Environmental Stewardship in the face of climate-induced and other environmental changes and

increasing knowledge for adaptive management

Sue HazlettUniversity of Alaska Fairbanks

School of Fisheries and Ocean Science

- Environmental Stewardship – What will we bequeath to future generations?

- Change – “what” will change is maybe not as important as how it will change

- Knowledge – what kinds of knowledge do we need to make management decisions

- Adaptive Management – “experimental” management?

Change – “Arctic is the canary in the coal mine….”

Q: Types of change are important – which institutional alternative would perform the best given a particular type of change?

- steady incremental change with the occasional extreme event (disaster)

We like this!!

Change

Widely varying incremental change with numerous extreme events (lots of disasters)

Change

Tipping points

Change

Ripple effects

Knowledge – there are many different types of knowledge

The more knowledge the better the decision-making process

Q: Where would knowledge originate and how would it flow in each of the institutional alternatives?

Q: How would different types and sources of knowledge be integrated?

Decision-making

- decision-making knowledge: valuable input

- decision-making power: can make decisions stick

- decision-making wisdom: content, timing, etc.

Q: Where would each of these qualities reside in each of the institutional alternatives?

Adaptive management

“An adaptive approach involves exploring alternative ways to meet management objectives, predicting the outcomes of alternatives based on the current state of knowledge, implementing one or more of these alternatives, monitoring to learn about the impacts of management actions, and then using the results to update knowledge and adjust management actions.”

- DOI online manual

Adaptive management is experimental management

Innovation is a key ingredient

The “f” word is OK.

Q: What is the “adapticity” of each institutional alternative? - rapid response to non-linear change - cope with serial disasters - deal with risk-appropriate failure