resource, spatial scale, and stages in the process of natural resource management. We then apply this framework to six of the more commonly cited methods: soft systems analysis, adaptive management, ecosystem management, agroecosystem analysis, rapid rural appraisal and participatory rural appraisal. Important differences among methods were found in prescriptions for stakeholder participation, institutional analysis, and simplification of complex natural resources. Despite such differences, the methods are surprisingly similar overall. All methods are applicable at the scale of a watershed. Most of the methods include techniques for understanding complex natural resources, but not complex social institutions, and most include monitoring and assessment as well as planning. Our comparisons suggest that, although much work has been done to improve collaborative management of natural resources, both in the development of collaborative methods and in related social science disciplines, the results have not been shared among disciplines. Further organization and classification of this work is therefore necessary to make it more accessible to both practitioners and students of collaborative management."
Collaborative Adaptive Management: Challenges and Opportunities
(2013) Scarlett, Lynn
"Collaborative adaptive management merges three essential features of twenty-first century conservation and resource management--science, collaboration, and a focus on results. These features intersect in conservation and resource management contexts characterized by: (1) high degrees of uncertainty; (2) complexity resulting from multiple variables and non-linear interactions; (3) interconnectedness--among issues, across landscapes, and between people and place; and (4) persistent, possibly dramatic, change. In this context, many resource management decisions present communication challenges, information challenges, coordination challenges, and action challenges. Collaboration and adaptive management, in part, are responses to these challenges. Many resource management questions are technical and complex. But policies and project decisions have distributional effects and often involve trade-offs. These effects raise issues about the respective roles of scientists, technical experts, and the public; underscore the relevance of adaptive decision frameworks, and heighten the importance of collaborate decision making. This essay examines collaborative adaptive management in this context from the perspective of a decisionmaker."
Collapse and Recovery in Sahelian Agro-pastoral Systems: Rethinking Trajectories of Change
(2012) Rasmussen, Laura Vang; Reenberg, Anette
"We discuss the adaptive cycle heuristic as a potential platform for describing the functioning and directions of change in Sahelian land use systems. Specifically, the aim is to go beyond the simplified narrative of a vicious circle of land degradation and land expansion prompted by population pressure and low rainfall and to develop conceptual means to account for system recovery and adaptation to exposures. We use a village study from northern Burkina Faso as an empirical point of departure. On the basis of information obtained from extensive interviews and surveys at the group and household level, the different phases of the adaptive cycle—exploitation (r), conservation (K), release (W) and reorganization (a)— are characterized by indicators of “potential” and “connectedness”. The main traits of an adaptive cycle trajectory are identified, yet deviations are also observed. It is, however, apparent that the traditional picture of a unidirectional process of land degradation and system collapse in Sahelian agro-pastoral systems is a simplification of more complex realities. The adaptive cycle heuristic provides insight into the possible importance of , for example, connectedness in terms of village groups. This may have implications for the policy discourse and may contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of trajectories of change in Sahelian systems."
Collapse and Reorganization in Social-Ecological Systems: Questions, Some Ideas, and Policy Implications
(2006) Abel, Nick; Cumming, David H. M.; Anderies, John M.
"We tested the explanatory usefulness and policy relevance of Holling's (2001) 'adaptive cycle' theory in exploring processes of 'collapse,' also called 'release,' and recovery in regional socialecological systems (SESs) in Zimbabwe and Australia. We found that the adaptive cycle is useful in recognizing changes in system behavior during the various phases. However, our small sample of cases did not generally show either the sequential passage of stages or the prerelease decline in resilience that adaptive cycle theory implies. In all cases, however, the reasons for releases were apparent with hindsight. On the other hand, our examples mostly supported the proposition that resilience is controlled by slowly changing variables. Although we found the adaptive cycle, and complex system theory in general, to be useful integrating frameworks, disciplinary theories are required to explain causes and effects in specific cases. We used theories linking distribution of political power to institutional change; to investment in natural, human, social, and physical capitals; and to access to financial capital. We explored patterns of change of these capitals before, during, and after release and reorganization. Both the patterns of change and relative importance of the different capitals during reorganization varied widely, but the importation of resources from broader scales was often a key to recovery. We propose that the resilience of most regional or national SESs can be explained in these terms. The capacity to self-organize emerged from our studies as a critical source of resilience. Although rebuilding this capacity at times requires access to external resources, excessive subsidization can reduce the capacity to self-organize. The policy implication is that cross-scale subsidization should end when self-organization becomes apparent, because subsidization can increase the vulnerability of the system as a whole. When the aim is to recover without changing the system fundamentally, the focus should be upon conserving or investing in the elements of capital critical for this. If the current system is not viable, it is necessary to invest in forms of capital that will enable fundamental change. It will also be necessary to stop investing in the capitals that maintained the unviable regime. The political difficulty of doing this is why SESs so often remain maladapted to current conditions and opportunities and eventually reach the point of collapse."
Combining Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Monitoring Populations for Co-Management
(2004) Moller, Henrik; Berkes, Fikret; O'Brian Lyver, Philip; Kislalioglu, Mina
"Using a combination of traditional ecological knowledge and science to monitor populations can greatly assist co-management for sustainable customary wildlife harvests by indigenous peoples. Case studies from Canada and New Zealand emphasize that, although traditional monitoring methods may often be imprecise and qualitative, they are nevertheless valuable because they are based on observations over long time periods, incorporate large sample sizes, are inexpensive, invite the participation of harvesters as researchers, and sometimes incorporate subtle multivariate cross checks for environmental change. A few simple rules suggested by traditional knowledge may produce good management outcomes consistent with fuzzy logic thinking. Science can sometimes offer better tests of potential causes of population change by research on larger spatial scales, precise quantification, and evaluation of population change where no harvest occurs. However, science is expensive and may not always be trusted or welcomed by customary users of wildlife. Short scientific studies in which traditional monitoring methods are calibrated against population abundance could make it possible to mesh traditional ecological knowledge with scientific inferences of prey population dynamics. This paper analyzes the traditional monitoring techniques of catch per unit effort and body condition. Combining scientific and traditional monitoring methods can not only build partnership and community consensus, but also, and more importantly, allow indigenous wildlife users to critically evaluate scientific predictions on their own terms and test sustainability using their own forms of adaptive management."
Community-Based Natural Resource Management: Governing the Commons
(2007) Fabricius, Christo; Collins, S.
"Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) focuses on the collective management of ecosystems to promote human well-being and aims to devolve authority for ecosystem management to the local (community) level. CBNRM therefore requires strong investments in capacity development of local institutions and governance structures. CBNRM has come under strong criticism for its failures to deliver real benefits to communities. In this paper we explore the reasons for the frequent failure of CBNRM. We postulate that good governance buffers CBNRM against unexpected change, notably conflicts, especially in the early stages when income generation, infrastructure development and capacity development have not yet taken place. We assess the key characteristics of CBNRM governance systems that could perform this buffering function, using case study examples from Macubeni, Nqabara, Makuleke and Richtersveld to support our propositions. In our case studies, 11 strategies have been used to increase the incidence of success of CBNRM: understand and describe the social-ecological system; establish and communicate a clear vision; build on local organizations; plan ahead; create rules for resource use and enforce them; communicate the vision, plan and rules; develop management capacity; finance the initial stages of the initiative; work within available legal frameworks; monitor and learn all the time; and create lasting incentives. Despite these strategies there are, however, a number of obstinate implementation challenges, related to governance shortcomings and external factors which management cannot control. We therefore propose seven additional strategies to promote good governance in CBNRM: 1. Develop knowledge networks that draw on the experience and wisdom of a wide range of key individuals. 2. Establish formalised decision-making structures (e.g. multi-level project steering committees) with clear constitutions and codes of conduct. 3. Clearly define and legitimise conflict resolution procedures. 4. Ensure acceptance of the governance structure by community members. 5. Obtain formal commitment to well-defined roles and responsibilities by key individuals. 6. Establish tangible incentives to key individuals for meeting their commitments."
Companion Modeling, Conflict Resolution, and Institution Building: Sharing Irrigation Water in the Lingmuteychu Watershed, Bhutan
(2006) Gurung, Tayan Raj; Bousquet, François; Trebuil, Guy
"We used multi-agent systems (MAS), following the companion modeling method, to facilitate water management negotiations in Bhutan. We show how this methodology helped resolve a conflict over the sharing of water resources by establishing a concrete agreement and creating an institution for collective watershed management. The conceptual model begins with a role-playing game (RPG). The stakeholders play the game, thus validating the proposed environment, the behavioral rules, and the emergent properties of the game. It is then relatively easy to translate the RPG into computerized MAS that allow different scenarios to be explored. After this first step in the MAS model, stakeholders then create an institution. A second model is developed to facilitate this process. We conclude by discussing the relationship between the models and reality, as well as the use of MAS as a mediation tool and the social process."
Comparative Study of Community-based Sea Turtle Management in Palau: Key Factors for Successful Implementation
(2008) Risien, Julie M.; Tilt, Bryan
"This article investigates social, political and cultural aspects of sea turtle management led by the Tobian community at Helen Reef in the Republic of Palau. We use participant observation, unstructured inter-views and examination of community-based natural resource management literature to compare and con-trast the Tobian community with several other communities in Palau in order to identify some of the underlying factors that we believe contributed to the successful implementation of the Tobian commu-nity-based programme. These factors include: robust structure of local and extra-local partnerships; re-mote location of the resource and small scale of the managing community; realised community benefits in terms of jobs and improved capacity to monitor and manage natural resources; adaptive capacity and autonomy in decision-making; and strong connections to traditional natural resource management sys-tems. Sea turtle conservation and management is a large scale issue; preventing further decline of endan-gered sea turtles will require management at multiple scales. For the Tobian community, success may be attributable to several key factors that come together to produce a decentralised community-based pro-gramme that operates with an adaptive, collaborative and bottom-up structure. This model may be appli-cable to comparable communities; it is, however, important to recognise that diverse societies will have a variety of formulas for success."
Connecting Knowledge With Action through Coproductive Capacities: Adaptive Governance and Connectivity Conservation
(2015) Wyborn, Carina A.
"Effective adaptive governance will emerge from strong relationships between science, governance, and practice. However, these relationships receive scant critical attention among adaptive governance scholarship. To address this lacuna, Jasanoff’s 'idiom of coproduction' provides a lens to view the dialectical relationships between science and society. This view sees science and governance as coevolving through iterative relationships between the material, cognitive, social, and normative dimensions of a problem. This coevolution is precisely the aspiration of adaptive governance; however, the abstract notion of coproduction must be grounded to provide practical guidance for groups aspiring to 'govern adaptively.' I have drawn on three concepts, namely coproduction, bridging/boundary organizations, and adaptive capacity, to present a conceptual framework of 'coproductive capacities.' Coproductive capacities are the material, cognitive, social, and normative capacities that enable groups of actors to connect knowledge with action in a cross-scale governance context. This framework was applied to two cases of connectivity conservation. Inspired by the science of conservation biology, connectivity conservation promotes collaborative, cross-scale governance to conserve biodiversity at a landscape scale. This tight coupling of science and governance in a cross-scale context makes connectivity conservation a classic case of both coproduction and adaptive governance. However, the inability of the initiatives in the cases examined to turn their visions into action highlights a critical absence of key capacities. In particular, challenges faced in connecting knowledge with action at various scales points to the importance of building relationships between actors across scales. The structures and mechanisms of governance have dominated adaptive governance scholarship, yet coproductive capacity and adaptive governance emerge from the relationships between actors seeking to connect knowledge with action. Building capacity to negotiate these relationships is a more fruitful focus for adaptive governance than design principles and diagnostics."
Conserving and Restoring Old Growth in Frequent-fire Forests: Cycles of Disruption and Recovery
(2007) Egan, Dave
"I provide a synthesis of the papers in the Special Issue, The Conservation and Restoration of Old Growth in Frequent-fire Forests of the American West. These papers-the product of an Old Growth Writing Workshop, held at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona on 18-19 April 2006-represent the ideas of 25 workshop participants who argue for a new attitude toward managing old growth in the frequent-fire forests of the American West. Unlike the lush, old-growth rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, the dry, frequent-fire forests of the western United States evolved with surface fires that disturbed the system with such regularity that young trees were almost always killed. When saplings did survive, they grew beyond the harm of frequent surface fires and, ultimately, attained the characteristics that define old growth in these systems. This system worked well, producing old-growth trees in abundance, until the onset of Euro-American settlement in the mid- to late-19th century. The arrival of these settlers put in motion an interplay of unprecedented social, political, economic, and ecological forces (e.g., removal of Native Americans and their fire-based land management systems, overgrazing of the understory, aggressive logging, establishment of federal land management agencies, implementation of a federal fire suppression policy). These activities have culminated in 1) overly dense forested ecosystems that are now on the verge of collapse because of catastrophic fires (i.e., crown fire at the landscape level; the Rodeo-Chediski Fire) and insect outbreaks, 2) the emergence of conservation-minded environmental legislation and policy, and 3) greater levels of interaction between citizens, federal agencies, and fire-prone landscapes. Recognizing the tenuous ecological situation of these forests, restoration ecologists, foresters, and others have developed ways to return historic ecological processes and lower tree densities to these forests. However, their efforts are not without challenges, including working with communities and citizens, serving as a bridge between entrenched bureaucracies (i.e., federal agencies and environmental groups), balancing both ecological and economic interests, and producing new applied technologies and science-based policy to advance conservation and restoration efforts aimed at preserving and developing old growth within a healthy forest environment."
Creating an Adaptive Ecosystem Management Network Among Stakeholders of the Lower Roanoke River, North Carolina, USA
(2005) Manring, Susan L.; Pearsall, Sam
"Adaptive ecosystem management (AEM) requires building and managing an interorganizational network of stakeholders to conserve ecosystem integrity while sustaining ecosystem services. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of applying the concepts of interorganizational networks and learning organizations to AEM. A case study of the lower Roanoke River in North Carolina illustrates how an AEM network can evolve to guide stakeholders in creating a shared framework for generative learning, consensus building through collaboration, and decision making. Environmental professionals can use this framework to guide institutional arrangements and to coordinate the systematic development of cohesive interorganizational AEM networks."
Cross-cultural Conflicts in Fire Management in Northern Australia: Not so Black and White
(1999) Andersen, Alan
"European ('scientific') and Aboriginal ('experiential') perspectives on fire management in northern Australia are often contrasted with each other. For Europeans, management is portrayed as a science-based, strategically directed and goal-oriented exercise aimed at achieving specific ecological outcomes. In contrast, landscape burning by Aboriginal people is more of an emergent property, diffusely arising from many uses of fire that serve social, cultural, and spiritual, as well as ecological, needs. Aboriginal knowledge is acquired through tradition and personal experience, rather than through the scientific paradigm of hypothesis testing. Here I argue that, in practice, science plays only a marginal role in European fire management in northern Australia. European managers often lack clearly defined goals in terms of land management outcomes, and rarely monitor the ecological effects of their management actions. Management is based primarily on tradition, intuition, and personal experience rather than on scientific knowledge, and there is often a reluctance to accept new information, particularly when it is provided by 'outsiders.' In these ways, the processes by which European land managers acquire and utilize information are actually similar to those of indigenous Australians, and can be considered characteristic of a management culture. In this context, the conventional European vs. Aboriginal contrast might be more accurately described as a conflict between scientists on one hand and land managers in general, both black and white, on the other. That is not to say that science has all the answers and that researchers always deliver useful research outcomes. Cultural tensions between Australia's colonists and its original inhabitants rank highly on the national agenda, particularly in relation to land access and ownership. For the effective management of such land, another difficult but rewarding challenge lies in reconciling tensions between the cultures of science and management, black and white."
Cross-scale Adaptation Challenges in the Coastal Fisheries: Findings from Lebesby, Northern Norway
(2010) West, Jennifer J.; Hovelsrud, Grete K.
"Cross-scale adaptation challenges in the coastal fisheries in Lebesby municipality, Finnmark County, northern Norway are examined on the basis of fieldwork conducted there. Although fishery actors in Lebesby are aware of, experience, and describe a number of connections between climate variability and coastal fishing activities, they do not characterize their livelihoods as being particularly vulnerable to climate change. Nevertheless, they identify a range of social factors that shape the flexibility of coastal fishing activities and livelihoods to deal with changing environmental conditions. We argue that these factors, and actors perceptions of their own resilience, constitute important aspects of adaptive capacity and may challenge local responses to climate variability and change. We identified four adaptation arenas: local perceptions of vulnerability and resilience to climate change, Lebesbys social and economic viability, national fishery management and regulations, and the markets and economy of coastal fishing. The adaptation arenas arise and interact across geographic and temporal scales, creating specific barriers and opportunities for local adaptation. Our findings suggest the need to pay close attention to the cross-scale adaptation challenges facing Arctic communities that depend on natural resources. The concept of adaptation arenas helps to illustrate these challenges and should be applied more widely."
Developing a Practical Approach to 'Light IWRM' in the Middle East
(2010) Moriarty, Patrick; Batchelor, Charles; Laban, Peter; Fahmy, Hazem
"This paper outlines the development of an approach (and a set of tools) for 'light' integrated water resources management (IWRM): that is, IWRM that is opportunistic, adaptive and incremental in nature and clearly focused on sustainable service delivery. The approach was developed as part of the EC funded EMPOWERS project in three middle-eastern countries: Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. Developed specifically for use at the intermediate and local levels (that is, sub-national and sub-basin) it is based on a facilitated process of stakeholder dialogue for concerted action supported by a strategic planning framework. The paper describes and discusses the justification for the approach, and sets out its main elements as well as experiences gained during its application. The main lesson of the EMPOWERS project is the seemingly simple – in fact, rather complex and time-consuming – work on facilitating dialogue, taking a structured approach to examining problems, collecting and sharing context-specific information, and helping to formulate a shared vision and strategies to achieve it all of which contribute to improved decision making. However, a major limitation to effective action is lack of appropriately decentralised finance, with local authorities reliant on financing from the national level that is often earmarked and over which they had very little control."
Developing Adaptation and Adapting Development
(2007) Lemos, Maria Carmen; Boyd, Emily; Tompkins, Emma L.; Osbah, Henny; Liverman, Diana
"Climate change is upon us. The fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change clearly describes the evidence of a changing climate (IPCC 2007a,b). Although scientists disagree about the extent to which these changes will happen, they do agree that there have been and will be changes in average climatic conditions, there will be changes in the frequency and intensity of weather hazards, already variable climates will become less predictable, and there is considerable uncertainty about the distribution and impact of these changes. Actions to reduce the human contribution to the changing climate are slowly happening, but they so far seem too few and too limited to make a significant difference to the climate change scientists predict. What has become clear is that people from all countries, from all income levels, and irrespective of capacity to do so, will have to adapt to these changes. The development and climate research communities have much to learn from each other in helping people with these adaptations."
Disentangling Scale Approaches in Governance Research: Comparing Monocentric, Multilevel, and Adaptive Governance
(2010) Termeer, Catrien; Dewulf, Art; van Lieshout, Maartje
"The question of how to govern the multiscale problems in today’s network society is an important topic in the fields of public administration, political sciences, and environmental sciences. How scales are defined, studied, and dealt with varies substantially within and across these fields. This paper aims to reduce the existing conceptual confusion regarding scales by disentangling three representative approaches that address both governance and scaling: monocentric governance, multilevel governance, and adaptive governance. It does so by analyzing the differences in (1) underlying views on governing, (2) assumptions about scales, (3) dominant problem definitions regarding scales, and (4) preferred responses for dealing with multiple scales. Finally, this paper identifies research opportunities within and across these approaches."
Do Adaptive Comanagement Processes Lead to Adaptive Comanagement Outcomes? A Multicase Study of Long-term Outcomes Associated with the National Riparian Service Team’s Place-based Riparian Assistance
(2013) Smedstad, Jill A.; Gosnell, Hannah
"Adaptive comanagement (ACM) is a novel approach to environmental governance that combines the dynamic learning features of adaptive management with the linking and network features of collaborative management. There is growing interest in the potential for ACM to resolve conflicts around natural resource management and contribute to greater social and ecological resilience, but little is known about how to catalyze long lasting ACM arrangements. We contribute to knowledge on this topic by evaluating the National Riparian Service Team’s (NRST) efforts to catalyze ACM of public lands riparian areas in seven cases in the western U.S. We found that the NRST’s approach offers a relatively novel model for integrating joint fact-finding, multiple forms of knowledge, and collaborative problem solving to improve public lands riparian grazing management. With this approach, learning and dialogue often helped facilitate the development of shared understanding and trust, key features of ACM. Their activities also influenced changes in assessment, monitoring, and management approaches to public lands riparian area grazing, also indicative of a transition to ACM. Whereas these effects often aligned with the NRST's immediate objectives, i.e., to work through a specific issue or point of conflict, there was little evidence of long-term effects beyond the specific issue or intervention; that is, in most cases the initiative did not influence longer term changes in place-based governance and institutions. Our results suggest that the success of interventions aimed at catalyzing the transformation of governance arrangements toward ACM may hinge on factors external to the collaborative process such as the presence or absence of (1) dynamic local leadership and (2) high quality agreements regarding next steps for the group. Efforts to establish long lasting ACM institutions may also face significant constraints and barriers, including existing laws and regulations associated with public land management."
Does Adaptive Management of Natural Resources Enhance Resilience to Climate Change?
(2004) Tompkins, Emma L.; Adger, W. Neil
"Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. We argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. We review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. We demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago. The case demonstrates that community-based management enhances adaptive capacity in two ways: by building networks that are important for coping with extreme events and by retaining the resilience of the underpinning resources and ecological systems."
Ecological and Social Dynamics in Simple Models of Ecosystem Management
(1999) Carpenter, Stephen; Brock, William A.; Hanson, Paul
"Simulation models were developed to explore and illustrate dynamics of socioecological systems. The ecosystem is a lake subject to phosphorus pollution. Phosphorus flows from agriculture to upland soils, to surface waters, where it cycles between water and sediments. The ecosystem is multi-stable, and moves among domains of attraction depending on the history of pollutant inputs. The alternative states yield different economic benefits. Agents form expectations about ecosystem dynamics, markets, and/or the actions of managers, and choose levels of pollutant inputs accordingly. Agents have heterogeneous beliefs and/or access to information. Their aggregate behavior determines the total rate of pollutant input. As the ecosystem changes, agents update their beliefs and expectations about the world they co-create, and modify their actions accordingly. For a wide range of scenarios, we observe irregular oscillations among ecosystem states and patterns of agent behavior. These oscillations resemble some features of the adaptive cycle of panarchy theory."
Ecosystem Modeling for Evaluation of Adaptive Management Policies in the Grand Canyon
(2000) Walters, Carl J.; Korman, Josh; Stevens, Lawrence E.; Gold, Barry
"An Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management workshop process was used to assist Grand Canyon scientists and managers in developing conceptual and simulation models for the Colorado ecosystem affected by Glen Canyon Dam. This model examines ecosystem variables and processes at multiple scales in space and time, ranging from feet and hours for benthic algal response to diurnal flow changes, to reaches and decades for sediment storage and dynamics of long-lived native fish species. Its aim is to help screen policy options ranging from changes in hourly variation in flow allowed from Glen Canyon Dam, to major structural changes for restoration of more natural temperature regimes. It appears that we can make fairly accurate predictions about some components of ecosystem response to policy change (e.g., autochthonous primary production, insect communities, riparian vegetation, rainbow trout population), but we are moderately or grossly uncertain about others (e.g., long-term sediment storage, response of native and non-native fishes to physical habitat restoration). Further, we do not believe that existing monitoring programs are adequate to detect responses of native fishes or vegetation to anything short of gross habitat changes. Some experimental manipulations (such as controlled floods for beach/habitat-building) should proceed, but most should await development of better monitoring programs and sound temporal baseline information from those programs."
Ecosystem Services, Governance, and Stakeholder Participation: An Introduction
(2013) Paavola, Jouni; Hubacek, Klaus
"The ecosystem services approach has gained popularity, and novel incentive-based ecosystem conservation strategies are increasingly being used. This calls for the reassessment and transformation of conceptual-theoretical, natural resource management, and governance approaches to conservation. In the past, conservation efforts focused on distinct components of ecosystems without regard for long-term human well-being. Natural resource management in turn sought to control nature to harvest products for direct consumption or for sale at markets. However, this singular focus on management ignored that ecosystems are complex, dynamic, adaptive systems with nonlinear feedback and thresholds and are tightly interlinked with human systems."
Enabling the Contextualization of Legal Rules in Responsive Strategies to Climate Change
(2012) van Rijswick, Marleen; Salet, Willem
"The paradigm of adaptive governance is paramount in policy discourses on the mitigation and adaptation strategies of climate change. Adaptability, resilience, and cooperative approaches are promoted as the appropriate vehicles to meet the contemporary conditions of uncertainty and complexity. We claim that the legitimacy and effectiveness of these responsive strategies might be augmented via the use of legal perspectives. Rather than the instrumental use of command and control type of regulation, the legal perspectives should focus on establishing principal norms that enable the search for different solutions in different contexts. From these assumptions, the concept of legal obligation is explored as embodying the meaning of legality, and at the same time conditioning and committing the probing of different ways of purposeful action in different local circumstances. We explore the innovative potential of legal norms and demonstrate how responsive strategies to climate change can be guided by the contextualization of legal norms."
Enhancing the Fit through Adaptive Co-management: Creating and Maintaining Bridging Functions for Matching Scales in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve, Sweden
(2007) Olsson, Per; Folke, Carl; Galaz, Victor; Hahn, Thomas; Schultz, Lisen
"In this article, we focus on adaptive governance of social-ecological systems (SES) and, more specifically, on social factors that can enhance the fit between governance systems and ecosystems. The challenge lies in matching multilevel governance system, often characterized by fragmented organizational and institutional structures and compartmentalized and sectorized decision-making processes, with ecosystems characterized by complex interactions in time and space. The ability to create the right links, at the right time, around the right issues in multilevel governance systems is crucial for fostering responses that build social-ecological resilience and maintain the capacity of complex and dynamic ecosystems to generate services for human well-being. This is especially true in the face of uncertainty and during periods of abrupt change and reorganization. We draw on our earlier work in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve (KVBR), in southern Sweden, to provide new insights on factors that can improve such linking. We focus especially on the bridging function in SES and the factors that constrain bridging in multilevel governance systems, and strategies used to overcome these. We present two features that seem critical for linking organizations dynamically across multiple levels: 1) the role of bridging organizations and 2) the importance of leadership. Bridging organizations and the bridging function can be vulnerable to disturbance, but there are sources of resilience for securing these key structures and functions in SES. These include social mechanisms for combining multiple sources of knowledge, building moral and political support in social networks, and having legal and financial support as part of the adaptive governance structure."
Epistemological Pluralism: Reorganizing Interdisciplinary Research
(2008) Miller, Thaddeus R.; Baird, Timothy D.; Littlefield, Caitlin M.; Kofinas, Gary P.; Chapin, F. Stuart; Redman, Charles L.
"Despite progress in interdisciplinary research, difficulties remain. In this paper, we argue that scholars, educators, and practitioners need to critically rethink the ways in which interdisciplinary research and training are conducted. We present epistemological pluralism as an approach for conducting innovative, collaborative research and study. Epistemological pluralism recognizes that, in any given research context, there may be several valuable ways of knowing, and that accommodating this plurality can lead to more successful integrated study. This approach is particularly useful in the study and management of social ecological systems. Through resilience theory's adaptive cycle, we demonstrate how a focus on epistemological pluralism can facilitate the reorganization of interdisciplinary research and avoid the build-up of significant, but insufficiently integrative, disciplinary-dominated research. Finally, using two case studies urban ecology and social ecological research in Alaska we highlight how interdisciplinary work is impeded when divergent epistemologies are not recognized and valued, and that by incorporating a pluralistic framework, these issues can be better explored, resulting in more integrated understanding."
Evaluating Responses in Complex Adaptive Systems: Insights on Water Management from the Southern African Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (SAfMA)
(2005) Bohensky, Erin; Lynam, Timothy
"Ecosystem services are embedded in complex adaptive systems. These systems are riddled with nonlinearities, uncertainties, and surprises, and are made increasingly complex by the many human responses to problems or changes arising within them. In this paper we attempt to determine whether there are certain factors that characterize effective responses in complex systems. We construct a framework for response evaluation with three interconnected scopes or spatial and temporal domains: the scope of an impact, the scope of the awareness of the impact, and the scope of the power or influence to respond. Drawing from the experience of the Southern African Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (SAfMA), we explore the applicability of this framework to the example of water management in southern Africa, where an ongoing paradigm shift in some areas has enabled a transition from supply-side to demand-side responses and the creation of new institutions to manage water across scales. We suggest that the most effective responses exhibit congruence between the impact, awareness, and power scopes; distribute impacts across space and time; expand response options; enhance social memory; and depend on power-distributing mechanisms. We conclude by stressing the need for sufficient flexibility to adapt responses to the specific, ever-evolving contexts in which they are implemented. Although our discussion focuses on water in southern Africa, we believe that the framework has broad applicability to a range of complex systems and places."
The Evolution of an Ecosystem Approach: The Diamond Schematic and an Adaptive Methodology for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health
(2005) Waltner-Toews, David; Kay, James
"Over the past 15 yr, an international network of researchers has developed and tested a methodology for integrating complex systems theories into sustainable development projects. Drawing on our best theoretical understanding of complex systems and combining it with best practices of community engagement drawn from a wide variety of sources, we have developed a methodology that is theoretically sound and practically effective. AMESH, an Adaptive Methodology for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health, has emerged from, and been tested in, Nepal, Kenya, Canada, and Peru."
Exploring Institutional Adaptive Capacity in Practice: Examining Water Governance Adaptation in Australia
(2015) Bettini, Yvette; Brown, Rebekah R.; de Haan, Fjalar J.
"Adaptive capacity is widely held as a key property of resilient and transformative social-ecological systems. However, current knowledge of the term does not yet address key questions of how to operationalize this system condition to address sustainability challenges through research and policy. This paper explores temporal and agency dimensions of adaptive capacity in practice to better understand how system conditions and attributes enable adaptation. An institutional dynamics lens is employed to systemically examine empirical cases of change in urban water management. Comparative analysis of two Australian cities' drought response is conducted using institutional analysis and qualitative system dynamics mapping techniques. The study finds that three forms of adaptive capacity appear critical: the ability to learn, decide, and act. The analytical approach developed provides insight into change dynamics and the agency mechanisms that generate them. The paper proposes a typology of adaptive capacity by characterizing these change dynamics and mechanisms for locked-in, crisis, reorganizing, and stabilizing systems. This set of propositions on institutional conditions and forms of adaptive capacity is offered to further advance research on the topic and help to operationalize adaptive capacity in practice."
Exploring Panarchy in Alpine Grasslands: An Application of Adaptive Cycle Concepts to the Conservation of a Cultural Landscape
(2012) Soane, Ian D.; Scolozzi, Rocco; Gretter, Alessandro; Hubacek, Klaus
"This paper explores approaches of applying the panarchy perspective to a case study of natural resource management in the cultural landscape of upland alpine pastures in northern Italy. The close interaction within the cultural landscape between alpine pasture ecology and the management regimes offers a strong fit with the concept of social-ecological systems and provides insights to appropriate and adaptive management of sites of conservation interest. We examine the limited literature available that offers a resilience understanding of such landscapes and address apparent gaps in the application through our interpretation and use of adaptive cycles and panarchy. We draft conceptual models of adaptive cycles considering ecological and socioeconomic information as acting in separate but interacting domains. Notwithstanding the difficulties in defining and measuring quantitative state variables, we found that a panarchy model can offer a powerful metaphor with practical implications for the maintenance of such alpine cultural landscapes. In effect, our panarchy interpretation of interacting adaptive cycles provides new insights into the description of and the future options for land use in our case study area. Some issues are only partly developed. We hypothesized measurable parameters that could be related to system resilience, such as alternative states, shifting thresholds, and regime stability, which are all dependent on adaptive processes; but we found quantification difficult even at a conceptual level. Nevertheless, we found it helpful to use nature conservation evaluation as a useful surrogate for measures of capital in adaptive cycles of vegetation. However, care is needed to distinguish between the descriptive metaphor using selective surrogate measures and real ecological behavior. Additionally we recognize the need to integrate this ecological understanding with cycles in socioeconomic domains and consider that interactions between the loss of both social and ecological capital would be interesting issues to explore further in our case study. We suggest that resilience theory, through its focus on adaptive cycles interacting at different speeds and across varying geographic scales, offers useful insights into resource management and in particular for nature conservation interest sites, by focusing more on dynamics than on an optimal state of species assemblages. This may help to define sites and to achieve the objectives of Natura 2000 through the European Habitats Directive, offering a basis to guide a conservation of processes, in which cultural tradition and local ecological knowledge are valued."
Facilitating Cooperation during Times of Chaos: Spontaneous Orders and Muddling Through in Malinau District, Indonesia
(2007) Wollenberg, Eva; Iwan, Ramses; Limberg, Godwin; Moeliono, Moira; Rhee, Steve; Sudana, Made
"Adaptive management has become increasingly common where natural resource managers face complex and uncertain conditions. The collaboration required among managers and others to do adaptive management, however, is not always easy to achieve. We describe efforts to work with villagers and government officials in Malinau, East Kalimantan Indonesia, where a weak, uncertain institutional setting and complex shifting political landscape made formal cooperation among these groups for forest management problematic. Through successive trials, the team learned instead to work with and enhance a 'spontaneous order' of cooperation using four tactics: (1) continuous physical presence, (2) regular contact with the people who advised and were close to major decision makers, (3) maintenance of multiple programs to fit the needs of different interest groups, and (4) hyperflexibility in resource allocation and schedules."
Facilitating Transitional Processes in Rigid Institutional Regimes for Water Management and Wetland Conservation: Experience from the Guadalquivir Estuary
(2012) Méndez, Pablo F.; Isendahl, Nicola; Amezaga, Jaime M.; Santamaría, Luis
"Traditional policies for water resources management and wetland conservation are often based on command-and-control approaches. The latter tend to drive the human–wetland–water system into pathological states, characterized by more vulnerable ecosystems and rigid institutions for governance. The overcoming of these states may rest in the development of flexible and adaptive institutional regimes that rely on adaptive governance and management. Because past factors might constrain the implementation of more flexible adaptive approaches to management, it is important to understand the historical mechanisms underlying the genesis of institutional rigidity. We first present the results of a historical analysis of Doñana, which can be characterized as a pathological water socio-ecosystem governed through rigid institutional regimes for water resources management and wetland conservation. In a second step, we analyze the advances achieved during a recent, large-scale restoration program for the Doñana wetlands, which adhered explicitly to the tenets of adaptive management. Our analysis indicated that the historical persistence of command-and-control approaches has been a path-dependent process that led to the emergence of a rigid institutional regime and caused it to enter a rigidity trap. However, the achievements of the restoration program suggest that a more flexible and adaptive regime could be developed through the introduction of adaptive management at the operational levels, using specifically tailored action research programs. To conclude, we speculate that the research strategy outlined could be extended to comply with, or complement, the requirements of the EU's Water Framework Directive in other European water socio-ecosystems."
Factors in Overcoming Barriers to Implementing Co-management in British Columbia Salmon Fisheries
(1999) Pinkerton, Evelyn
"Ten years of research and efforts to implement co-management in British Columbia fisheries have demonstrated that we lack neither good models nor the political will in communities to design and test local and regional institutions for successful involvement in various aspects of management. The barriers lie rather in the distrust and resistance of management agencies and the lack of broadly organized political support. The nature of the barriers and some of the elements of a successful approach to overcoming them are identified and discussed. The analysis is focused around the barriers encountered by two differently situated fishing communities or regions that have launched conservation initiatives through cooperation between local aboriginal and non-aboriginal fishing groups. In attempting to overcome the political barriers, the communities seek to develop expertise in selective fishing technology for more sustainable harvest, principled multi-stakeholder negotiation, marketing, shared databases, and preliminary ecosystem monitoring. The communities exemplify small- and medium-scale bottom-up approaches to adaptive management. The analysis shows the key and possibly unique contributions of processes at these levels, and suggests how they can be scaled up and linked to processes at other levels. Both types of analysis are largely missing in adaptive management theory, which has tended to focus on larger scale processes and to dismiss the potential of smaller scale ones to transform, expand, and link. This analysis focuses on salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) fisheries of British Columbia, Canada, but the literature suggests that the findings have far broader applicability."

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