Research on complex adaptive systems contests models and policies that are based on assumptions of linear dynamics, with a focus on optimal solution in the vicinity of a single equilibrium.

Social-ecological adaptation
Recent research has revealed that applications of such theory and world views tend to develop governance systems that invest in controlling a few selected ecosystem processes, causing loss of ecological support functions, in the urge to produce particular resources to fulfill economic or social goals in the short term.

Such practices have over the longer term reduced the social-ecological capacity to deal with change and continue to develop and may result in vulnerable systems susceptible to disturbance and regime shifts, which in turn may lead to social traps and constrained options for development.

To address these challenges, we advocate a complex adaptive systems approach and argue that social-ecological systems are complex adaptive systems characterized by historical (path) dependency, non-linear (non-convex) dynamics, regime shifts, multiple basins of attraction and limited predictability.

Theories of complex adaptive systems portray systems not as deterministic, predictable and mechanistic, but as process dependent organic and self-organizing with feedbacks between multiple scales.

Developing tools about the dynamics of complex systems
Complexity makes it hard to forecast the future. Not only are forecasts uncertain, the usual statistical approaches will likely underestimate the uncertainties since key drivers like climate and technological change are largely unpredictable and may change in non-linear fashions.

Concepts and tools about the dynamics of complex systems and their implications for sustainability are developing in parallel, influencing not only the natural sciences but also the social sciences and humanities.

Complex systems thinking is used to bridge social and biophysical sciences to understand, for example, climate, history and human action, assessments of regions at risk, syndromes of global change and how to link social and ecological systems for sustainability. It underpins many of the new integrative approaches, such as ecological economics and sustainability science.

From change control to adaptation
The complex adaptive systems approach shifts the perspective on governance from trying to control change in resource and ecosystems assumed to be stable, to enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to learn to live with and shape change and even find ways to transform into more desirable directions.

It is in this context that the Stockholm Resilience Centre, in collaboration with many institutes and scholars, works internationally with the resilience approach and systems of adaptive governance.