Adaptive Co-management in Social-Ecological Governance

Abstract

Directional changes in factors that control social-ecological systems require a flexible approach to social-ecological governance that promotes collaboration among stakeholders at various scales and facilitates social learning. Previous chapters showed that environmental and social changes are rapidly degrading many ecosystem services on which human livelihoods depend. However, simply knowing that degradation is occurring seldom leads to solutions. People have tremendous capacity to modify their environment by changing the rules that shape human behavior, yet much of the conventional thinking on resource management offers limited insights into how to steward sustainability in conditions of rapid change. Consequently, there is a critical need to understand the role of people and their social institutions as mechanisms for negotiating social-ecological change. Designing and implementing appropriate resource management in conditions of change requires an understanding of both the processes by which groups make decisions and the mechanisms by which these decision-making processes adjust to change. It also requires moving beyond notions of resource management as control of resources and people, toward an approach of adaptive social-ecological governance.