Ryan Plummer

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.

The Adaptive Co-Management Process: an Initial Synthesis of Representative Models and Influential Variables

Collaborative and adaptive approaches to environmental management have captured the attention of administrators, resource users, and scholars. Adaptive co-management builds upon these approaches to create a novel governance strategy. This paper investigates the dynamics of the adaptive co-management process and the variables that influence it. The investigation begins by summarizing analytical and causal models relevant to the adaptive co-management process. Variables that influence this process are then synthesized from diverse literatures, categorized as being exogenous or endogenous, and developed into respective analytical frameworks. In identifying commonalities among models of the adaptive co-management process and discerning influential variables, this paper provides initial insights into understanding the dynamic social process of adaptive co-management. From these insights conjectures for future inquires are offered in the conclusion.

Managing protected areas for sustainable tourism: prospects for adaptive co-management

This paper looks at the challenging enterprise of managing protected areas for sustainable tourism. It notes that during the past 25 years multistakeholder conflicts, complexity and uncertainty have emerged and persisted as important issues requiring managerial responses. These issues reflect substantial paradigmatic shifts in pursuing and understanding sustainability. Governance directs attention to broad participatory approaches, and complex systems theory emphasises transformative changes and an integrative perspective that couples human and natural systems (a social–ecological system). The paper envisions the prospects of adaptive co-management as an alternative approach to protected areas management for sustainable tourism. It also makes the case for an interdisciplinary approach by highlighting important and informative developments outside tourism studies. Adaptive co-management bridges governance and complex systems by bringing together cooperative and adaptive approaches to management. In appraising the potential for adaptive co-management attention is systematically directed to conceptual, technical, ethical and practical dimensions. While adaptive co-management is clearly not a universal answer, experiences and knowledge from natural resource management raise salient prospects for the approach to be insightfully applied to protected areas for sustainable tourism.

Adaptive Comanagement: a Systematic Review and Analysis

This paper outlines the results of a systematic review of the literature on adaptive comanagement (ACM). Adaptive comanagement is an emergent governance approach for complex social-ecological systems that links the learning function of adaptive management (experimental and experiential) and the linking (vertically and horizontally) function of comanagement. Given the rapid growth of adaptive comanagement scholarship, there is value in a systematic analysis of how the concept is being conceptualized to elucidate agreement and discrepancies and to examine the challenges this presents for cross-case comparisons and the possibility of arriving at more generalizable insights. A synthesis-based methodology has been developed involving a comprehensive search and screening of academic databases and the internet. A detailed analysis of 108 documents was undertaken to characterize the state of the ACM literature, unpack the construct of ACM, and examine relationships among aspects of ACM based on accumulated experiences to date. The systematic review and analysis reveals imprecision, inconsistency, and confusion with the concept. Robust evidentiary insights into how the variables or components of ACM interrelate as well as relate to goals and outcomes are, therefore, presently not possible. These findings lead to the discussion of a series of challenges for ACM scholarship. Opportunities remain for ACM scholars to pursue theoretical development in rigorous ways that facilitate empirically based cross-site comparisons.

Adaptive Capacity and Environmental Governance

Rapid environmental change calls for individuals and societies with an ability to transform our interactions with each other and the ecosystems upon which we depend. Adaptive capacity - the ability of a social-ecological system (or the components of that system) to be robust to disturbances and capable of responding to changes - is increasingly recognized as a critical attribute of multi-level environmental governance. This unique volume offers the first interdisciplinary and integrative perspective on an emerging area of applied scholarship, with contributions from internationally recognized researchers and practitioners. It demonstrates how adaptive capacity makes environmental governance possible in complex social-ecological systems. Cutting-edge theoretical developments are explored and empirical case studies offered from a wide range of geographic settings and natural resource contexts, such as water, climate, fisheries and forestry. Of interest to researchers, policymakers and resource managers seeking to navigate and understand social-ecological change in diverse geographic settings and resource contexts

Charting the New Territory of Adaptive Co-management: A Delphi Study

Complex systems understanding implies a world characterized by dynamic, nonlinear interactions, discontinuities, and surprises. Such conditions are not amenable to conventional resource management approaches that stress command-and-control, and therefore, novel governance approaches more suited to complexity and uncertainty are required. Adaptive co-management has emerged as an interdisciplinary response to this need, and blends the adaptive management and collaborative management narratives. However, concepts associated with adaptive co-management are relatively new and quickly expanding from multiple perspectives. The objective of this paper is to take stock of this relatively recent concept and synthesize current thinking in terms of: (1) the core components of adaptive co-management, (2) emerging research directions, (3) the barriers to implementation of adaptive co-management, and (4) criteria for success. To explore these four areas, a three-round, classical Delphi process was administered with an expert panel of 30 individuals. All members of the expert panel initially responded to open-ended questions, and the qualitative results were analyzed using QSR NVIVO. The subsequent two rounds of the Delphi required quantitative responses in which the expert panel was asked to indicate the level of importance using a seven point likert scale associated with specific items. Results of the Delphi survey reveal a high degree of consensus on several core areas within this emerging interdisciplinary governance approach. Results of this research should foster precision with respect to employment of the term, foster scholarly discourse, and indicate areas of practical importance to adaptive co-management.

A Systematic Review of Water Vulnerability Assessment Tools

The important relationship between health and water necessitates consideration of water vulnerability. Water vulnerability is contingent upon biophysical and social drivers operating at multiple scales, and is difficult to assess. This paper offers a systematic review of 50 water vulnerability assessment tools. We identify and synthesise the contents of these assessment tools (710 indicators) into five dimensions and 22 sub-dimensions and consider the extent to which they reflect environmental and social aspects. The findings are discussed in light of a holistic approach to water resources management, and specifically Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Significant opportunities exist to enhance the efficacy of water vulnerability assessment tools by incorporating indicators and operational measures for social considerations (e.g., adaptation, institutions, governance) that are developed outside the context of water.

Adaptive Comanagement and Its Relationship to Environmental Governance

We provide a systematic review of the adaptive comanagement (ACM) literature to (i) investigate how the concept of governance is considered and (ii) examine what insights ACM offers with reference to six key concerns in environmental governance literature: accountability and legitimacy; actors and roles; fit, interplay, and scale; adaptiveness, flexibility, and learning; evaluation and monitoring; and, knowledge. Findings from the systematic review uncover a complicated relationship with evidence of conceptual closeness as well as relational ambiguities. The findings also reveal several specific contributions from the ACM literature to each of the six key environmental governance concerns, including applied strategies for sharing power and responsibility and value of systems approaches in understanding problems of fit. More broadly, the research suggests a dissolving or fuzzy boundary between ACM and governance, with implications for understanding emerging approaches to navigate social-ecological system change. Future research opportunities may be found at the confluence of ACM and environmental governance scholarship, such as identifying ways to build adaptive capacity and encouraging the development of more flexible governance arrangements.

Integrating Perspectives on Adaptive Capacity and Environmental Governance

Humanity is confronted with severe and pervasive environmental challenges, highlighted by climatic change, ecosystem degradation and resource scarcity. The complexity and intractability of these challenges demands new strategies, of which institutional flexibility and adaptive governance are central themes. This chapter positions adaptive capacity in this context and documents its emergence in the search for governance systems better prepared to cope with unprecedented change and uncertainty. Adaptive capacity, understood here as an integrative and synthetic concept is proposed as a critical dimension of multi-level approaches to environmental governance in which knowledge co-production, learning and collaboration are paramount concerns. In setting the scene for this book we direct attention to theoretical and applied areas of scholarship that inform adaptive capacity including capacity and capacity building, complex systems thinking, institutions, social capital and networks, learning, and vulnerability and livelihood studies. The contribution of these integrative bodies of scholarship concerning adaptive capacity and its relationship to environmental governance are significant. Contributors to this volume draw upon these areas of scholarship to advance knowledge and practice through theory, case studies and applications and they also provide suggestions for new directions in research.

Resilience and learning: a conspectus for environmental education

There has been an increasing interest in how environmental education contributes to sustainability dating from the 1977 UNESCO conference in Tbilisi to the current Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which in 2009, reached mid term. There is also a growing interest and concern in the complexity, uncertainty and changing nature of social–ecological systems and how sustainability is understood. Learning and resilience figure dominantly in both these trends. This contribution to the collection provides a conceptual overview of environmental learning, resilience in ecology and resilience in human development. The manners in which these conceptual areas are beginning to coalesce are discussed and their intersection in environmental education is illustrated in the context of formal schooling, organisations and society. Key research questions for environmental education emerge about its critical role in enhancing adaptive capacity and contributing to the resilience of social–ecological systems.