Introduction. Social-Ecological Resilience and Law

Garmestani, Ahjond S.; Allen, Craig R.; Arnold, Craig Anthony; Gunderson, Lance

doi:10.7312/garm16058-intro

Cited by 21 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…A methodology that has great potential would be based in large part upon resilience theory, adaptive management and adaptive governance (Karkkainen 2005). In essence, what is needed is an iterative approach that has feedbacks built-in between the ecological and the social system, which allows for policy to evolve in response to policy experiments, and laws to evolve in response to legal experiments, and not past assumptions about the system of interest (Garmestani and Allen 2014). Here, laws can be applied within an adaptive or structured decision-making framework, and the utility and effectiveness of the laws can be assessed through monitoring.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Law Foster Social-Ecological Resilience?

Garmestani¹,

Allen²,

Benson³

2013

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Law plays an essential role in shaping natural resource and environmental policy, but unfortunately, many environmental laws were developed around the prevailing scientific understanding that there was a "balance of nature" that could be managed and sustained. This view assumes that natural resource managers have the capacity to predict the behavior of ecological systems, know what its important functional components are, and successfully predict the outcome of management interventions. This paper takes on this problem by summarizing and synthesizing the contributions to this Special Feature (Law and Social-Ecological Resilience, Part I: Contributions from Resilience 2011), focusing on the interaction of law and socialecological resilience, and then offering recommendations for the integration of law and social-ecological resilience.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Law Foster Social-Ecological Resilience?

Garmestani¹,

Allen²,

Benson³

2013

E&S

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“…These steps represent a significant challenge and deserve further exploration. Although major legal reform may be the most direct means of addressing barriers in current governance structures (Ebbesson and Hey 2013, Garmestani and Allen 2014, the complex and politically charged nature of this process in most SESs often renders legal reform infeasible in the short term. Sometimes myths and underlying perceptions must be challenged for progress to be made .…”

Section: Building Social-ecological Resilience In the New Desired Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…AG is increasingly recognized as a way to address this need (Dietz et al 2003, Folke et al 2005, and the concept is being applied in a variety of arenas. For example, theoretical and empirical exploration of AG is ongoing in disciplines of international trade (Cooney and Lang 2007), health research (Andrew and Kendra 2012), political science (Heilmann and Perry 2011), disaster research (Djalante et al 2011, Djalante 2012, and appropriately, in law (Ebbesson and Hey 2013, Garmestani and Allen 2014. The purpose of this paper, however, is to organize and clarify conceptualizations of AG posed in the literature on environmental governance, resilience, and the management of SESs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions

Chaffin¹,

Gosnell²,

Cosens³

2014

E&S

558

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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“…Accordingly, there is increasing interest in the literature on social-ecological resilience in the ways that legal principles and processes may enhance adaptive decision making in environmental governance and may in fact ease the "social barriers" to implementing adaptive management (Cosens and Williams 2012, Cosens 2013, Garmestani and Benson 2013, Garmestani and Allen 2014. For instance, in the recent special feature of Ecology and Society, "Law and Social-Ecological Resilience," Cosens (2013) explores how participatory legal procedures and coordination across scales of governance may promote accountable and legitimate forms of ecological experimentation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, although law may seek to provide certainty in some circumstances, the viability of legal systems rests on their ability to provide for deliberation between evolving social values, norms, and ideas of justice in relation to developments in scientific and other forms of knowledge (Ebbesson 2010, Ebbesson and Folke 2014, Garmestani and Allen 2014. In this sense, law has a potentially powerful role to play in stimulating learning by mediating between various equally valid conceptions of social-ecological systems inevitably informed equally by notions of what is "right" and what is "true."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning for resilience in the European Court of Human Rights: adjudication as an adaptive governance practice

West¹,

Schultz²

2015

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ABSTRACT. Managing for social-ecological resilience requires ongoing learning. In the context of nonlinear dynamics, surprise, and uncertainty, resilience scholars have proposed adaptive management, in which policies and management actions are treated as experiments, as one way of encouraging learning. However, the implementation of adaptive management has been problematic. The legal system has been identified as an impediment to adaptive management, with its apparent prioritization of certainty over flexibility, emphasis on checks and balances, protection of individual rights over public interests, and its search for "transcendent justice" over "contingent truth." However, although adaptive management may encourage learning for ecological resilience, it is only one aspect of the institutional change needed to foster learning for social-ecological resilience. The mechanisms, including law, that provide for pursuit and protection of evolving ideas of justice and equity are critical for guiding human understanding of and interaction with the material environment. A broader agenda for learning within and about social-ecological resilience that focuses on the interaction between ideas of justice and equity with ecosystem dynamics is captured in the concept of adaptive governance. We have built on recent literature that has elaborated on the role of law in governance of social-ecological systems by analyzing environmental cases in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). We find that the ECtHR contributes to adaptive governance by supporting multiple ways of knowing the environment, enhancing polycentricity, and encouraging adaptive management and policy making by member states in the context of public participation. We have argued that the environmental case law of the ECtHR constitutes an important site of learning for governance of social-ecological systems, because it situates knowledge and experience of environmental change in the context of discussions about the relative rights, duties, and responsibilities of social actors, facilitating the mutually adaptive evolution of truth and justice across scales.

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Introduction. Social-Ecological Resilience and Law

Cited by 21 publications

References 16 publications

Can Law Foster Social-Ecological Resilience?

Can Law Foster Social-Ecological Resilience?

A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions

Learning for resilience in the European Court of Human Rights: adjudication as an adaptive governance practice

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