10. Aaptive Governance of Social-ecological Systems

26 Sep 2005 15:56 AR ANRV256-EG30-13.tex XMLPublishSM(2004/02/24) P1: KUV10.1146/annurev.energy.30.050504.144511

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2005. 30:441–73doi: 10.1146/annurev.energy.30.050504.144511

Copyright c© 2005 by Annual Reviews. All rights reservedFirst published online as a Review in Advance on July 25, 2005

ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL

SYSTEMS

Carl Folke,1,2 Thomas Hahn,1 Per Olsson,1

and Jon Norberg2

1Centre for Transdisciplinary Environmental Research and 2Department of SystemsEcology, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden;email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Key Words adaptive capacity, ecosystem management, leadership, resilience,social capital, governance

■ Abstract We explore the social dimension that enables adaptive ecosystem-basedmanagement. The review concentrates on experiences of adaptive governance of social-ecological systems during periods of abrupt change (crisis) and investigates socialsources of renewal and reorganization. Such governance connects individuals, organi-zations, agencies, and institutions at multiple organizational levels. Key persons provideleadership, trust, vision, meaning, and they help transform management organizationstoward a learning environment. Adaptive governance systems often self-organize associal networks with teams and actor groups that draw on various knowledge systemsand experiences for the development of a common understanding and policies. Theemergence of “bridging organizations” seem to lower the costs of collaboration andconflict resolution, and enabling legislation and governmental policies can supportself-organization while framing creativity for adaptive comanagement efforts. A re-silient social-ecological system may make use of crisis as an opportunity to transforminto a more desired state.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442SOCIAL CAPACITY FOR RESPONDING TO AND SHAPING

ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445Knowledge, Learning, and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445Adaptive Management and Organizational Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447Governance and Adaptive Comanagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448Adaptive Governance and Social Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

SOCIAL SOURCES OF RESILIENCE FOR ADAPTABILITY ANDTRANSFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452

Social Memory, Teams, and Actor Groups as Sources of Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . 453Transforming Governance for Social-Ecological Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455

1543-5938/05/1121-0441$20.00 441

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442 FOLKE ET AL.

ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE IN RELATION TO THE BROADERENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462

INTRODUCTION

The history of human use and abuse of ecosystems tells the story of adaptation tothe changing conditions that we create. Often, the response has been to increasecontrol over resources through domestication and simplification of landscapes andseascapes to increase production, avoid fluctuations, and reduce uncertainty (1, 2).This behavior has decreased temporal variability at the expense of increased spatialdependence on other areas on Earth. Human activities have become globally inter-connected and intensified through new technology, capital markets, and systems ofgovernance, with decisions in one place influencing people elsewhere. At the sametime, the capacity of the environment, from local ecosystems to the biosphere, tosustain societal development seems to have been reduced over historical time (3,4) and at increasing pace during the past century (5). This has lead to vulnerabilityin many places and regions with constrained options for human livelihoods andprogress (6, 7). But has humanity adapted its capacity for learning and foresightto deal with this new and challenging situation?

Sometimes change in ecosystems and society is gradual or incremental. Duringperiods of steady progress, things move forward in roughly continuous and pre-dictable ways. At other times, change is abrupt, disorganizing, or turbulent. Duringsuch periods, experience tends to be incomplete for understanding, consequencesof actions are ambiguous, and the future of system dynamics is often unclear anduncertain (8). Evidence points to a situation where periods of abrupt change are ex-pected to increase in frequency, duration, and magnitude (9). At the same time, thecapacity of ecosystems to remain within desired states in the face of abrupt changeseems to have been reduced as a consequence of human actions (10). Vulnerableterrestrial and aquatic ecosystems may easily shift into undesired states in the senseof providing ecosystem services to society. The existence of such alternate regimesposes new fundamental challenges to environment and resource management (11).

Theories and approaches to environment and resource management have to alarge extent focused on single issues or resources and been based on a steady-stateview, interpreting change as gradual and incremental and disregarding interac-tions across scales. Such partial approaches are less useful in the current situationwherein the capacity of many ecosystems to generate resources and ecosystem ser-vices for societal development has become vulnerable to change and no longer canbe taken for granted. Furthermore, it is now clear that patterns of production, con-sumption, and well-being arise not only from economic and social relations withinregions but also depend on the capacity of other regions’ ecosystems to sustainthem (12, 13). A major challenge is to assure this capacity in the face of change (14).

Emerging theories and approaches point to the importance of assessing and ac-tively managing resilience, i.e., the extent to which a system can absorb

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ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE 443

recurrent natural and human perturbations and continue to regenerate withoutslowly degrading or even unexpectedly flipping into less desirable states (10, 15–17). Resilience in this context is defined as the capacity of a system to absorbdisturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentiallythe same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks (18). Science and policy forsustainability need to address the interplay between periods of gradual and abruptchange and their relations to resilience. There is also need to account for inter-actions across spatial and temporal scales to secure the capacity to reorganize inthe face of change. It will require new forms of human behavior with a shift inperspective from the aspiration to control change in systems, assumed to be stable,to sustain and generate desirable pathways for societal development in the face ofincreased frequency of abrupt change (19).

The ecological basis for such an approach is developing and includes recog-nition of ecosystems as complex adaptive systems and the necessity to addressuncertainty and surprise (20–22). It is moving from the conventional approachbased on assessment of the maximum sustainable yield of individual species at asingle broad scale to a more general focus on managing essential ecological pro-cesses that sustain the delivery of harvestable resources and ecosystem services atmultiple scales (23–25). Significant roles of biological diversity in the dynamicsand resilience of complex adaptive systems faced with change become part of theprocess (26–28) of such an ecosystem-based management approach (29).

Furthermore, the ecosystem-based approach recognizes the role of the humandimension in shaping ecosystem processes and dynamics (30, 31). Also, the hu-man dimension reflects properties of complex adaptive systems, such as a diverseset of institutions and behaviors, local interactions between actors, and selectiveprocesses, that shape future social structures and dynamics (32–35).

Scholars have used concepts like coupled human-environment systems (36),ecosocial systems (37) and socioecological systems (38, 39) to illustrate the inter-play between social and ecological systems, but treating the social or ecologicaldimension as a prefix may give it less weight during the analysis. Consequently,Berkes & Folke (40) started to use the term “social-ecological” system to empha-size the integrated concept of humans in nature and to stress that the delineationbetween social and ecological systems is artificial and arbitrary. Research sug-gests that social-ecological systems have powerful reciprocal feedbacks and act ascomplex adaptive systems (8, 31, 41–43).

It is important to clarify that implications of analyses of social-ecological sys-tems generally differ from analyses of social or ecological systems alone (44, 45).Addressing only the social dimension of resource management without an under-standing of resource and ecosystem dynamics will not be sufficient to guide societytoward sustainable outcomes. For example, the mobilization of Belizian coastalfishermen into cooperatives, which was socially desirable and economically suc-cessful, led ultimately to excessive harvesting of stocks of lobster and conch (46).Similarly, focusing only on the ecological side as a basis for decision making forsustainability may lead to too narrow conclusions. For example, an observed shiftin a lake from a desired to a less desired state may indicate that the lake has lost

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444 FOLKE ET AL.

resilience, but if there is capacity in the social system to respond to change andrestore the lake the social-ecological system is still resilient (47, 48).

The capacity to adapt to and shape change is an important component of re-silience in a social-ecological system (42). In a social-ecological system with highadaptability, the actors have the capacity to reorganize the system within desiredstates in response to changing conditions and disturbance events (18). Adaptivemanagement (49) is often put forward as a more realistic and promising approachto deal with ecosystem complexity (50) than management for optimal use andcontrol of resources (1, 44). Dietz et al. (51) used the concept of adaptive gover-nance to expand the focus from adaptive management of ecosystems to address thebroader social contexts that enable ecosystem-based management. By governance,we mean creating the conditions for ordered rule and collective action (52) or in-stitutions of social coordination (53). Governance is the structures and processesby which people in societies make decisions and share power (54). Advocating anadaptive ecosystem approach, Boyle et al. (55) suggest a triad of activities, whereingovernance is the process of resolving trade-offs and of providing a vision and di-rection for sustainability, management is the operationalization of this vision, andmonitoring provides feedback and synthesizes the observations to a narrative ofhow the situation has emerged and might unfold in the future.

There has been substantial progress in understanding the social dimension ofecosystem management, including organizational and institutional flexibility fordealing with uncertainty and change (8, 40, 42, 51, 56–61) and social capital (62–64). Challenges for the social sciences have been raised in this context (65, 66). So-cial sources of resilience, such as social capital (including trust and social networks)and social memory (including experience for dealing with change) (67), are essen-tial for the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt to and shape change (68).

Here, we extend the framework of ecosystem-based management, as currentlyapplied, to explore the social dimension in what we refer to as adaptive governanceof social-ecological systems. We concentrate our review on experiences of gover-nance in relation to complex adaptive ecosystems and in particular during periodswhen change is abrupt, disorganizing, or turbulent. This is the time when existingstructures are most challenged, and the risk for a shift into undesired regimes is thehighest. We are particularly interested in social sources that seem to be of signifi-cance in responding to and shaping change as well as building resilience for reor-ganization in social-ecological systems, both internally and in relation to externaldrivers. The focus is on local and regional governance of landscapes and seascapes.

In the first part of the review, we address the social responsiveness to ecosystemdynamics, in particular learning from the level of individuals through managementpractice and social networks to organizations. It is argued that adaptive gover-nance is operationalized through adaptive comanagement systems and that theroles of social capital, focusing on networks, leadership, and trust, are emphasizedin this context. The second section strives toward understanding social sourcesof resilience, in particular the interplay between crisis and mobilization of so-cial memory for reorganization. The issues of transformation of social-ecological

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systems toward adaptive governance as well as ecosystem and landscape manage-ment are investigated. The third section addresses the capacity of adaptive gover-nance systems to cope with and make use of external perturbations and challengesin the broader social-ecological environment. We emphasize the role of bridgingorganizations that have the ability to strengthen social capital and the capacity foreffective governance of multilevel organizations involved with ecosystem manage-ment. We conclude by presenting four essential features of adaptive governanceof social-ecological systems.

SOCIAL CAPACITY FOR RESPONDING TOAND SHAPING ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS

Management is about bringing together old knowledge, from diverse sources, intonew perspectives for practice (58). Management of ecosystem resilience to sus-tain resources and ecosystem services requires the ability to observe and interpretessential processes and variables in ecosystem dynamics to develop the social ca-pacity to respond to environmental feedback and change (23, 40, 69). Processesthat generate learning, meaning, knowledge, and experience of ecosystem dynam-ics expressed in management practice are part of the social capacity of respondingto environmental change.

Knowledge, Learning, and Practice

Much of contemporary science of natural resource management is focused on de-tailed single-species models, and policy recommendations are based on optimalsustainable use of these species without accounting for the role of ecosystem dy-namics and regional patterns and processes (21). Managing for control and stabilitysets the system on a path to turbulent change (70). Therefore, the goal should beto seek not detailed knowledge of parts of the system but improved understandingof the dynamics of the whole system. Knowledge generation for understandingand managing periods of rapid change, the social sources of resilience requiredfor reorganization following change, as well as strategies for dealing with trueuncertainty and surprise in this context are still in their infancy (8, 71, 72).

Facing complex adaptive systems and periods of rapid change gives the scientista new role in decision making from being an objective and detached specialist ex-pected to deliver knowledge to managers to becoming one of several actors in thelearning and knowledge generation process (31, 73, 74). Other actors include localgroups with experience in resource and ecosystem management (75, 76). Effortsare taking place to mobilize, make use of, and combine different knowledge sys-tems and learning environments to enhance the capacity for dealing with complexadaptive systems and uncertainty (44). It comes as no surprise that knowledge ofecosystem dynamics and associated management practices exists among peopleof communities that, on a daily basis and over long periods of time, interact for

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446 FOLKE ET AL.

their benefit and livelihood with ecosystems (77, 78). The way such knowledge isbeing organized and culturally embedded, its relationship to institutionalized, pro-fessional science, and its role in catalyzing new ways of managing environmentalresources have all become important subjects (79–85).

There is a growing literature on the potential in combining local knowledgesystems with scientific knowledge to cope with change in resource and ecosystemmanagement, including understanding climate change (86) and managing fish-eries, biodiversity, and landscape dynamics (87–90). For example, in the SolomonIslands, indigenous knowledge, practice, and sea tenure systems were used incombination with scientific knowledge to establish marine protected areas forbumphead parrotfish conservation (91). A self-governing community in Ecuadorchanged their unsustainable forest management practice by incorporating scien-tific knowledge about the interplay between freshwater and forest dynamics intotheir traditional knowledge system and thereby curtailed destruction of their moistforest commons (92). It has been argued that such self-organized local responsesfor active adaptation to environmental change have emerged among communitiesand societies that have survived over long periods of time (75).

Berkes & Folke (93) identify management practices that cope with periods ofrapid environmental change in what has been referred to as the “back-loop” ofsocial-ecological system development (8, 42). They divide them into practicesthat evoke change, that survive change, and that nurture sources for reorgani-zation following change (93). McCay (94) refers to the economics of flexibilitywhere diversification is the primary strategy. Robust, adaptive strategies of social-ecological systems accept uncertainty and change (22). They take advantage ofrapid change and surprise and turn them into opportunities for development. Manylocal communities have long recognized the necessity of coexisting with gradualand rapid change. There are groups with associated institutions that have accumu-lated a knowledge base of how to relate to and respond to environmental feedback,which allows the disturbance to enter at smaller scales instead of accumulating tolarger scales, thereby precluding large-scale collapse (95, 96). Such managementpractices seem to have developed as a result of experience with change and crisis,realizing that not all possible outcomes can be anticipated, planned, or predicted(40).

Crisis, perceived or real, seems to trigger learning and knowledge generation(58) and opens up space for new management trajectories of resources and ecosys-tems. For example, Olsson & Folke (97) described how threats of acidification,overfishing, and disease successively initiated learning and generated ecologicalknowledge among local groups in the Lake Racken catchment in western Swe-den. The ecological knowledge system covers scales from physiology of the re-source to integrative knowledge of catchment processes. Knowledge acquisitionof complex adaptive ecosystems is an ongoing, dynamic learning process, andsuch knowledge often emerges over decades with peoples’ institutions and orga-nizations, as illustrated for frontier colonist farmers in the Brazilian Amazon (98).The ecosystem-based management of the Lake Racken catchment, in which the

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ecological knowledge system is embedded, emerged in about a decade, and peoplenow interact through social networks across local to national organizational andinstitutional levels.

Adaptive Management and Organizational Learning

Because the self-organizing properties of complex ecosystems and associatedmanagement systems seem to cause uncertainty to grow over time, understand-ing should be continuously updated and adjusted, and each management actionviewed as an opportunity to further learn how to adapt to changing circumstances(22). This is the foundation for active adaptive management wherein policies be-come hypotheses, and management actions become the experiments to test thosehypotheses (99). Walters (100) in his review of adaptive management of ripar-ian ecosystems argues that a reason for failure lies in management stakeholdersshowing deplorable self-interest, seeing adaptive-policy development as a threat toexisting research programs and management regimes, rather than as an opportunityfor improvement. This is why it is important to address the social dimension andcontexts for adaptive governance in relation to ecosystem management, includingprocesses of participation, collective action, and learning.

Developing the capacity of individuals to learn effectively from their experi-ences is an important part of building knowledge and skills into organizations andinstitutions to permit good adaptive management (101). Learning that helps de-velop adaptive expertise (an individual’s ability to deal flexibly with new situations)and processes of sense making (102) are essential features in governance of com-plex social-ecological systems, and these skills prepare managers for uncertaintyand surprise. Sense making implies taking interpretations seriously, inventing andreinventing a meaningful order and then acting upon it (45). Learning for ecosys-tem management is often considered to be a social process referred to as “sociallearning” (56, 103). Authors have also used the concept “institutional learning.”For example, Ostrom (61) stresses that although theory and evidence play a key rolein increasing the probability of selecting rules for resource management, leadingto better as contrasted to worse outcomes, they cannot eliminate the need to viewall policies as ongoing learning experiments that need to be monitored, evaluated,and adapted over time.

The social context of learning is further stressed in the literature on organi-zational learning (e.g., Reference 58). The confrontation of underlying assump-tions, norms, and objectives and the changes in mental models and meaning werereferred to as double-loop learning by Argyris (104) and applied in relation toecosystem management by, e.g., Blann et al. (105). In recent organizational liter-ature, resilience (interpreted as the capacity for innovation and renewal) has beenproposed as a key feature that allows industries to survive turbulent times andreorganize (106). Whiteman et al. (107) argue that business theory and practiceneed to move beyond organizational resilience and embrace ecosystem resiliencein management goals.

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448 FOLKE ET AL.

Organizational learning is not limited to formal organizations but also takesplace in loosely defined organizations (108). For example, Fazey et al. (101) de-scribe how managers of marsh areas in Australia combined their external expe-riences for a collective interpretation of ecosystem dynamics, and Olsson et al.(109) illustrate how knowledge for ecosystem management in southern Sweden,generated through local innovation, learning, and practice, as well as through ex-ternal experiences and contacts, is collectively mobilized in overlapping subsets ofthe social network and applied in landscape management. Hence, social systemsare structured not only by rules, positions, and resources but also by meaning andby the entire network of communicating individuals and organizations at differ-ent levels of interaction, representing the social system involved in governance ofecosystems (58, 110). A clear and convincing vision, comprehensive stories andmeaning, and good social links and trust with fellow stakeholders may mobilizeseveral interest groups at several levels and start a self-organizing process of learn-ing and social capital generation for management of complex adaptive ecosystems(111).

Governance and Adaptive Comanagement

The self-organizing process may emerge into systems of adaptive comanagement(109, 112). “Adaptive comanagement” systems are flexible community-based sys-tems of resource management tailored to specific places and situations, and they aresupported by and work with various organizations at different levels. The flexiblestructure allows for learning and ways to respond to and shape change. Folke et al.(113) define adaptive comanagement as a process by which institutional arrange-ments and ecological knowledge are tested and revised in a dynamic, ongoing,self-organized process of learning by doing. Adaptive comanagement combinesthe dynamic learning characteristic of adaptive management (e.g., Reference 49)with the linkage characteristic of cooperative management (e.g., References 114and 115) and also with collaborative management (e.g., Reference 116). Coman-agement is concerned with the problem-solving process involved in sharing ofmanagement power across organizational levels (117). Authors have identified so-cial conditions that need to be fulfilled in comanagement systems (e.g., References118 and 119).

Adaptive comanagement relies on the collaboration of a diverse set of stake-holders, operating at different levels, often through networks from local usersto municipalities, to regional and national organizations, and also to internationalbodies. The sharing of management power and responsibility may involve multipleinstitutional linkages among user groups or communities, government agencies,and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In addition, adaptive comanagementextends adaptive management into the social domain and is a way to operationalizeadaptive governance. Although adaptive management focuses on understandingecosystem dynamics and feeding ecological knowledge into management orga-nizations, adaptive governance conveys multi-objective reality when handling

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conflicts among diverse stakeholders and, at the same time, adapts this socialproblem to resolve issues concerning dynamic ecosystems (51). The term “gover-nance” has recently become a catchword for various alternatives to conventionaltop-down government control, including collaboration, partnerships, and networks(120). Issues of legitimacy and accountability are often stressed in the literatureon governance (121, 122), and good governance of ecosystems has been inter-preted as solving the trilemma characterized by tensions between effectiveness,participation, and legitimacy (123).

Governance emerges from many actors in the state-society complex and canbe institutionalized or expressed through subtle norms of interactions or evenmore indirectly through influencing agendas and shaping contexts in which actorscontest decisions and access resources (54). In a review of the recent governanceliterature (L. Martin, unpublished paper), Martin found a new appreciation ofloosely structured governance entities that spontaneously emerge or self-organize,often in response to rigid governmental structures. Lee (53) refers to such adaptivesystems of governance as the new governance and defines it as a polycentric formof social coordination in which actions are coordinated voluntarily by individualsand organizations with self-organizing and self-enforcing capabilities.

Adaptive governance of ecosystems generally involves polycentric institutionalarrangements, which are nested quasi-autonomous decision-making units operat-ing at multiple scales (124, 125). They involve local, as well as higher, organiza-tional levels and aim at finding a balance between decentralized and centralizedcontrol (126). The vertical links of such arrangements may boost adaptive gov-ernance, for instance when local and national institutions gain strength from be-ing nested in regional and global institutions. Such links can also stifle adaptivegovernance, as in cases where national land-use regulations contradict or under-mine informal local systems of land tenure (127) and limit practitioners’ abilitiesto exploit an interorganizational network’s collaborative capacity (128). Institu-tional interaction across organizational levels can increase the diversity of responseoptions and can deal more appropriately with uncertainty and change (61). Fur-thermore, such polycentric arrangements may be of significance in responding toecosystem dynamics at different scales. The ability to use institutions effectively,at organizational levels appropriate to the ecological scale, has been referred to asscale-matching (56) or institutional fit (84, 129).

Adaptive Governance and Social Capital

Adaptive governance involves devolution of management rights and power sharingthat promotes participation. However, devolution of management rights does notautomatically result in adaptive comanagement. Adaptive comanagement requiressocial networks (in the sense of Reference 130). For example, the devolution ofmanagement rights in1994 in Sweden to a fishing association resulted in increasedlocal control over the management of fish and crayfish in inland freshwater lakesand streams (97). It did not initially involve efforts to develop partnerships among

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450 FOLKE ET AL.

actors at local to state levels. However, in 1998 the Swedish Environmental Protec-tion Agency and the National Board of Fisheries initiated a joint project betweenNorway and Sweden to implement an action program for conserving the noblecrayfish (131). It involves collaboration between county administration boards,municipalities, rural economic and agricultural associations, local fishing associ-ations, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Board ofFisheries of both countries. It is funded by the European Commissions Interregprogram, three Norwegian and two Swedish county administrations boards, andseveral Norwegian municipalities. The action program for the noble crayfish illus-trates an alternative governance form within a polycentric institutional structure,which assumed a new role for government and governmental agencies and stimu-lated the emergence of adaptive governance. External resources and actors can playan important role, interacting with internal and local ones, in creating civic arenasor forums as well as social and political spaces for deliberation (94). Schneideret al. (132) state that formal lines of authority are blurred in these self-organizednetwork-based governance systems in which diverse policy actors are knitted to-gether to focus on common problems, but these multilevel networks can stimulatecollaboration, build trust, provide information, and encourage the developmentof common perspectives on policy issues. Such networks represent informal gov-ernance systems across organizational levels with an interest in influencing andimplementing policies in a given resource area. They have been referred to aspolicy communities (133) or epistemic communities (134).

In times of rapid change informal social networks can provide arenas for noveltyand innovation and enhance flexibility, all of which tend to be stifled in bureau-cracies (99). However, these network structures do not replace the accountabilityof existing hierarchical bureaucracies but operate within and complement them(135). As observed by Steel & Weber (136), too much decentralization may coun-teract its purpose and miss the opportunity of collective action that involves severalorganizational levels.

Networks of collaboration may emerge from different actors and levels, in-cluding local as well as governmental initiatives. Schusler et al. (137) describea successful attempt by a New York State agency to encourage comanagementthrough a deliberative process. Aided by researchers, the agency initiated collabo-ration and catalyzed social learning. The stakeholders were invited to a conferenceand learned about system dynamics of the basin, about the concerns of other par-ticipants, and as much as half of them experienced value formation and alteredtheir own concerns related to natural resource management in the area. Formal col-laboration initiated by authorities can be supported by legislation and institutionalinteraction, as the polycentric fishing institutions in Sweden, or be nonstatutoryarrangements with the purpose of collaborative learning and conflict resolution,as the example by Schusler illustrates. Berkes (138) distinguishes between realcomanagement, with shared management authority, and multistakeholder bodiesthat are often used by government agencies to increase legitimacy and manageconflicts without devolution of power.

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Governing complex adaptive ecosystems requires adaptive managers supportedby flexible organizations (58); problem-oriented organization or adhocracy orga-nizations (139) have been suggested by Danter et al. (59) and observed by Imperial(128) as significant in this context. In Kristianstad, Sweden, the loosely connectedhorizontal and vertical networks are based on voluntary participation, and key per-sons are mobilized to form ad hoc project organizations when pressing issues arise(140). These collaboration networks can provide an arena where social capital isenhanced and where concerns are reformulated to generate innovation and nurturerenewal in times of reorganization. Informal collaboration dominates at the locallevel but may also span the regional and global levels. For instance, UNESCOMan and Biosphere reserves are often governed by an informal ad hoc assemblyof concerned individuals and NGOs with no legal power but ability to influencethe policy-making process (55).

Collaboration in governance networks requires leadership. Here we focus onleadership in the direction of adaptive governance of social-ecological systems.Crises open up arenas for new leadership with various objectives (99). In a review ofthe empirical literature on watershed partnership by Leach & Pelkey (141), effec-tive leadership and management was the second most frequent factor for successfulpartnership after adequate funding. Leadership is essential in shaping change andreorganization by providing innovation in order to achieve the flexibility needed todeal with ecosystem dynamics. This is addressed by Shannon (142) in her work onthe role of policy entrepreneurs in forest management and by Kuhnert (143) andOstrom (144) on public entrepreneurs in relation to irrigation- and groundwaterbasin management. Furthermore, entrepreneurial leaders have proven their signif-icance in the development of international institutions by functioning as agendasetters, popularizing issues at stake, devising policy options to overcome bargain-ing impediments, brokering deals, and lining up support for salient options (145).Leaders can provide key functions for adaptive governance, such as building trust,making sense, managing conflict, linking actors, initiating partnership among ac-tor groups, compiling and generating knowledge, and mobilizing broad supportfor change. Key individuals also develop and communicate visions of ecosystemmanagement that frame self-organizing processes (58). These individuals oftenhave the ability to manage existing knowledge within social networks for ecosys-tem management and further develop those networks. Lack of leaders can lead toinertia in social-ecological systems (111).

Trust makes social life predictable, it creates a sense of community, and it makesit easier for people to work together (146). Trust can be said to be the basis of allsocial institutions and is also integral to the idea of social influence, as it is easierto influence or persuade someone who is trusting (147, 148). Building trust and thegrowth of social network are closely related to investments in social capital. Pretty& Ward (149) refer to social capital as relations of trust, reciprocity, commonrules, norms, sanctions, and connectedness in institutions. Several authors haveregarded social capital as the glue for adaptive capacity and collaboration (63,109, 149–151), whereas others have contested its empirically explanatory power

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452 FOLKE ET AL.

(152, 153). Social capital is built by investing in social relationships, and thenetworks that emerge can either focus on horizontal or vertical collaboration (111).Both dimensions seem to be necessary for transforming ecosystem managementto more adaptive governance (58). Wondolleck & Yaffee (118) provide severalexamples of how public managers have invested in building trust and collaborationto meet their objectives in natural resource management. Stakeholder networkshave emerged in some of the U.S. National Estuary Program areas (154). Theseareas have been found to span more levels of government, integrate more expertsinto policy discussions, build trust, reduce the level of conflict among key personsfrom different stakeholder groups, and as a result, increase the legitimacy of theprogram (132).

We emphasize that, to emerge and be effective, self-organized governance sys-tems for ecosystem management require a civic society with a certain level of socialcapital (53, 149), and the governance system must continuously learn and generateexperience about ecosystem dynamics. Social capital increases the flexibility ofmanagement organizations and institutions, but the social features and processesunderlying reorganization after disturbance are not well understood. In the nextsection, we focus on social sources of resilience that make adaptive governance ofsocial-ecological systems possible. We are particularly interested in social sourcesof resilience that can be mobilized to adapt to and shape periods of rapid andturbulent change as well as contribute to the reorganization of social-ecologicalsystems into desired states.

SOCIAL SOURCES OF RESILIENCE FORADAPTABILITY AND TRANSFORMATION

Systems with high adaptive capacity are able to reconfigure themselves whensubject to change without significant declines in crucial functions of the social-ecological system. Gunderson & Holling (8) argue that addressing how peoplerespond to periods of change and how society reorganizes following change arethe most neglected and the least understood aspects in resource management andscience. Synthesizing several case studies, Folke et al. (68) identified and expandedon the following four critical factors that interact across temporal and spatial scalesand that seem to be required for dealing with social-ecological dynamics duringperiods of rapid change and reorganization:

� Learning to live with change and uncertainty� Combining different types of knowledge for learning� Creating opportunity for self-organization toward social-ecological resilience� Nurturing sources of resilience for renewal and reorganization

The first three factors have been dealt with above. Here, we focus on nurturingsources of resilience. The functional role of biological diversity as a source of

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resilience in ecosystem renewal and reorganization is a growing area of researchreviewed elsewhere (e.g., References 10 and 28). Here, we are concerned with thesocial sources in adaptive governance of social-ecological systems that help copewith and adapt to change and facilitate reorganization and innovation followingdisturbance and crisis.

Social Memory, Teams, and Actor Groupsas Sources of Resilience

Resilience of social-ecological systems in the face of uncertainty and surprise isabout promoting the capacity to expect the unexpected and absorb it (72). Assuggested by Low et al. (155) diversity and redundancy of institutions and theiroverlapping functions across organizational levels may play a central role in ab-sorbing disturbance and in spreading risks. Hence, it is an important challengeto overcome common perceptions of inefficiencies associated with redundancy,namely fragmentation and duplication of authority, policy inconsistencies, andhigh transaction costs (126). Accumulating experience through collective learn-ing, mobilized during periods of rapid change as discussed above, is importantin this context (56, 93). A collective memory of experiences with resource andecosystem management provides context for social responses and helps the social-ecological system prepare for change. If experience embedded in institutions andorganizations provides a context for the modification of management policy andrules, people can act adaptively in the face of surprise. They can navigate theturbulent phase and perform through diversification and redundancy rather thansimplification (61, 155).

A crucial challenge for adaptive governance during periods of rapid changeseems to be the mobilization of social memory. “Social memory” has been definedas the arena in which captured experience with change and successful adaptations,embedded in a deeper level of values, is actualized through community debate anddecision-making processes into appropriate strategies for dealing with ongoingchange (67). Social memory is important for linking past experiences with presentand future policies. It is a part of the cultural capital of human society (156). A sub-set of social memory is the accumulation of a diversity of experiences concerningmanagement practices and rules in use at the collective level. It draws on experiencebut allows for novelty, innovation, and experimentation within the framework ofaccumulated experience (e.g., Reference 140), referred to as framed creativity (68).

Social memory seems to play an important role in the adaptive comanagementprocess when key persons draw on social memory of several scales in reorgani-zation following change. Social networks can be key mechanisms for drawing onsocial memory at critical times and enhance information flow and collaborationacross scales. The social memory of past changes in ecosystems, and responses tothese, can be mobilized and fed into processes whereby structures of governance ofecosystem are decided, management practices worked out, and conflicts resolved.This requires leadership at various organizational levels (110, 157).

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Different agents/actors or team/actor groups seem to play significant roles, aspart of social memory, in mobilizing the social network to deal with change andunexpected events and to reorganize accordingly. Guimera et al. (158) find thatteam self-assembly mechanisms determine the structure of collaboration networksand team performance. They suggest that team size, the fraction of newcomers, andthe tendency of incumbents to repeat previous collaboration are of significance.Holling & Chambers (159) identified in their workshops on adaptive managementa set of characters that emerges in the process and that take on different rolesfrom leadership to those who oppose and criticize. Gladwell (160) in his book ontipping points stresses the social roles of mavens (altruistic individuals, with socialskills, who serve as information brokers, sharing and trading what they know) andconnectors (individuals who know lots of people not only by numbers but the kindof people they know and in particular the diversity of acquaintances). They are thestrength of the weak ties and enhance the information base of their social network.Mavens are data banks and provide the message. Connectors are social glue andspread the message, and then there are salesmen, individuals with the social skillsto persuade people unconvinced of what they are hearing. All interact to createrapid and large change (160).

Many patterns of adaptive comanagement can be understood by personal traits,and these traits combined with the roles of teams or actor groups are importantfactors for building adaptive capacity and provide a source of social resilience insocial-ecological systems. Bebbington (161) identified brokers with different back-grounds, including a priest, university professor, European volunteers, and fundingagencies that came from outside and played key roles in sustainable agricultureintensification in the Andes. They brought in new ideas, but more importantly theybrought in networks of contacts that helped the members of the local communi-ties gain access to nonlocal institutions and resources, including access to NGOswith technical assistance and financial resources, sources of technology, donors,and alternative trading networks. Tompkins et al. (162) show how expanding andlinking networks of dependence and exchange helps facilitate integrated and in-clusive coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago. Such networks spread acrossnational and international boundaries in ways that would have been hard for thelocals to do on their own.

Other social roles of key individuals operating in teams or actor groups inadaptive comanagement systems include knowledge carriers, knowledge gener-ators, stewards, leaders, and people who make sense of available information(109). Folke et al. (68), using several case studies, also identified the followingactor groups: knowledge retainers, interpreters, facilitators, visionaries, inspirers,innovators, experimenters, followers, and reinforcers. Social capital focuses onrelationships among such groups, i.e., the bridging and bonding links betweenpeople in social networks (163, 164). Applied to adaptive governance, these re-lationships must be fed with relevant knowledge on ecosystem dynamics. This isrelated to the capacity of teams to process information, to make sense of scien-tific data and connect it to an empirical context, to mobilize the social memory of

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experiences from past changes and responses, and to facilitate adaptive and inno-vative responses.

Social roles of actor groups are all important components of social networksand essential for creating the conditions that we argue are necessary for adaptivegovernance of ecosystem dynamics during periods of rapid change and reorga-nization. Linking different actors groups in networks and creating opportunitiesfor new interactions are important for dealing with uncertainty and change andcritical factors for learning and nurturing integrated adaptive responses to change(165). We hypothesize that the combination of social roles of agent/actor andteam/actor groups as part of social memory as well as their diversity, overlappingfunctions, and redundancy provide resilience for reorganization, allow for nov-elty, and thereby enhance adaptive capacity in the face of disturbance and crisis(68). But their combination may also cause barriers, collision, and erosion of so-cial capital and social memory, as may be the case when different cultural valuesystems, worldviews, and discrepancies in conceptualization are brought togetherand interact (e.g., Reference 166) or when the cultural dynamics created by thepolicies of those in power during earlier periods may inhibit development of theability to respond to disturbance and surprise (99). In this sense, the underlyingworldview of resource management (167) may impose a grid on social memoryfor managing ecosystem dynamics (1), and opinion shifts may be inhibited bycredible authorities, who neglect the problem, or by competition for attention toother issues and problems that take place simultaneously (111).

However, key individuals with strong leadership may catalyze opinion shifts(111, 160), and creative teams and actor groups may emerge into a large connectedcommunity of practitioners who prepare a social-ecological system for change(105, 158) and transform it into a new state as discussed below. Such fundamentalchange in social-ecological systems can occur rapidly (111).

Transforming Governance for Social-EcologicalSustainability

Surprise and crisis seem to create space for reorganization, renewal, and nov-elty as well as provide opportunities for new ways of social self-organization forresilience (8). The crises may be caused by, for example, external markets andtourism pressure, floods and flood management, shifts in property rights, threatsof acidification, resource failures, rigid paradigms of resource management, andnew legislation or governmental policies that do not take into account local con-texts (42). A social-ecological system with low levels of social memory and socialcapital is vulnerable to such changes and may as a consequence deteriorate intoundesired states.

In contrast, crisis may trigger mobilization of social capital and social memoryand may result in new forms of governance systems with the ability to managedynamic ecosystems and landscapes. This has been referred to as building socialcapacity for resilience in social-ecological systems (68), and it requires inducing

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Figure 1 The role of leadership in transforming an organization toward ecosystemmanagement and sustaining it [modified from Danter et al. (59)].

change in social structures (58). For instance, in a study of the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service, Danter et al. (59) highlight the need for organizational changeas a component of ecosystem management and put forward the role of leadershipin actively initiating change within organizations (Figure 1). Visionary leadersfabricate new and vital meanings, overcome contradictions, create new synthesis,and forge new alliances between knowledge and action (58). Leadership that canengage and change the opinions and values of a critical mass of people to createan epidemic movement toward an idea has been investigated by Scheffer et al.(111) and is referred to as tipping-point leadership (168). Kingdon (169) stressesthe importance of timing for initiating change and suggests that policy windowsopen either when decision makers perceive a problem as pressing and seek a policy(problem-driven window) or when they adopt a theme for their administration andlook for problems that may justify change and proposals that are along the theme(politically driven window). A policy entrepreneur in this context is a person whoconnects political momentum to problem perception and a policy proposal. Grindle& Thomas (170) have also studied the role of such key individuals in shaping andinfluencing policy and institutional change with a focus on developing countries.Key individuals assess and identify a range of opportunities for change, a processreferred to as creating policy space. Single individuals have also been found to playkey functions in managing boundaries between different organizations involved in

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science and policy and also in the context of learning, knowledge generation, andsocial responses for dealing with global environmental risks (103, 171), includingthe social amplification of risk (172).

In the literature on resilience, adaptability is the capacity of actors in a social-ecological system to manage resilience in the face of uncertainty and surprise.It implies remaining and developing within the current attractor of the social-ecological system. In contrast, transformability is the capacity to create a funda-mentally new system when ecological, economic, or social (including political)conditions make the existing system untenable. Transformability means creatingand defining a new attractor that directs the development of the social-ecologicalsystem by introducing new components and ways of making a living, therebychanging the state variables, and often the scales of key cycles, that define thesystem (18).

Transformations toward alternative forms of governance have been addressed byKettl (135), Kuks & Bressers (173) and Agrawal (174). In a recent paper (109), weanalyzed the emergence of a governance system for adaptive comanagement of thewetland landscape of Kristianstad in southern Sweden, a process whereby uncon-nected management by several actors in the landscape was mobilized, renewed, andmoved into a new configuration of ecosystem management within about a decade.The self-organizing process was triggered by the perceived threats to the area’scultural and ecological values among people of various local steward associationsand local government. A key individual provided visionary leadership in directingchange and transforming governance. The transformation involved four phases: (a)preparing the system for change, (b) the opening of an opportunity, (c) navigatingthe transition, and (d ) charting a new direction for management while buildingresilience of the new governance regime (Figure 2). Trust-building dialogues, mo-bilization of social networks with actors and teams across scales, coordinationof ongoing activities, sense making, collaborative learning, and creating publicawareness were part of the process. A comprehensive framework with a sharedvision and goals that presented conservation as development and turned problemsinto opportunities was developed and contributed to a shift in values and mean-ing of the wetland landscape among key actors. The shift was facilitated throughbroader scale crises, such as seal deaths and toxic algal blooms in the North Sea,which caused environmental issues to become top priority on the national politicallevel, at the time of a search for a new identity at the municipality level. Hence, awindow of opportunity at the political level opened, which made it possible to tipand transform the governance system into a trajectory of adaptive comanagementof the landscape with extensive social networks of practitioners engaged in mul-tilevel governance. The transformation took place within the existing institutionalframework (140). As observed by McCay (94), changing perceptions of the envi-ronment can change human behavior on a fairly large scale without involving thesocial dynamics and political behavior involved in making and changing rules.

Transformational leadership includes recognizing opportunities, identifyingand transforming constraints and barriers, such as conflicts of interests, values,

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458 FOLKE ET AL.

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and opinions (175). This is critical for reducing the resilience of undesired trajec-tories and building up a momentum for moving into new trajectories (58). Currentlyefforts in the wetland landscape of Kristianstad are directed toward strengtheningthe resilience of the new governance system in the performance of ecosystem man-agement. Olsson et al. (109) identified 30 different strategies for increasing thecapacity for dealing with uncertainty and change and divided these strategies intodeveloping motivation and values for ecosystem management, directing the localcontext through adaptive comanagement, and navigating the larger environment.The new governance system strives to combine vision, direction, learning, andmanagement and has been instrumental in orchestrating the area to become thefirst Man and the Biosphere Reserve in Sweden.

Successful social transformations toward adaptive governance for ecosystemmanagement seem to be preceded by the emergence of informal networks, orches-trated by key individuals, that help facilitate information flows, identify knowledgegaps, and create nodes of expertise of significance for ecosystem management thatcan be drawn upon at critical times. These networks place emphasis on politicalindependence, out of the fray of regulation and implementation, places where for-mal networks and many planning processes fail (50). Gunderson et al. (99) haveemphasized the role of such shadow networks as incubators of new approachesfor governing social-ecological systems. Because members of these networks arenot always under scrutiny or obligations of their agencies or constituencies, mostlikely they are freer to develop alternative policies, dare to learn from each other,and think creatively about the resolution of resource problems. But, even if the newadaptive governance system is performing in a resilient manner through adaptivecomanagement of ecosystems and landscapes it may be challenged and fragileduring changes in external drivers.

ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE IN RELATIONTO THE BROADER ENVIRONMENT

Lots of efforts may go in to supporting the emergence of adaptive governancefor management of ecosystems, and such governance may perform quite success-fully during periods of gradual change. But rapid change may challenge the wholegovernance system. In the Kristianstad example, a change in European Union agri-cultural subsidies of cattle grazing or a rapid increase in climate-induced floodingmay perturb the system and cause irreversible change. Therefore, key stewardsactively develop strategies that prepare for uncertainty and surprise. They navi-gate the larger environment of social, economic, and ecological drivers to reducevulnerability and thereby enhance their ability to cope with change as resourcedevelopment continues along desired trajectories.

Vulnerability research emphasizes the importance of addressing both the roleof external forces and rapid change in reshaping social-ecological systems as wellas the different capacities of agents/actors in the system to respond to change onthe basis of their access to social and biophysical capital (36). In their review on

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causes behind land-use change, Lambin et al. (176) argue that land-use change canbe understood using the concepts of complex adaptive systems and transitions.They illustrate that synergies between resource scarcity leading to an increasein the pressure of production on resources, changing opportunities created bymarkets, outside policy intervention, loss of adaptive capacity, and changes insocial organization and attitudes are essential drivers that challenge governancesystems in tropical regions. The strength of marine tenure institutions in PapuaNew Guinea and Indonesia seems to be undermined by connectivity to largermarkets. Immigration, dependence on fishing, and conflicts also impact marinetenure systems (177). Differences in land tenure, agricultural policy, and marketconditions are more significant drivers of long-term changes in semiarid Africansavannas than are agro-pastoral population growth, cattle numbers, or small-holderland use (178). Increasing vulnerability places a region on a trajectory of greaterrisk to the panoply of stresses and shocks that occur over time. Catastrophes, i.e.,undesirable sudden changes in social-ecological systems, are due to a combinationof the magnitude of external forces and the internal resilience of the system.As resilience declines, it takes a progressively smaller external event to causea catastrophe. The process is a cumulative one in which sequences of shocks andstresses punctuate the trends, and the inability to replenish coping resources propelsa region and its people to increasing criticality (6, 7, 179).

Hence, adaptive governance of social-ecological resilience also requires ca-pacity to deal with the broader environment and preparation for uncertainty andsurprise (180). A growing literature on polycentric institutions (124, 125, 181)demonstrates that flexible coping with external drivers and rapid change is en-hanced by systems of governance that exist at multiple levels with some degree ofautonomy, complemented by modest overlaps in authority and capability (155).Such flexible institutional arrangements have been judged as inefficient becausethey look messy and are nonhierarchical in structure, but they help provide a reper-toire of general design principles that can be drawn on by resource users at multiplelevels to aid in the crafting of new institutions that cope with changing situations(182, 183).

A lot of attention is given to multilevel governance and cross-scale interactionsin relation to social-ecological systems and adaptive comanagement (e.g., Refer-ences 41, 127, 129, 138, 184–186). The real challenge is dealing with systemsthat are not only cross-scale but also dynamic, whereby the nature of cross-scaleinfluences in the linked social-ecological system changes over time, creating fun-damental problems for division of responsibility between centralized and decen-tralized agents (187). Gunderson & Holling (8) use the concept “panarchy” as aheuristic model to conceptualize complex interactions, emphasizing the interplaybetween periods of gradual and rapid change within and between scales and be-tween novelty and memory, and scholars have used such aspects to address changein complex adaptive social-ecological systems (e.g., References 188 and 189).

An important factor in this context is organizations in adaptive comanage-ment that emerge to bridge local actors and communities with other scales of

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organizations. Such bridging organizations can serve as filters for external drivers(190) and also provide opportunities by bringing in resources, knowledge, and otherincentives for ecosystem management. Westley (58) used the term “bridging” forinterorganizational collaboration. In Kristianstad, southern Sweden, a bridging or-ganization, the Ecomuseum Kristianstad Vattenrike, emerged as a local responseto the perceived crisis in wetland landscape management. The Ecomuseum pro-vides an arena for building trust, sense making, learning, vertical and/or horizontalcollaboration, and conflict resolution. The bridging organization encompasses thefunction of a boundary organization (171, 191) by communicating, translating,and mediating scientific knowledge to make it relevant to policy and action. Theorganization also uses its network of stakeholders to mobilize knowledge and so-cial memory in turbulent times, which in turn help deal with uncertainty and shapechange (68).

NGOs may act as bridging organizations in, for example, community-basedecosystem management in tropical regions, and scientists may serve as visionaryleaders in the process (e.g., Reference 81). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment(http://www.maweb.org) provides several local examples of how bridging organi-zations perform essential functions in crafting effective responses, often withoutchanging formal institutions (192). These include the bottom-up initiative in Swe-den, a top-down initiative in the Philippines, and external initiatives in Indonesiaand Chile. About 12 million people live around the Laguna Lake in the Philippines.The governance was compartmentalized and nonparticipatory before the author-ities formed 33 River Rehabilitation Councils (RRCs), which included severalstakeholders. The RRCs can be regarded as bridging organizations that are able toaddress social as well as ecological drivers and make comprehensive and effectiveresponses to declining trends. The scientific community played an important role inthe formation of RRCs (193). Development agencies and research institutes, suchas the Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) program of International Centre forResearch in Agroforestry, can also act as catalyzer and perform functions similar tobridging organizations. In Indonesia, the ASB facilitated a tenure reform by invest-ing several years in dialogue and consensus building with NGOs, local governmentoffices, and the Krui community. Eventually the ASB managed to convince the au-thorities of the high social benefits from community agroforestry (194). In northernChile, a small research center without formal political or economic power man-aged to provide an arena with an advisory committee, for indigenous communities,large mining companies, tourist operators, and local government officials. Accessto information and the unique opportunity to interact because of a complex andpressing issue attracted these participants. A history of distrust was broken when,for the first time, they sat down together to discuss ecosystem management andlocal development. Capacity building was reinforced through scenario workshopsundertaken in late 2004, as part of The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (195).

Bridging organizations thrive under open institutions (196), which provide flex-ibility and space for dealing with the ambiguity of multiple objectives. These areimportant in strengthening the adaptive capacity of local actors. By reducing the

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(nonmonetary) transaction costs of collaboration, bridging organizations can bedescribed as providing social incentives to stakeholders to invest in building trust,identification of common interests, and resolving conflict (140). The facilitation,leadership, and social incentives for collaboration provided by bridging organi-zations or key persons in the community appear to be essential for building thecapacity to adapt to change (118).

In a similar vein, McCay (94) states that emergence of viable governance in-stitutions may depend on the creation of large multistakeholder organizations orencompassing organizations. She refers to a coordinating unit that was created inEcuador (using a model tried out in Mexico) and that represented local communi-ties, timber companies, government agencies, environmental NGOs, and foreignassistance groups. It became a forum for discussion and debate on sustainableforestry issues, and a civic arena for bargaining and making compromises andtrade-offs, as well as communication. The local communities were able to im-prove the terms of trade with the timber companies because they could exchangeinformation on deals offered and cooperate in demanding better prices. The timbercompanies also benefited by getting the communities to agree on a workable policyfor sales of timber land.

CONCLUSION

In recent years cooperative and collaborative efforts and participatory approacheshave become increasingly popular in ecosystem management and governmentalpolicy. Stakeholder meetings, engaging different actors in workshop settings, havebeen part of the process. There has been a tendency, however, for the natural sci-entists to do the science first or governmental agencies to develop the agenda first,present it to the different groups, and incorporate these groups in already estab-lished frameworks. Complex social dynamics, such as trust building and powerrelations, have often been underestimated and the view of social relationshipssimplified. Once a problem needing collaboration moves into the public arena,stakeholders tend to become frozen in polarized positions, and any real negotiationbecomes difficult (58). Consequently, many attempts for ecosystem stewardshiphave failed.

In this review, we have explored the social dimension of adaptive comanage-ment of ecosystems and landscapes, referred to as systems of adaptive governance.The focus has been on social features and sources that seem to be of significance inresponding to crisis, shaping change and building resilience for reorganization andrenewal of social-ecological systems, both internally and in relation to external per-turbations. This challenge involves linking a broad range of actors at multiple scalesto deal with the interrelated dynamics of resources and ecosystems, managementsystems and social systems, as well as uncertainty, unpredictability, and surprise.

Adaptive governance focuses on experimentation and learning, and it bringstogether research on institutions and organizations for collaboration, collective

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action, and conflict resolution in relation to natural resource and ecosystem man-agement. The essential role of individuals needs to be recognized in this context(e.g., leadership, trust building, vision, and meaning); their social relations (e.g.,actor groups, knowledge systems, social memory) and social networks serve asthe web that tie together the adaptive governance system. It has cross-level andcross-scale activities and includes governmental policies that frame creativity. Thenotion of adaptation implies capacity to respond to change and even transformsocial-ecological systems into improved states.

Research on adaptive governance of social-ecological systems illustrate thatthe management of ecosystem and landscapes is complex to apprehend and imple-ment and, therefore, cannot easily be subject to planning and control by a centralorganization, such as a national government. However, the conditions creating theopportunities for adaptive comanagement to self-organize, such as enabling leg-islation, flexible institutions, and recognition of bridging organization, are goodcandidates for governmental actions, which can be carefully tested and evaluated.

The review highlights the following four interacting aspects of importance inadaptive governance of complex social-ecological systems:

� Build knowledge and understanding of resource and ecosystem dynamics;detecting and responding to environmental feedback in a fashion that con-tributes to resilience require ecological knowledge and understanding ofecosystem processes and functions. All sources of understanding need tobe mobilized, and management of complex adaptive systems may benefitfrom the combination of different knowledge systems. Social incentives forecological knowledge generation need to be in place as well as the capacityto monitor and translate signals (feedback) from ecosystem dynamics intoknowledge that can be used in the social system.

� Feed ecological knowledge into adaptive management practices; successfulmanagement is characterized by continuous testing, monitoring, and reevalu-ation to enhance adaptive responses, acknowledging the inherent uncertaintyin complex systems. It is increasingly proposed that knowledge generationof ecosystem dynamics should be explicitly integrated with adaptive man-agement practices rather than striving for optimization based on past records.This aspect emphasizes a learning environment that requires leadership andchanges of social norms within management organizations.

� Support flexible institutions and multilevel governance systems; the adap-tive governance framework is operationalized through adaptive comanage-ment whereby the dynamic learning characteristic of adaptive managementis combined with the multilevel linkage characteristic of comanagement.The sharing of management power and responsibility may involve multipleand often polycentric institutional and organizational linkages among usergroups or communities, government agencies, and nongovernmental organi-zations, i.e., neither centralization nor decentralization but cross-level inter-actions. Adaptive comanagement relies on the collaboration of a diverse set of

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stakeholders, operating at different levels through social networks. This as-pect emphasizes the role of multilevel social networks to generate and transferknowledge and develop social capital as well as legal, political, and financialsupport to ecosystem management initiatives.

� Deal with external perturbations, uncertainty and surprise; it is not sufficientfor a well-functioning multilevel governance system to be in tune with thedynamics of the ecosystems under management. It also needs to developcapacity for dealing with changes in climate, disease outbreaks, hurricanes,global market demands, subsidies, and governmental policies. The chal-lenge for the social-ecological system is to accept uncertainty, be preparedfor change and surprise, and enhance the adaptive capacity to deal with dis-turbance. Nonresilient social-ecological systems are vulnerable to externalchange, whereas a resilient system may even make use of disturbances asopportunities to transform into more desired states.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank friends and colleagues of the Resilience Alliance, Stock-holm University, and the Beijer Institute for constructive discussions. FORMAS,the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and SpatialPlanning, has supported our work.

The Annual Review of Environment and Resources is online athttp://environ.annualreviews.org

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P1: JRX

September 27, 2005 15:29 Annual Reviews AR256-FM

Annual Review of Environment and ResourcesVolume 30, 2005

CONTENTS

I. EARTH’S LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Regional Atmospheric Pollution and Transboundary Air QualityManagement, Michelle S. Bergin, J. Jason West, Terry J. Keating,and Armistead G. Russell 1

Wetland Resources: Status, Trends, Ecosystem Services, and Restorability,Joy B. Zedler and Suzanne Kercher 39

Feedback in the Plant-Soil System, Joan G. Ehrenfeld, Beth Ravit,and Kenneth Elgersma 75

II. HUMAN USE OF ENVIRONMENT AND RESOURCES

Productive Uses of Energy for Rural Development,R. Anil Cabraal, Douglas F. Barnes, and Sachin G. Agarwal 117

Private-Sector Participation in the Water and Sanitation Sector,Jennifer Davis 145

Aquaculture and Ocean Resources: Raising Tigers of the Sea,Rosamond Naylor and Marshall Burke 185

The Role of Protected Areas in Conserving Biodiversity and SustainingLocal Livelihoods, Lisa Naughton-Treves, Margaret Buck Holland,and Katrina Brandon 219

III. MANAGEMENT AND HUMAN DIMENSIONS

Economics of Pollution Trading for SO2 and NOx , Dallas Burtraw,David A. Evans, Alan Krupnick, Karen Palmer, and Russell Toth 253

How Environmental Health Risks Change with Development: TheEpidemiologic and Environmental Risk Transitions Revisited,Kirk R. Smith and Majid Ezzati 291

Environmental Values, Thomas Dietz, Amy Fitzgerald, and Rachael Shwom 335

Righteous Oil? Human Rights, the Oil Complex, and Corporate SocialResponsibility, Michael J. Watts 373

Archaeology and Global Change: The Holocene Record,Patrick V. Kirch 409

ix

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P1: JRX

September 27, 2005 15:29 Annual Reviews AR256-FM

x CONTENTS

IV. EMERGING INTEGRATIVE THEMES

Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems,Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg 441

INDEXES

Subject Index 475Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 21–30 499Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 21–30 503

ERRATA

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Environment andand Resources chapters may be found at http://environ.annualreviews.org

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10. Aaptive Governance of Social-ecological Systems

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