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Journal Article Learning as You Journey: Anishinaabe Perception of Social-Ecological Environments and Adaptive Learning(2003) Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.; Berkes, Fikret"This paper explores the linkages between social-ecological resilience and adaptive learning. We refer to adaptive learning as a method to capture the two-way relationship between people and their social-ecological environment. In this paper, we focus on traditional ecological knowledge. Research was undertaken with the Anishinaabe people of Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation, in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The research was carried out over two field seasons, with verification workshops following each field season. The methodology was based on site visits and transects determined by the elders as appropriate to answer a specific question, find specific plants, or locate plant communities. During site visits and transect walks, research themes such as plant nomenclature, plant use, habitat descriptions, biogeophysical landscape vocabulary, and place names were discussed. Working with elders allowed us to record a rich set of vocabulary to describe the spatial characteristics of the biogeophysical landscape. However, elders also directed our attention to places they knew through personal experiences and journeys and remembered from stories and collective history. We documented elders perceptions of the temporal dynamics of the landscape through discussion of disturbance events and cycles. Again, elders drew our attention to the ways in which time was marked by cultural references to seasons and moons. The social memory of landscape dynamics was documented as a combination of biogeophysical structures and processes, along with the stories by which Iskatewizaagegan people wrote their histories upon the land. Adaptive learning for social-ecological resilience, as suggested by this research, requires maintaining the web of relationships of people and places. Such relationships allow social memory to frame creativity, while allowing knowledge to evolve in the face of change. Social memory does not actually evolve directly out of ecosystem dynamics. Rather, social memory both frames creativity within, and emerges from, a dynamic social-ecological environment."Conference Paper Do Resource Users Learn from Management Disasters? Indigenous Management and Social Learning in James Bay(1998) Berkes, Fikret"Practice is not always true to belief. Philosophers point out that 'ethics bear a normative relation to behavior; they do not describe how people actually behave, but rather set out how people ought to behave' (Callicott 1982). For example, the Koyukon people of Alaska often violate their own rules on limiting harvests when they hunt caribou (Nelson 1982). Anyone who has worked with hunting peoples knows that rules of ethics are sometimes suspended. But one can say that about any culture or any group of people; there is always a gap between the ideal practice and the actual. The story of caribou is important in this regard. Cree elders in Chisasibi readily admit that they once overhunted the caribou. But the events that took place in the community in the mid-1980's indicate that the Cree hunters as a group learned from that experience. The caribou story illustrates how traditional beliefs play out in the real world, and how community-based systems can learn and evolve. It also illustrates the role that traditional stewards and elders play in providing leadership for collective decision-making. It shows why almost all traditional cultures consider elders so important. Elders provide corporate memory for the group, the wisdom to interpret events, and they help enforce the rules and ethical norms of the community. "The main issue here is the development and application of a conservation ethic in a social group. 'Conservation ethic,' defined here after Johannes (1994), is the 'awareness of one's ability to deplete or otherwise damage natural resources, coupled with a commitment to reduce or eliminate the problem.' We will hypothesize that a conservation ethic can develop if a resource is important or limiting, predictable and depletable, and if it is effectively under the control of the social group in question so that the group can reap the benefits of its conservation (Berkes 1989a). We explain each point of the hypothesis in turn. "If a resource is superabundant there is no adaptive advantage in developing a conservation ethic for it, nor a territorial system for its defense. The resource has to be predictable and abundant, and important for the group, if not outright limiting (Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978; Richardson 1982; Nelson 1982; Berkes 1986). If the resource is not depletable, it is perfectly logical (and, one may argue, ecologically adaptive) to kill excess numbers. Under such conditions, 'a natural response is not to limit harvests intentionally, but the precise opposite -- take as much as possible, whenever possible, and store the proceeds for later use,' as Nelson (1982) points out in his discussion of Alaska caribou hunting. "Finally, there is the question of the control of the resource. Societies do not establish conservation rules and ethics for the benefit of outsiders. The evidence on this question shows that the incursion of outsiders, and the inability of the group to defend an important resource, causes the lifting of rules and conservation ethic (Feit 1986; Berkes 1986). Once open-access conditions are created, perfectly conservation-minded stewards may well become participants themselves in a 'tragedy of the commons' rather than to allow the outsiders to take the remaining resource. Such free-for-all depletions of resources seem to have happened in the case of beaver in James Bay in the 1920s, and the overkill of North American bison at the turn of the century (Berkes et al. 1989; Feeny et al. 1990). In some cases, the condition is reversible; if local controls can be re-established, the group can again reap the benefits of its own restraint, and conservation rules and ethics become operative once more (Feit 1986; Berkes 1989b)."Book Chapter Integrating Holism and Segmentalism: Overcoming Barriers to Adaptive Co-Management between Management Agencies and Multi-Sector Bodies(UBC Press, 2007) Pinkerton, Evelyn; Armitage, Derek; Berkes, Fikret; Doubleday, N."In January 2005, I and another evaluation team member,' Anita Bedo, delivered an evaluation of a three-year pilot initiative in adaptive co-management to the co-managing body, the West Coast Vancouver Island Aquatic Management Board (AMB).' This body is attempting to move towards integrated ecosystem-based management of a coastal area covering some two-thirds of the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The evaluation was intended to inform not only the co-management board itself but also the four levels of government that fund and sponsor it, as the pilot project was to end in March 2005 (and to be up for renewal). The sponsoring governments are the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the Province of British Columbia, the Regional Districts of Alberni-Clayoquot and Comox-Strathcona, and the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council. By far the most important funder (50 percent) and sponsor (because they have the legal mandate to manage most aquatic resources) was the DFO. The DFO eventually opted to continue supporting the AMB, at least for another two years beyond the three-year pilot, but their continued support and vision for the future of the AMB is uncertain. The nature of these differences exemplifies the difficulties in coordinating the perspectives of government bureaucracies and community-based (or regionally based) co-managers. This discussion explores key dimensions of these difficulties and options for overcoming them. After briefly noting how these difficulties surfaced in our evaluation and the discussion surrounding it, I review some aspects of what the literature on organizational behaviour contributes to the discussion. This review is not comprehensive but is meant to highlight key aspects relevant to adaptive co-management."Journal Article Community-based Enterprises: The Significance of Partnerships and Institutional Linkages(2010) Seixas, Cristiana Simao; Berkes, Fikret"Community-based institutions used to be driven by local needs, but in recent decades, some of them have been responding to national and global economic opportunities. These cases are of interest because they make it possible to investigate how local institutions can evolve in response to new challenges. A promising set of cases comes from the UNDP Equator Initiative, a program that holds biennial searches to find and reward entrepreneurship cases that seek to reduce poverty and conserve biodiversity at the same time. What can we learn from these local entrepreneurship cases that seem to be playing at the global level? Here we focus on partnerships and horizontal and vertical linkages in a sample of ten Equator Initiative projects. We find that successful projects tend to interact with a large array of support groups, typically 10–15 partners. Based on information from on-site research, these partners include local and national NGOs; local, regional and (less commonly) national governments; international donor agencies and other organizations; and universities and research centres. These partners provide a range of services and support functions, including raising start-up funds; institution building; business networking and marketing; innovation and knowledge transfer; and technical training. These findings indicate that a diverse variety of partners are needed to help satisfy a diversity of needs, and highlight the importance of networks and support groups in the evolution of commons institutions."Journal Article Innovating through Commons Use: Community-based Enterprises(2010) Berkes, Fikret; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J."Community-based enterprises are of interest to commons researchers because they offer a means to study how local institutions respond to opportunities, develop networks, new skills and knowledge, and evolve. Nevertheless, the relationship between commons and community-based enterprises has received little attention, with a few exceptions. Therefore, we decided to organize a conference session and explore this relationship in more detail. We invited a diverse array of scholars and practitioners active with indigenous enterprises, community development, community forestry, ecotourism and conservation-development projects. This Special Issue includes peer-reviewed and edited versions of seven of the papers (plus two additional invited papers) presented at the two panels on 'Innovating through commons use: community based enterprises', at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons in Cheltenham, England."Journal Article 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."Conference Paper Community-based Enterprises: The Significance of Horizontal and Vertical Institutional Linkages(2008) Berkes, Fikret; Seixas, Cristiana Simao"Commons institutions evolve all the time, responding to social and economic needs and environmental constraints. Historically, the main drivers have been local needs and constraints. But in recent decades, the use of local commons has been increasingly responding to national and global economic opportunities. Such cases are of interest to commons researchers because they make it possible to investigate how local institutions can develop linkages, networks, relations, new skills, and new knowledge. A promising set of cases comes from the UNDP Equator Initiative. This is a program that holds biennial searches to find and reward entrepreneurship cases that seek to reduce poverty and conserve biodiversity at the same time. The short-listed cases are largely those that have been able to respond to national and global opportunities. What can we learn from these local entrepreneurship cases that seem to be playing successfully at the global level? "Here we focus on partnerships, networks, and specifically on horizontal linkages (across the same level of organization) and vertical linkages (across levels of organization) in a sample of ten UNDP EI projects. We find that successful projects typically interacted with a large array of supportive agencies and partners, around 10 to 15 partners in the cases in our sample. Based on information from on-site research, these partners included local and national NGOs; local, regional and (less commonly) national governments; international donor agencies and other organizations; and universities and research centers. These partners interacted with the local community to provide a range of services and support functions, including raising start-up funds; institution building; business networking and marketing; innovation and knowledge transfer; technical training; research; legal support; infrastructure; and community health and social services. These findings indicate that a diverse variety of partners are needed to help satisfy a diversity of needs, and highlight the importance of networks and support groups in the expanding use of commons."Conference Paper How to Keep Commons as Commons in the Long Run: Formation and Distortions of Property Regimes in Chilika Lagoon, India(2008) Nayak, Prateep Kumar; Berkes, Fikret"The paper tries to understand how a regime of de jure ownership of customary fishers is gradually changing into a state of de facto control of non-fishers and outsiders in the Chilika lagoon, a Ramsar site on the eastern coast of India. The paper brings into analysis the historical and current distortions in the access regime of the lagoon. The focus of this analysis is on two processes: one, the shift from a position of legal rights and entitlements to denial of access for customary fishers, and two, from a state of no or thin access to claim of legal rights by the non-fishers. While tracking this changing nature of property regimes in Chilika Lagoon the paper makes two important conclusions. One, commons is not fixed in its own distinct category; rather there often remains a threat that commons can change into other types of property regimes. Two, the immediate challenge is to identify drivers that may cause these changes and even the bigger challenge is how to keep commons as commons in the long run."Journal Article Diversity of Resource Use and Property Rights in Tam Giang Lagoon, Vietnam(2011) Huong, Ta Thi Thanh; Berkes, Fikret"Since the early 1990s, aquaculture has become the most important livelihood activity in Tam Giang Lagoon, Vietnam. The aquaculture boom has reduced the available water area for mobile gear fishers, polarized different user-groups, created resource conflicts, and increased pressures on the lagoon systems. Aquaculture in the lagoon is governed by both customary and legal rights. The objective of this paper is to explore the diversity of resource use and the complexity of property rights in one of the villages located in the lagoon. The paper emphasizes the linkages between changes in commons institutions and changes in resource use and property rights. First, the political and socio-economic changes in Vietnam are examined as well as how they have influenced traditional commons institutions and lagoon resource management in the village. Second, the linkages between common institutions and the diversity of property rights are analyzed. Particular attention is given to the analysis of different types of resource use associated with 'bundle of rights' and the diversity of property rights regimes in the village."Journal Article Rethinking Social Contracts: Building Resilience in a Changing Climate(2009) O'Brien, Karen; Hayward, Bronwyn; Berkes, Fikret"Social contracts play an important role in defining the reciprocal rights, obligations, and responsibilities between states and citizens. Climate change is creating new challenges for both states and citizens, inevitably forcing a rethinking of existing and evolving social contracts. In particular, the social arrangements that enhance the well-being and security of both present and future generations are likely to undergo dramatic transformations in response to ecosystem changes, more extreme weather events, and the consequences of social–ecological changes in distant locations. The types of social contracts that evolve in the face of a changing climate will have considerable implications for adaptation policies and processes. We consider how a resilience approach can contribute to new social contracts in the face of uncertainty and change. Examples from Norway, New Zealand, and Canada show how resilience thinking provides a new way of looking at social contracts, emphasizing the dynamics, links, and complexity of coupled social–ecological systems. Resilience thinking provides valuable insights on the characteristics of a new social contract, and social contract theory provides some insights on creating resilience and human security in a warming world."