Conventional command and control approaches to environmental problems are increasingly being replaced by strategies better suited to deal with imminent social-ecological uncertainties and changes. Centre researchers have long been advocates for adaptive management and warned that the world faces a compounding series of human-induced crises that are outpacing the capacity of governments and institutions to deal with them (see also video with Professor Frank Biermann on the global governance implications of drastic climate change).
Cutting-edge
In a newly published book co-edited by senior research fellow Ryan Plummer and Derek Armitage (Wilfrid Laurier University), researchers and practitioners demonstrates how adaptive capacity — the ability of a social-ecological system to be robust to disturbances and capable of responding to changes — makes environmental governance possible.
- Adaptive capacity provides a valuable analytic construct around which managers, scientists, resource users and policy makers can address new challenges of governance, says Ryan Plummer.
The book, entitled Adaptive Capacity and Environmental Governance, presents cutting-edge theoretical developments as well as empirical case studies offered from a wide range of geographic settings and natural resource contexts such as water, climate, fisheries and forestry.
Centre researchers Örjan Bodin, Per Olsson and Carl Folke have contributed with a chapter on transformative capacity and ecosystem stewardship.
The book aims to synthesize current knowledge and understanding of adaptive capacity within natural resource governance and encourage novel governance approaches.
It offers the first interdisciplinary perspective on how adaptive capacity makes environmental governance possible in today's complex interaction between social-ecological systems.
