Traditional management of ecosystems and natural resources is generally based on unique-target, control-based strategies, consolidated by means of rigid institutional arrangements and hyerarchical organizational structures. They tend to result in policy making cycles that repetitively aim at “domesticating” nature, characterized by their inability to learn from and adapt to the environmental crisis generated by their own functioning.
Adaptive co-Management (AcoM) provides a useful alternative to the policy making process. It aims at advancing socio-ecosystem and natural-resource management beyond traditional incrementalism (i.e., beyond learning by incremental trial-and-error proofs). It is based on participatory approaches for formal questioning, strategic problem statement, experimental setting ('policies as experiments'), critical evaluation and iterative reassessment.
In conflicting decision arenas that often result in wicked socio-environmental problems, it uses a 'bounded conflict' approach that favours social learning thorugh the join, iterative examination of its aims, results and conclusions, which are then carried forward into the policy making via negotiation processes.
AcoM constitutes a flexible, coherent alternative to traditional command-and-control management and policy making, since:
AcoM constitutes a flexible, coherent alternative to traditional command-and-control management and policy making, since:
- Its structure with iterative learning loops is tailored to facilitate the continuous incorporation of empirical knowledge, based on management practice, into theory.
- It relies on a much closer interplay of science and policy - by envisaging policies as alternative hypotheses to be tested while being brought into action (i.e., implemented).
- It fosters creative theoretical development, therefore allowing for rapid cycles of innovative scientific prediction, objective implementation, and scenario development.
We are developing this work at different areas across the world, including:
- The design of adaptive restoration strategies for European wetlands
- The design of adaptive restoration strategies for European wetlands
- The design of adaptive co-management strategies for water and food security in complex socio-cultural systems - a long-term partnership with researchers from Colombia, Costa Rica, UK and Spain.
- The management of natural and restored wetlands in the Doñana Nature Reserves.
- The transfer of Adaptive Management Strategies from Canada to the EU.
