Abstract
Abstract. This study presents a characterisation of the implementation of Adaptive Management (AM) from the analysis of 35 projects around the world. Our results reveal that AM projects are usually aimed at ecosystem management, conservation and restoration. Also, they mainly act upon forest or epicontinental water ecosystems and their goal is generally species exploitation and in most cases these projects act at a local scale. From a methodological point of view, most AM cases use an active approach and monitoring programs and were at the phase of problem identification. We found differences in the implementation of AM between developed and developing countries that were present in our samples in the following way: AM projects in developed countries were typically carried out by state agencies, and focused on solving problems concerning epicontinental waters and the public use of ecosystems. They had the support of national funds and used modelling techniques. In contrast, the AM projects from developing countries were mainly aimed at the conservation of natural protected areas and at the mitigation of environmental impacts derived from mining activities. The financial support of these projects was frequently provided by international organizations, and the use of modelling techniques was uncommon. For a better exploitation of all the possibilities of AM, we suggest the use of criteria to be customized to the specific needs of the socio-economic reality of every country and to monitor the results at a global scale to continuously improve this practice.
Highlights
As there is no established convention for the designation of ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries in the United Nations system, we considered as developed those countries within the upper third in the ranking of countries according with Human Development Index (HDI) (UNDP 2002)
The analysis of a series of AM cases from a global sample allowed us to obtain a general picture of what it is being performed in the world under the denomination of Adaptive Management
We can state that when we speak of AM we are referring to management models broadly used all over the world, covering all ecological domains but more frequently in the more populated areas
Summary
The study involved 35 study cases of AM, which were obtained by reviewing the scientific literature during 1994– 2004 as well as other documents (e.g. project reports) backed up by well-known institutions (Table 1). Each case was examined to obtain 16 variables that reflected its geographical, ecological, and socio-economic contexts, the actors supporting and undertaking the AM (funding and implementing organizations), and the major methodological features of the practices it involved (Table 2). In those cases in which the bibliography did not supply all the data required for the study, we contacted the authors and asked for additional information. Since only two variables were quantitative, Human Development Index (HDI), and Gross National Product (GNP) (Table 2), a second NMDS was performed without these variables to avoid their overweight in the ordination results For both analyses, distances were measured on the basis of Sorensen index. NMDS analyses were performed with PC-Ord for Windows Multivariate Analysis of Ecological Data ver. 4.0. (McCune and Mefford 1999), and for χ2 tests we used Statistica Software ver. 6.0. (StatSoft 2003)
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