Adaptive Comanagement and Its Relationship to Environmental Governance

Plummer, Ryan; Armitage, Derek; Loë, Rob C. de

doi:10.5751/es-05383-180121

Cited by 169 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Many of the early empirical and theoretical contributions to AG are framed in terms of adaptive comanagement, and although more concerned with the expansion, operationalization, and scaling of adaptive management, adaptive comanagement is often, but not always, used synonymously with AG (e.g., Olsson et al 2004a, 2007, Hahn et al 2006, Huitema et al 2009). Plummer et al (2013) offer an excellent discussion of the relationship between environmental governance (and AG) and adaptive comanagement. In our consideration of AG concepts, we include foundational sources from the adaptive comanagement literature and draw distinctions in terminology where appropriate.…”

Section: Situating Ag In Resilience Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions

Chaffin¹,

Gosnell²,

Cosens³

2014

E&S

530

469

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ABSTRACT. Adaptive governance is an emergent form of environmental governance that is increasingly called upon by scholars and practitioners to coordinate resource management regimes in the face of the complexity and uncertainty associated with rapid environmental change. Although the term "adaptive governance" is not exclusively applied to the governance of social-ecological systems, related research represents a significant outgrowth of literature on resilience, social-ecological systems, and environmental governance. We present a chronology of major scholarship on adaptive governance, synthesizing efforts to define the concept and identifying the array of governance concepts associated with transformation toward adaptive governance. Based on this synthesis, we define adaptive governance as a range of interactions between actors, networks, organizations, and institutions emerging in pursuit of a desired state for social-ecological systems. In addition, we identify and discuss ambiguities in adaptive governance scholarship such as the roles of adaptive management, crisis, and a desired state for governance of social-ecological systems. Finally, we outline a research agenda to examine whether an adaptive governance approach can become institutionalized under current legal frameworks and political contexts. We suggest a further investigation of the relationship between adaptive governance and the principles of good governance; the roles of power and politics in the emergence of adaptive governance; and potential interventions such as legal reform that may catalyze or enhance governance adaptations or transformation toward adaptive governance.

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Section: Situating Ag In Resilience Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions

Chaffin¹,

Gosnell²,

Cosens³

2014

E&S

530

469

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“…It thus appears that despite recent theoretical emphasis on participation in adaptive management, in practice natural resource managers and scientists prefer to learn among themselves. The opposite is probably the case in adaptive comanagement, which we excluded from our analysis, and where the emphasis is placed on participation and governance (Armitage et al 2008, Plummer et al 2013. In theory, the advantages of inclusivity include a reduction in conflict and an increase in the pool of knowledge contributing to solutions (Meinke et al 2009, Rist et al 2013) but the disadvantage is that, particularly in situations with low capacity or low organizational buy-in, inclusivity can be very costly and time-consuming (Muriti and Murphy Ives 2007).…”

Section: Participatory or Exclusive Learning?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning in Adaptive Management: Insights from Published Practice

Fabricius¹,

Cundill²

2014

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Adaptive management is often advocated as a solution to understanding and managing complexity in social-ecological systems. Given the centrality of learning in adaptive management, it remains unclear how learning in adaptive management is understood to occur, who learns, what they learn about, and how they learn. We conducted a systematic review using the Thomson Reuters Web of Science, and searched specifically for examples of the practical implementation of adaptive management between 2011 and 2013, i.e., excluding articles that suggested frameworks, models, or recommendations for future action. This provided a subset of 22 papers that were analyzed using five elements: the aims of adaptive management as stated in each paper; the reported achievements of adaptive management; what was learned; who learned; and how they learned. Our results indicate that, although most published adaptive management initiatives aimed at improvements in biological conservation or ecosystem management, scholars of adaptive management tend to report on learning more about governance and about learning, than about ecosystems or biological conservation. Whereas almost all the papers (91%) listed improvements in biological conservation and ecosystem management as aims, 59% reported these as achievements. Whereas only 27% listed improved governance as an aim, 73% mentioned this as an achievement. Conservation scientists and academics reporting on adaptive management tend to learn among themselves, and very seldom (18%) with external stakeholders. Adaptive ecosystem management is dominated by direct assessment and single-loop learning aimed at improving existing practices (86%), with about 50% engaged in double-loop learning and a similar number in deutero-learning (learning about learning). Some adaptive managers (36%) combined double-and single-loop learning and the majority of these (6/8) reported on conservation achievements. A possible explanation for these findings is that adaptive management is an evolutionary process and in most instances is still in an early pioneering stage, possibly held back by participants' capacity for learning. The constraint of learning capacity may also explain why so few adaptive management initiatives reported on learning with societal stakeholders.

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“…In contrast, governance arrangements where multiple (and alternative) interpretations are recognised and considered can offer a critical space for potentially innovative and nuanced responses to water dilemmas [75,76]. There are plenty of studies advocating for the inclusion of multiple types of knowledges, with many of them considering transdisciplinary studies as an essential component [77,78].…”

Section: Recognising Multiple Constructions Of a Dilemmamentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Water Governance and Climate Change: Identifying Innovative Arrangements for Adaptive Transformation

Zurita

Thomsen

Holbrook

et al. 2018

Water

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A convoluted network of different water governance systems exists around the world. Collectively, these systems provide insight into how to build sustainable regimes of water use and management. We argue that the challenge is not to make the system less convoluted, but rather to support positive and promising trends in governance, creating a vision for future environmental outcomes. In this paper, we analyse nine water case studies from around the world to help identify potential 'innovative arrangements' for addressing existing dilemmas. We argue that such arrangements can be used as a catalyst for crafting new global water governance futures. The nine case studies were selected for their diversity in terms of location, scale and water dilemma, and through an examination of their contexts, structures and processes we identify key themes to consider in the milieu of adaptive transformation. These themes include the importance of acknowledging socio-ecological entanglements, understanding the political dimensions of environmental dilemmas, the recognition of different constructions of the dillema, and the importance of democratized processes.

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Adaptive Comanagement and Its Relationship to Environmental Governance

Cited by 169 publications

References 76 publications

A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions

A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions

Learning in Adaptive Management: Insights from Published Practice

Global Water Governance and Climate Change: Identifying Innovative Arrangements for Adaptive Transformation

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