Enabling Adaptive Governance: Defining the Role of Government in New Governance

Abstract

Regulation of landscape scale social-ecological systems is insufficient alone to navigate accelerating environmental change. In parallel with experimentation in new governance in the face of globalization, adaptive governance is emerging to address problems of scarcity and value-based conflict over use and preservation at the landscape scale. This paper explores how governance is evolving to address increasing complexity; why adaptive governance emerges in response to the inadequacy of existing governance at the landscape scale; the relation of adaptive governance to traditional regulatory and market approaches; and what legal reform is necessary to allow government to navigate among governance options to enhance the capacity of society to adapt to accelerating change. State assistance in building adaptive capacity, and capacity to itself adapt, accelerating change must complement traditional approaches to governance if society is to navigate accelerating environmental and social change.