learningforsustainability.netAdaptive management - "learning by doing"
Many contemporary research efforts are concentrating on creating new approaches to more closely link science, management and policy at an ecosystem level. As Jiggins (1993) points out, these efforts represent a search for a research and development model and practice which combine the features of: i) management-based experimentation and innovation; ii) natural resource system management on scales larger than individual enterprises and communities; iii) methods for bringing about capacity for action among multiple agencies and actors (with typically divergent, not to say antagonistic points of view and interests); and iv) facilitation of the social processes and organisational capacity to accomplish these. One promising initiative in this area can be seen in the area of adaptive management (or adaptive environmental assessment and management), the emerging directions of which can be seen to be developing through the integration of ecological and participatory research approaches.
- An introductory guide to adaptive management This page from the Canadian Ministry of Forest and Range sets out an introduction, and stepwise process for adaptive management. They point out that adaptive management is a process where participants with a diversity of skills and expertise are brought together in a workshop or series of workshops to assess a management problem and explore and develop management options. Usually, participants work with modellers to develop a computer simulation model that they then use to explore various "what if..?" scenarios and evaluate potential outcomes of different management actions. In addition, significant benefits are derived from the process of building the model. The workshops are intended to encourage debate about system response to management actions and to stimulate a creative search for new solutions, rather than build consensus around a single solution.
- Murray, Carol; and David Marmorek (May 2003). Adaptive management: a science-based approach to managing ecosystems in the face of uncertainty. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Science and Management of Protected Areas: Making Ecosystem Based Management Work, Victoria, B.C.
- Allen, W.; Bosch, O.; Kilvington, M.; Harley, D.; Brown I. 2001. Monitoring and adaptive management: addressing social and organisational issues to improve information sharing. Natural Resources Forum 25(3): 225-233
- One of the most successful applications of adaptive management have been in the area of waterfowl harvest management in North America, and there have been a corresponding number of papers that look at the issue. Johnson, F.A.; and Williams, B.K. (1999). Protocol and practice in the adaptive management of waterfowl harvests.. Conservation Ecology 3(8); Nichols, J. D., F. A. Johnson, B. K. Williams. 1995. Managing North American waterfowl in the face of uncertainty. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 26:177-199; Johnson, F. A., W. L. Kendall, and J. A. Dubovsky. 2002. Conditions and limitations on learning in the adaptive management of mallard harvests. Wildl. Soc. Bull. 30:176-185; Johnson, F. A. 2001. Adaptive regulation of waterfowl hunting in the United States. Pages 113-131 in R. G. Stahl, Jr., R. A. Bachman, A. L. Barton, J. R. Clark, P. L. deFur, S. J. Ellis, C. A. Pittinger, M. W. Slimak, and R. S. Wentsel, eds. Risk management: ecological risk-based decision-making. SETAC Press, Pensacola, FL.
- Learning Portfolios: Adaptive Management Across a Network of Projects These pages from Foundations of Success provide some ideas on how to implent a learning portfolio. A learning portfolio is a network of projects that use a common conservation strategy and work together to learn about the conditions under which this conservation strategy works, does not work, and why.
- Bosch, O.J.H., Allen, W.J., Williams, J.M. & Ensor, A. (1996) An integrated system for maximising community knowledge: Integrating community-based monitoring into the adaptive management process in the New Zealand high country The Rangeland Journal 18(1): 23-32
