Insight, part of a Special Feature on Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems Shooting the Rapids: Navigating Transitions to Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems

By P. Olsson, L. Gunderson, Stephen R. Carpenter, Paul Ryan, L. Lebel, Carl Folke, C. S. Holling. 2006

1,164 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The case studies of Kristianstads Vattenrike, Sweden; the Northern Highlands Lake District and the Everglades in the USA; the Mae Nam Ping Basin, Thailand; and the Goulburn-Broken Catchment, Australia, were compared to assess the outcome of different actions for transforming social-ecological systems (SESs). The transformations consisted of two phases, a preparation phase and a transition phase, linked by a window of opportunity. Key leaders and shadow networks can prepare a system for change by exploring alternative system configurations and developing strategies for choosing from among possible futures. Key leaders can recognize and use or create windows of opportunity and navigate transitions toward adaptive governance. Leadership functions include the ability to span scales of governance, orchestrate networks, integrate and communicate understanding, and reconcile different problem domains. Successful transformations rely on epistemic and shadow networks to provide novel ideas and ways of governing SESs. We conclude by listing some rules of thumb" that can help build leadership and networks for successful transformations toward adaptive governance of social-ecological systems.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a971d7c47bff42bd10c04a7f61bb1b50ec410069

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In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Exploring Panarchy in Alpine Grasslands: an Application of Adaptive Cycle Concepts to the Conservation of a Cultural Landscape (2012, background): “…an integrated theory on resilience of SES attempt to explain how and under what conditions ecological systems and communities adjust and adapt or dramatically change their self-organization in response to slow changing variables or shocks (Lebel et al. 2006, Olsson et al. 2006, Walker et al. 2006).”
Social Learning and Water Resources Management (2007, background): “Olsson et al. (2006) and Gunderson (1999) emphasized the role of shadow networks as incubators for new approaches to governing socialecological systems.”
The Ecology of Games as a Theory of Polycentricity: Recent Advances and Future Challenges (2019, background): “Furthermore, polycentric systems feature a wide mix of formal institutional rules and informal norms, and we hypothesize that policy network interactions constrained by informal norms are crucial preludes to more formal institutional changes and transitions (Olsson et al., 2006).”
The Emergent Network Structure of the Multilateral Environmental Agreement System (2013, background): “For example, the network has polycentric institutional arrangements, which may provide adaptive capacity and a balance between centralized and decentralized control (Ostrom, 1999a; Folke et al., 2005; Olsson et al., 2006).”
A Cognition-based View of Decision Processes in Complex Social–Ecological Systems (2007, background): “Olsson et al. (2006) observe that successful transformations toward adaptive governance seem to be preceded by the emergence of informal networks that help to facilitate information flows, identify knowledge gaps, and create nodes of expertise.”
Self-Organized Governance Networks for Ecosystem Management: Who Is Accountable? (2011, background): “The social memory (Barthel et al. 2010) embedded in the persons and organizations of the governance network or “shadow network” (Olsson et al. 2006) provides a context for successful adaptation, thereby enhancing the resilience of the social-ecological system (Folke et al. 2005).”
The Politics of Reflexive Governance: Challenges for Designing Adaptive Management and Transition Management (2011, background): “…the philosophical fundamentals of AM (Norton 1999, 2005), there is empirical research on the capabilities of governance arrangements to adaptively manage resilience (Berkes et al. 2003b; Lebel et al. 2006), as well as on the emergence of AM practices in various contexts (Olsson et al. 2004, 2006).”