A New Paradigm for Adaptive Management

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Uncertainty is a pervasive feature in natural resource management. Adaptive management, an approach that focuses on identifying critical uncertainties to be reduced via diagnostic management experiments, is one favored approach for tackling this reality. While adaptive management is identified as a key method in the environmental management toolbox, there remains a lack of clarity over when its use is appropriate or feasible. Its implementation is often viewed as suitable only in a limited set of circumstances. Here we restructure some of the ideas supporting this view, and show why much of the pessimism around AM may be unwarranted. We present a new framework for deciding when AM is appropriate, feasible, and subsequently successful. We thus present a new paradigm for adaptive management that shows that there are no categorical limitations to its appropriate use, the boundaries of application being defined by problem conception and the resources available to managers. In doing so we also separate adaptive management as a management tool, from the burden of failures that result from the complex policy, social, and institutional environment within which management occurs.

Facilitating Adaptive Management in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

“…The availability of adequate funding is a challenge that lies outside the adaptive management framework (Figure 1), but it is not the only challenge (Rist et al 2013). Other examples are the lack of a clear, quick process for coordinating among multiple agencies with different priorities and cultures; the lack of organized, two-way communication between scientists and managers; and a failure to use formal decision-support tools.…”

Cities and Water Security in the Anthropocene: Research Challenges and Opportunities for International Relations

“…Assuming that people and ecosystems are uncertain and difficult to control, AWM uses feedbacks from nature to shape policies, placing systematic experimentation and learning in an incessant cycle (Schoeman, Allan and Finlayson 2014). However, AWM's complexity, costs and risks, as well as institutional resistance to reflection before action, have also limited its success (Rist et al 2013).…”

Developing an effective adaptive monitoring network to support integrated coastal management in a multiuser nature reserve

“…Institutional learning processes may be enhanced by establishing dialogue among the actors involved in ICM to facilitate taking agreed action (Parr et al 2003, Hanssen et al 2009). Concepts like adaptive comanagement and adaptive governance emphasize stakeholder processes for more inclusive and democratic management, focusing on participation in decision making (Armitage et al 2009, Cundill and Fabricius 2009, Rist et al 2013. Participation may also extend to monitoring and management activities wherein citizen volunteers assist in data collection or conduct research themselves, i.e., citizen science serving so called community-based monitoring (Conrad and Hilchey 2011).…”

“…We present quality criteria for evaluating the appropriateness of monitoring, organizational feasibility, and operational performance. They apply to the challenges encountered in management and monitoring in a broad sense and are not exclusive to adaptive aspects, i.e., learning and reducing uncertainty (Rist et al 2013). …”