Eva Wollenberg

Adaptive co‐management for social–ecological complexity

Building trust through collaboration, institutional development, and social learning enhances efforts to foster ecosystem management and resolve multi-scale society–environment dilemmas. One emerging approach aimed at addressing these dilemmas is adaptive co-management. This method draws explicit attention to the learning (experiential and experimental) and collaboration (vertical and horizontal) functions necessary to improve our understanding of, and ability to respond to, complex social–ecological systems. Here, we identify and outline the core features of adaptive co-management, which include innovative institutional arrangements and incentives across spatiotemporal scales and levels, learning through complexity and change, monitoring and assessment of interventions, the role of power, and opportunities to link science with policy.

Linking Livelihoods and Conservation: A Conceptual Framework and Scale for Assessing the Integration of Human Needs and Biodiversity

Abstract Although there has been increasing interest in trying to link the livelihoods of people living near natural resources to the conservation of those resources, there has been little attempt to systematically assess or measure this linkage. We develop a conceptual framework for defining the linkage between livelihood activities and conservation. We then develop a scale to assess the strength of linkage across five dimensions: species, habitat, spatial, temporal and conservation association. We test the framework and scale by evaluating 39 project sites in the Biodiversity Conservation Network. Finally, we discuss the relevance of linkage to designing appropriate conservation strategies.

Using scenarios to make decisions about the future : anticipatory learning for the adaptive co-management of community forests

Current trends to improve the adaptiveness of community forest management focus on monitoring past actions and emphasize internal dynamics. We show how scenario methods can be used to (1) enable managers to better understand landscape and larger scale forces for change and to work with stakeholders at these levels and (2) improve adaptiveness not only by responding to changes, but also by anticipating them. We review methods related to scenario analysis and discuss how they can be adapted to community management settings to improve the responsiveness and the collaboration among stakeholders. The review is used to identify the key elements of scenario methods that CIFOR will test among communities in Bulungan Regency, East Kalimantan, Indonesia and two villages in the buffer zone of Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar.

A Strategic Approach to Multistakeholder Negotiations

Environment and development practitioners increasingly are interested in identifying methods, institutional arrangements and policy environments that promote negotiations among natural resource stakeholders leading to collective action and, it is hoped, sustainable resource management. Yet the implications of negotiations for disadvantaged groups of people are seldom critically examined. We draw attention to such implications by examining different theoretical foundations for multistakeholder negotiations and linking these to practical problems for disadvantaged groups. We argue that negotiations based on an unhealthy combination of communicative rationality and liberal pluralism, which underplays or seeks to neutralize differences among stakeholders, poses considerable risks for disadvantaged groups. We suggest that negotiations influenced by radical pluralist and feminist poststructuralist thought, which emphasize strategic behaviour and selective alliance-building, promise better outcomes for disadvantaged groups in most cases, particularly on the scale and in the historical contexts in which negotiations over forest management usually take place.

Biological diversity : balancing interests through adaptive collaborative management

Foreword, Norman Uphoff Introduction: The Challenge of Adaptive Collaborative Management, John Schelhas, Louise E. Buck, and Charles C. Geisler I. Foundations of Adaptive Collaborative Management Kai N. Lee, Appraising Adaptive Management, Jeffrey A. McNeely, Roles for Civil Society in Protected Area Management: A Global Perspective on Current Trends in Collaborative Management Sarah Christiansen and Eric Dinerstein, Ecodevelopment Perspectives in Conservation: Recent Lessons and Future Directions Jeffrey A. Sayer, Learning and Adaptation for Forest Conservation Robert J. Fisher, Experience, Challenges, and Prospects for Collaborative Management of Protected Areas: An International Perspective II. Institutions and Policies Charles G. Geisler , Adapting Land Reform to Protected Area Management in the Dominican Republic Richard Cahoon, Property in Wild Biota and Adaptive Collaborative Management Neils Roling and Janice Jiggins, Agents in Adaptive Collaborative Management: The Logic of Collective Cognition Jon Anderson, On the Edge of Chaos: Crafting Adaptive Collaborative Management for Biological Diversity Conservation in a Pluralistic World Ronald J. Herring, Authority and Scale in Political Ecology: Some Cautions on Localism, Maria Paz (Ipat) G. Luna, Tenure and Community Management of Protected Areas in the Philippines: Policy Change and Implementation Challenges III. Modeling Protected Area-Human Activity Systems Andy White, Hans Gregersen, Allen Lundgren, and Glenn Smucker, Making Public Protected Area Systems Effective: An Operational Framework John Schelhas, Ecoregional Management in Southern Costa Rica: Finding a Role for Adaptive Collaborative Management Jenny Ericson, Eckart Boege, and Mark S. Freudenberger, Population Dynamics, Migration, and the Future of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Toward Social Criteria and Indicators for Protected Areas: One Cut on Adaptive Co-management Nick Salafsky and Richard Margoluis, Overview of a Systematic Approach to Designing, Managing, and Monitoring Conservation and Development Projects Eva Wollenberg, David Edmunds, and Louise E. Buck, Anticipating Change: Scenarios as a Tool for Increasing Adaptivity in Multi-stakeholder Settings IV. Case Studies: Applications of Adaptive Collaborative Management Approaches Arlyne Johnson, Paul Igag, Robert Bino, and Paul Hakahu, Community-based Conservation Area Management in Papua, New Guinea: Adapting to Changing Policy and Practice Carlos Guindon, Celia Harvey, and Guillermo Vargas, Integrating Biological Research and Land Use Practices in Monteverde, Costa Rica, Richard Ford and William McConnell, Linking GIS and Participation to Manage Natural Resources in Madagascar Paul Cowles, Haingolalao Rasolonirinarimanana, and Vololoniaina Rasoarimanana, Innovative Learning in a Participatory Ecoregion-based Planning Process: The Case of AGERAS in Tulear, Madagascar, Maria Cristina S. Guerrero and Eufemia Felisa Pinto, Reclaiming Ancestral Domains in Palawan, Phillipines: A Context for Adaptive Collaborative Management

Beyond climate-smart agriculture: toward safe operating spaces for global food systems

Agriculture is considered to be “climate-smart” when it contributes to increasing food security, adaptation and mitigation in a sustainable way. This new concept now dominates current discussions in agricultural development because of its capacity to unite the agendas of the agriculture, development and climate change communities under one brand. In this opinion piece authored by scientists from a variety of international agricultural and climate research communities, we argue that the concept needs to be evaluated critically because the relationship between the three dimensions is poorly understood, such that practically any improved agricultural practice can be considered climate-smart. This lack of clarity may have contributed to the broad appeal of the concept. From the understanding that we must hold ourselves accountable to demonstrably better meet human needs in the short and long term within foreseeable local and planetary limits, we develop a conceptualization of climate-smart agriculture as agriculture that can be shown to bring us closer to safe operating spaces for agricultural and food systems across spatial and temporal scales. Improvements in the management of agricultural systems that bring us significantly closer to safe operating spaces will require transformations in governance and use of our natural resources, underpinned by enabling political, social and economic conditions beyond incremental changes. Establishing scientifically credible indicators and metrics of long-term safe operating spaces in the context of a changing climate and growing social-ecological challenges is critical to creating the societal demand and political will required to motivate deep transformations. Answering questions on how the needed transformational change can be achieved will require actively setting and testing hypotheses to refine and characterize our concepts of safer spaces for social-ecological systems across scales. This effort will demand prioritizing key areas of innovation, such as (1) improved adaptive management and governance of social-ecological systems; (2) development of meaningful and relevant integrated indicators of social-ecological systems; (3) gathering of quality integrated data, information, knowledge and analytical tools for improved models and scenarios in time frames and at scales relevant for decision-making; and (4) establishment of legitimate and empowered science policy dialogues on local to international scales to facilitate decision making informed by metrics and indicators of safe operating spaces.

Natural climate solutions

Significance Most nations recently agreed to hold global average temperature rise to well below 2 °C. We examine how much climate mitigation nature can contribute to this goal with a comprehensive analysis of “natural climate solutions” (NCS): 20 conservation, restoration, and/or improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. We show that NCS can provide over one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2 °C. Alongside aggressive fossil fuel emissions reductions, NCS offer a powerful set of options for nations to deliver on the Paris Climate Agreement while improving soil productivity, cleaning our air and water, and maintaining biodiversity. Better stewardship of land is needed to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement goal of holding warming to below 2 °C; however, confusion persists about the specific set of land stewardship options available and their mitigation potential. To address this, we identify and quantify “natural climate solutions” (NCS): 20 conservation, restoration, and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. We find that the maximum potential of NCS—when constrained by food security, fiber security, and biodiversity conservation—is 23.8 petagrams of CO2 equivalent (PgCO2e) y−1 (95% CI 20.3–37.4). This is ≥30% higher than prior estimates, which did not include the full range of options and safeguards considered here. About half of this maximum (11.3 PgCO2e y−1) represents cost-effective climate mitigation, assuming the social cost of CO2 pollution is ≥100 USD MgCO2e−1 by 2030. Natural climate solutions can provide 37% of cost-effective CO2 mitigation needed through 2030 for a >66% chance of holding warming to below 2 °C. One-third of this cost-effective NCS mitigation can be delivered at or below 10 USD MgCO2−1. Most NCS actions—if effectively implemented—also offer water filtration, flood buffering, soil health, biodiversity habitat, and enhanced climate resilience. Work remains to better constrain uncertainty of NCS mitigation estimates. Nevertheless, existing knowledge reported here provides a robust basis for immediate global action to improve ecosystem stewardship as a major solution to climate change.

Climate-smart agriculture global research agenda: scientific basis for action

BackgroundClimate-smart agriculture (CSA) addresses the challenge of meeting the growing demand for food, fibre and fuel, despite the changing climate and fewer opportunities for agricultural expansion on additional lands. CSA focuses on contributing to economic development, poverty reduction and food security; maintaining and enhancing the productivity and resilience of natural and agricultural ecosystem functions, thus building natural capital; and reducing trade-offs involved in meeting these goals. Current gaps in knowledge, work within CSA, and agendas for interdisciplinary research and science-based actions identified at the 2013 Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture (Davis, CA, USA) are described here within three themes: (1) farm and food systems, (2) landscape and regional issues and (3) institutional and policy aspects. The first two themes comprise crop physiology and genetics, mitigation and adaptation for livestock and agriculture, barriers to adoption of CSA practices, climate risk management and energy and biofuels (theme 1); and modelling adaptation and uncertainty, achieving multifunctionality, food and fishery systems, forest biodiversity and ecosystem services, rural migration from climate change and metrics (theme 2). Theme 3 comprises designing research that bridges disciplines, integrating stakeholder input to directly link science, action and governance.OutcomesIn addition to interdisciplinary research among these themes, imperatives include developing (1) models that include adaptation and transformation at either the farm or landscape level; (2) capacity approaches to examine multifunctional solutions for agronomic, ecological and socioeconomic challenges; (3) scenarios that are validated by direct evidence and metrics to support behaviours that foster resilience and natural capital; (4) reductions in the risk that can present formidable barriers for farmers during adoption of new technology and practices; and (5) an understanding of how climate affects the rural labour force, land tenure and cultural integrity, and thus the stability of food production. Effective work in CSA will involve stakeholders, address governance issues, examine uncertainties, incorporate social benefits with technological change, and establish climate finance within a green development framework. Here, the socioecological approach is intended to reduce development controversies associated with CSA and to identify technologies, policies and approaches leading to sustainable food production and consumption patterns in a changing climate.

Facilitating Cooperation During Times Of Chaos: Spontaneous Orders And Muddling Through In Malinau District, Indonesia

Adaptive management has become increasingly common where natural resource managers face complex and uncertain conditions. The collaboration required among managers and others to do adaptive management, however, is not always easy to achieve. We describe efforts to work with villagers and government officials in Malinau, East Kalimantan Indonesia, where a weak, uncertain institutional setting and complex shifting political landscape made formal cooperation among these groups for forest management problematic. Through successive trials, the team learned instead to work with and enhance a “spontaneous order” of cooperation using four tactics: (1) continuous physical presence, (2) regular contact with the people who advised and were close to major decision makers, (3) maintenance of multiple programs to fit the needs of different interest groups, and (4) hyperflexibility in resource allocation and schedules.

Interactive land-use planning in Indonesian rain-forest landscapes: reconnecting plans to practice.

Indonesia’s 1999–2004 decentralization reforms created opportunities for land-use planning that reflected local conditions and local people’s needs. We report on seven years of work in the District of Malinau in Indonesian Borneo that attempted to reconnect government land-use plans to local people’s values, priorities, and practices. Four principles are proposed to support more interactive planning between government and local land users: Support local groups to make their local knowledge, experience, and aspirations more visible in formal land-use planning and decision making; create channels of communication, feedback, and transparency to support the adaptive capacities and accountability of district leadership and institutions; use system frameworks to understand the drivers of change and resulting scenarios and trade-offs; and link analysis and intervention across multiple levels, from the local land user to the district and national levels. We describe the application of these principles in Malinau and the resulting challenges.