Adaptive Capacity and Environmental Governance

Humanity is confronted with severe and pervasive environmental challenges, highlighted by climatic change, ecosystem degradation and resource scarcity. The complexity and intractability of these challenges demands new strategies, of which institutional flexibility and adaptive governance are central themes. This chapter positions adaptive capacity in this context and documents its emergence in the search for governance systems better prepared to cope with unprecedented change and uncertainty. Adaptive capacity, understood here as an integrative and synthetic concept is proposed as a critical dimension of multi-level approaches to environmental governance in which knowledge co-production, learning and collaboration are paramount concerns. In setting the scene for this book we direct attention to theoretical and applied areas of scholarship that inform adaptive capacity including capacity and capacity building, complex systems thinking, institutions, social capital and networks, learning, and vulnerability and livelihood studies. The contribution of these integrative bodies of scholarship concerning adaptive capacity and its relationship to environmental governance are significant. Contributors to this volume draw upon these areas of scholarship to advance knowledge and practice through theory, case studies and applications and they also provide suggestions for new directions in research.

The Great Barrier Reef is an iconic ecosystem that faces multiple threats, including overharvesting, water quality decline and climate change. There is general recognition that these threats occur at multiple scales, and the reef ecosystem therefore requires management at multiple scales. This situation presents a highly complex challenge, as it involves multiple actors who have different objectives and values associated with the GBR. Adaptive capacity, by most definitions and measures, is considered high for this region, but these definitions and measures may have limited utility for managing in reality because they fall short of accounting for the complex dynamics of the region, including how adaptive capacity and its determinants are perceived on the ground. In this chapter, we review theoretical definitions of adaptive capacity and compare these to individual and organizational perceptions of adaptive capacity obtained through interview data from several research efforts. We discuss key messages emerging from this comparison of theoretical and empirical definitions, and potential implications for future governance of the Great Barrier Reef region.

Social–ecological systems that are pushed beyond their limits have lost their ‘seeds of renewal’ that are necessary for moving toward a more productive and resilient state. Between 2001 and 2007 an inter-disciplinary group of academics, funders and development facilitators conducted participatory ‘action’ research with rural communities at Macubeni in South Africa’s former Transkei homeland. Macubeni is one of the most ecologically degraded and impoverished areas in South Africa, mainly because of the historical impacts of development policies. The many positive changes can be ascribed to interventions founded on resilience theory, but the local people's capacity to cope with rapid institutional, economic and political change at national level remains low. Adaptive co-management in systems beyond the threshold faces six challenges: 1. Maintaining key individuals and balancing power relations; 2. Motivating all actors to collaborate; 3. Making the most of available capacity and resources; 4. Overcoming and coping with disturbances during the early stages of capacity development; 5. Focusing on the finest resolution that time and budget allows; 6. Persisting for long enough. The amount of investment required to fully rebuild the adaptive capacity of a system that has gone beyond the threshold is underestimated.

This chapter focuses on factors affecting the capacity of co-management to contribute to building resilient social–ecological fishery systems. Drawing on co-management examples from Africa and South America, we show that, while creating co-management and enabling legal frameworks may be relatively easy, the challenge lies in sustaining the institutional initiatives over the long-term. The chapter concludes that key aspects for successful and sustainable co-management include the presence of mechanisms for building learning and adaptive capacity at government and community levels. By reorganizing themselves through co-management, fishing communities have an adaptive mechanism in the face of disturbance to respond to and cope with fisheries crisis. However not all the co-management case-studies we review have shown the capacity to adapt and recover from disturbance, once locally defined customary systems have been eroded. Imposed self-organization through externally-conceived co-management did not allow for learning and adaptation. Institutional rigidity, lack of appropriate management time-frame and insufficient flexibility of management instruments associated with a lack of fisher's participation into co-management systems all characterize the challenges to adaptive capacity in these cases.

Governance and conflict resolution in multi-use forests require the integration of stakeholders and decision-makers in multiple sectors: forestry, reindeer husbandry, conservation, tourism and local use. To a large extent, these sectors are characterised by divergent interests and considerable power discrepancies. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews in Gällivare, a municipality in northernmost Sweden, this paper discusses adaptive capacity with regard to interaction between sectors. The chapter examines impacts of the different land uses on each other, identifies adaptation options, and describes existing interaction measures. The chapter concludes that adaptive capacity at the local level is constrained by a number of factors, one example being the institutionalised character of reindeer herding–forestry relations that may limit adaptation at the local level.

Building the capacity of northern communities to adapt to widespread resource development and climate change is a key governance challenge. In this paper, we provide a multi-scale analysis of adaptive capacity based on fieldwork in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories, and highlight the governance implications. At the local level, our analysis places particular emphasis on the relationships? among adaptive capacity and the features of social organization that facilitate collaboration and cooperation for mutual benefit, the importance of local social networks, knowledge and equitable access to resources. We nest this local-scale analysis of adaptive capacity in the wider socio-political and institutional context of the North, drawing attention to the manner in which the northern economic transition, government support programs, emerging land claims processes and governance models (e.g. co-jurisdiction) can have a profound influence on the ability of communities to proactively respond to change. The analysis draws in part on 33 interviews with elders and subsistence harvesters, two workshops, 5 focus groups, a questionnaire administered to 104 heads of household, and 19 key informant interviews with leaders involved in resource management at local and regional levels. Focusing explicitly on the interactions among endogenous and exogenous dimensions of adaptive capacity provides a road map for policy, decision making and institutional development to support adaptation to social–ecological change. The insights and perspectives outlined may be usefully adapted to other communities in the North (and elsewhere) that are confronting complex issues of biophysical and socio-economic change.

The Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions (CAVIAR) project connects case study research from across the Arctic with a framework for conceptualizing and investigating conditions that contribute to vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Case studies address research and policy needs by characterizing conditions to which people are exposed and sensitive, and the types of adaptive responses undertaken in Arctic communities. Adaptive strategies reflect the application of resources and capabilities to solve or manage problems that threaten individual or community well-being. The interplay between local and global conditions influences flexibility and diversity of institutions, livelihoods, economic activities and other social processes that are important, linked dimensions of adaptive strategies and adaptive capacity in Arctic communities. It appears that capacity to adapt to climate and other changes will be highest where local institutions are strong, have broad community support and good linkages to external governance institutions with commitment to Arctic community well-being.

Water managers have relied on the tendency of natural systems to fluctuate within a predictable range. This assumption is no longer valid in the context of climate change and thus past response capabilities offer little confidence in future adaptive capacity. Dealing with greater uncertainty and complexity relating to drinking water will therefore require a broad and integrative perspective. This perspective is developed by synthesizing literature pertaining to climate change adaptation, complex systems and water governance. We use this perspective to explore the context of drinking water supply in two very different settings in Canada: urban water supply and drinking water quality in Aboriginal communities. Insights reveal notable challenges relating to heterogeneity of drinking water systems, complexity of the social and institutional milieu in which they function, and their embeddedness in larger circumstances. Appropriate strategies for addressing these challenges include acknowledging the need to go beyond technical solutions and mainstreaming climate change concerns into drinking water governance.

Canada’s Dry Belt has been subject to recurring climatic stimuli, political changes and macro-economic conditions throughout its history of human occupation. The various social–ecological systems that emerged as a result of these broad stimuli, changes and conditions have been associated with attendant societal and institutional reorganization. This paper uses the lens of institutional fit and interplay to examine three dominant systems – open range ranching, crop-based wheat farming, and mixed ranching – since Europeans first settled the area in the late 19th Century. We focus on one particular example institutional jurisdiction, the Special Areas of Alberta administrative unit, to illustrate how institutional fit and interplay both facilitate particular social-ecological systems and contribute to a shift in the dominant system.

This chapter summarizes learning processes at individual, action group, organizational, network, and societal levels of analysis, and details connections linking learning outcomes across multiple levels. The discussion highlights how learning processes may not adequately accommodate contested values, power imbalances, and socio-economic constraints. The chapter casts light on adaptive capacity in multi-level governance by developing the concept of multi-level learning, suggesting ways to produce complementarity across multiple organizational levels, and supporting the proposition that relational spaces enhance adaptive capacity. The chapter also reveals the need for further theoretical development, including fully accounting for network and societal levels of analysis, assessing promising linking institutions (such as community-based social marketing and adaptive co-management), and addressing power asymmetries in learning dynamics. A promising avenue regarding the last point is giving more attention in theory and practice to critical, non-formal education. Further, the chapter emphasizes the need for place-based empirical studies of existing institutions.

This paper takes exception to approaches to adaptive capacity derived from either ecology or social science that treat it as a systems response to exposure and vulnerability. It argues that many such approaches are inherently tautological (i.e. adaptive capacity is the ability of a system to adapt) and often provide little more than a classification of the determinants of adaptive capacity without an analysis or explanation of it as a dynamic social process. We suggest that such limitations are further compounded in those works that link adaptive capacity to institutional analysis, but which see institutions largely as cultural straitjackets limiting the ability of societies to respond to either ecological or social changes. We argue, instead, for an approach based in “New Institutional Analysis”. Our perspective regards institutions as the cultural frames supporting organizational processes. However, our focus is on the extent to which actors operating in organizations are impeded or facilitated by these cultural frameworks. We argue that it is the capacity of these institutional approaches to permit actions that are effective “adaptive” responses to changing environmental circumstances that is the appropriate measure of adaptive capacity. Such an approach focuses on decision-processes and interactive patterns. It is, we suggest, consistent with the work of Ostrom (2005) and the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) of the International Human Dimensions Program (IHDP). We conclude the paper with a brief example of how we are operationalizing our approach in our examination of the adaptive capacity of the 'Arctic Gateway City' of Whitehorse, Yukon.

Adaptation is a foundational concept in the natural sciences. In the context of biological evolution it refers to the process of change through natural selection whereby those best adapted or most fit out compete others for resources or mates. This general idea has been adopted and variously applied in the social sciences in reference to the persistence of cultures and ability of humans to cope with environmental change. This chapter explores the relationship between evolutionary biology and adaptive capacity that builds environmental governance. The ecological and socio-institutional frames for understanding adaptive capacity are considered and an integrative nature-in-humans perspective is proposed that re-positions evolutionary biology and environmental governance in relation to adaptive capacity for social-ecological systems. To explore this proposed relationship, sociobiology and the theory of reciprocal altruism are summarized and used to explain how and why some individuals, communities and societies undertake adaptive strategies aimed at collaboration, flexibility and learning. This enriched understanding of adaptive capacity is consistent with the unique nature of socio-ecological systems and has implications for fostering behavioural changes as well as long term responses in the realm of governance.

We use a “resilience lens” to identify gaps in the understanding of capacity to transform social-ecological systems’ (SES) trajectories toward ecosystem stewardship and highlight some challenges that need to be addressed. We draw on the organizational evolution literature in combination with the latest insights on SES transformations to give a more detailed understanding of what constitute transformative capacity. Two case studies illustrate the possibilities and challenges. SES transformations require knowledge and skills that can link ecosystem and social system dynamics, and develop strategies to overcome barriers and enable institutional changes that foster transformations. We identify some criteria that seem important for developing a framework for analyzing transformations and assessing transformative capacity in social-ecological systems. These criteria include experimentation and innovation, agency and social networks, opportunity context, diversity, boundaries, and collaboration.

To navigate social-ecological change, individuals and societies must develop the capacity to adapt and transform our interactions with ecosystems and ecosystem services. Institutions and multi-level governance arrangements are particularly important in this regard as they can support as well as constrain knowledge building, learning and conflict resolution that may help to reduce vulnerability, build resilience and increase adaptive capacity. However, building adaptive capacity into governance is a daunting challenge. Here, we synthesize the insights of this volume and offer lessons for practice and further research. These lessons include the need to: (1) define and understand social-ecological change; (2) avoid panaceas; (3) recognize relational spaces and the role of institutions; (4) consider the influence of scale; (5) link actors and networks of actors; (6) rethink the role of government; (7) benefit from bridging organizations; (8) promote knowledge co-production and learning processes; (9) highlight the role of ecosystems; and (10) ensure integrative approaches.