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Authors: Mark Pelling
Tags: Development Studies
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management approach.
Adaptive management also helps to provide insight into a key element of adaptation to climate change – multi-stakeholder collaboration for social learning. Evidence suggests that many of the challenges to this aspect of adaptive management are common to other development approaches that seek to incorporate or be led by community actors. Such challenges are most well studied in international development contexts (for example, Mungai
et al.
, 2004) and often revolve around the distribution of power between local and management actors worked out through the division of labour and responsibilities, and control of information and decision-making rights (Pelling
et al
., 2007b). In a study of seven community-based forestry management organisations supported as part of adaptive management programmes in the western USA, Fernandez-Gimenez
et al.
(2008) found that the best outcomes measured by benefits in social learning, trust and community building, and application and communication of results came from projects where local actors had been given an opportunity to participate, not only in data collection and monitoring but also in design and objective setting, and where projects were supported by commensurately large budgets. Of those projects with much more limited financial support the best results were found where community members participated in multiple roles.
Table 2.1
Barriers for the implementation of adaptive management
Challenge
Barrier for adaptive Management
Research agenda
Institutional
Rigid institutions (cultural values and more formal rules).
Lack of stakeholder commitment to share information over the long term.
What institutional arrangements are best suited to implementing adaptive management?
Evidence of success
The use of ‘soft’ conceptual and qualitative modelling makes it difficult to communicate outcomes.
The boundaries between adaptive management and background processes can be difficult to distinguish.
Methodologies are needed to gather evidence for and communicate the outcomes of adaptive management to stakeholders.
Ambiguity of definition
Multiple, ambiguous definitions make it difficult for resource managers to understand how they can apply this approach.
Is ambiguity a potential strength indicating diversity? Refining the typology of approaches associating themselves with this adaptive management will help add clarity.
Complexity, costs and risk
Experimentation can be ecologically and economically risky.
Adaptive management is slow and planning costs are high compared to centralised management.
An honest dialogue is needed on the appropriateness of concepts from complexity science such as sub-optimality, uncertainty and diversity.
(Source: based on Medema
et al.
, 2008)
From this more bottom-up perspective the key challenges for adaptive management – and by implication for integrating adaptation into development planning more generally – can be identified:
• the need for higher level organisations to be receptive to local viewpoints and undertake learning in response,
• the challenges of maintaining local engagement over extended time-spans, and
• determining and securing the needed level of technical assistance and science capacity to ensure the validity and credibility of community-led efforts.
Fernandez-Gimenez
et al.
(2008) also point to the opportunities that adaptation can open. They note that community-led approaches to adaptive management can be a source of local skill training and employment generation in the establishment of an ecological monitoring workforce. These could in part offset or help to justify the financial costs of adaptation in development.
Coping mechanisms
The notion of coping has acquired a sizable and well developed literature. It describes the strategies used by those living with rapid onset disasters such as flash floods, and chronic disasters, including drought and food insecurity (Wisner
et al.
, 2004). This matches well
Adaptive management also helps to provide insight into a key element of adaptation to climate change – multi-stakeholder collaboration for social learning. Evidence suggests that many of the challenges to this aspect of adaptive management are common to other development approaches that seek to incorporate or be led by community actors. Such challenges are most well studied in international development contexts (for example, Mungai
et al.
, 2004) and often revolve around the distribution of power between local and management actors worked out through the division of labour and responsibilities, and control of information and decision-making rights (Pelling
et al
., 2007b). In a study of seven community-based forestry management organisations supported as part of adaptive management programmes in the western USA, Fernandez-Gimenez
et al.
(2008) found that the best outcomes measured by benefits in social learning, trust and community building, and application and communication of results came from projects where local actors had been given an opportunity to participate, not only in data collection and monitoring but also in design and objective setting, and where projects were supported by commensurately large budgets. Of those projects with much more limited financial support the best results were found where community members participated in multiple roles.
Table 2.1
Barriers for the implementation of adaptive management
Challenge
Barrier for adaptive Management
Research agenda
Institutional
Rigid institutions (cultural values and more formal rules).
Lack of stakeholder commitment to share information over the long term.
What institutional arrangements are best suited to implementing adaptive management?
Evidence of success
The use of ‘soft’ conceptual and qualitative modelling makes it difficult to communicate outcomes.
The boundaries between adaptive management and background processes can be difficult to distinguish.
Methodologies are needed to gather evidence for and communicate the outcomes of adaptive management to stakeholders.
Ambiguity of definition
Multiple, ambiguous definitions make it difficult for resource managers to understand how they can apply this approach.
Is ambiguity a potential strength indicating diversity? Refining the typology of approaches associating themselves with this adaptive management will help add clarity.
Complexity, costs and risk
Experimentation can be ecologically and economically risky.
Adaptive management is slow and planning costs are high compared to centralised management.
An honest dialogue is needed on the appropriateness of concepts from complexity science such as sub-optimality, uncertainty and diversity.
(Source: based on Medema
et al.
, 2008)
From this more bottom-up perspective the key challenges for adaptive management – and by implication for integrating adaptation into development planning more generally – can be identified:
• the need for higher level organisations to be receptive to local viewpoints and undertake learning in response,
• the challenges of maintaining local engagement over extended time-spans, and
• determining and securing the needed level of technical assistance and science capacity to ensure the validity and credibility of community-led efforts.
Fernandez-Gimenez
et al.
(2008) also point to the opportunities that adaptation can open. They note that community-led approaches to adaptive management can be a source of local skill training and employment generation in the establishment of an ecological monitoring workforce. These could in part offset or help to justify the financial costs of adaptation in development.
Coping mechanisms
The notion of coping has acquired a sizable and well developed literature. It describes the strategies used by those living with rapid onset disasters such as flash floods, and chronic disasters, including drought and food insecurity (Wisner
et al.
, 2004). This matches well
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