Abstract
This research was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council through the Ocean Canada Partnership (Pacific Working Group). Additional support was provided to C.K.W. through an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship (475091) and a Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) fellowship, and to N.J.B. through a Liber Ero Fellowship in Conservation Science, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award, and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship. J.B. was supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research project FIS/2012/074.
Highlights
Coastal communities are experiencing complex social and ecological changes at multiple scales and speeds (Steffen et al 2011, Kareiva and Marvier 2012, Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury 2014, Moore 2016)
Sustainability science holds a promise of providing solutions to real world problems, we found that too few assessments seem to lead to tangible outcomes or actions to foster adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems
Based on a literature review of adaptive capacity studies using key word search terms in Google Scholar and Web of Science for papers published between 1990 and 2015, we identified adaptive capacity assessment approaches that spanned a range of scales from local to large scale and varied in their emphasis on social or ecological methods
Summary
Coastal communities are experiencing complex social and ecological changes at multiple scales and speeds (Steffen et al 2011, Kareiva and Marvier 2012, Kueffer and Kaiser-Bunbury 2014, Moore 2016). Assessments of adaptive capacity are often used to provide the basis for planning adaptations or management actions to mitigate impacts in efforts to achieve beneficial social or ecological outcomes (McClanahan et al 2008, Marshall et al 2010, Hill and Engle 2013). The approaches were grouped into 11 categories based on differences in methods, scale of application, and social or ecological focus: (1) large-scale social indicators, (2) large-scale ecological indicators and models, (3) integrated social-ecological indicators, (4) governance approaches, (5) multiple community surveys, (6) social experiments, (7) species-level experiments, (8) historical ethnographic approaches, (9) participatory planning approaches, (10) qualitative community-based approaches, and (11) mixedmethod approaches (Table 1, Appendix 1) This list covers broad categories of adaptive capacity analyses to illustrate the range of possible approaches and may not be comprehensive. The group was convened to explore the following overarching questions: What are the strengths, drawbacks, and insights of the range of approaches for analyzing adaptive capacity? How might these different approaches be applied to analyze the adaptive capacity of linked SESs? What lessons can be learned from previous efforts to bridge analyses of adaptive capacity with taking actions to build adaptive capacity? For each identified approach to assess adaptive capacity, one participant was asked to present and prepare a brief synopsis based on the following criteria: 1. Describe the approach used to analyze adaptive capacity
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