Resilience Management or Resilient Management? A Political Ecology of Adaptive, Multi-Level Governance

Abstract

"Multi-level governance may facilitate learning and adaptation in complex social-ecological circumstances. Such arrangements should connect community-based management with regional/national government- level management, link scientific management and traditional management systems, encourage the sharing of knowledge and information, and promote collaboration and dialogue around management goals and outcomes. Governance innovations of this type can thus build capacity to adapt to change and manage for resilience. However, critical reflection on the emergence of multi-level governance and its many implications for community-based conservation and natural resource management is warranted. Drawing on examples from the North and South, this review examines the challenge inherent in fostering adaptive, multi-level governance and overcoming entrenched management systems. A framework to facilitate analysis is developed by integrating concepts from three complementary bodies of scholarship: common property theory, resilience thinking and political ecology. Core value and attributes of resilience management are identified, and include participation and accountability, leadership, knowledge building learning and trust. However, political ecological interpretations help to reveal the challenge of actualizing those values, and the contextual forces that make entrenched, top-down management systems resilient to change. These forces include the role of power, scale and levels of organization, the positioning of social actors, social constructions of nature and problems confronting governance efforts, knowledge valuation and the roles of ecological systems as agents of social change."