ABSTRACT
Social actors involved in the co-management of natural resources typically act as innovators, trying out in practice novel technical and institutional solutions to problems, which often demand a re-adjustment of their habitual ways of working. This adds to the always present need to deal with the complex, uncertain, and rapidly changing characteristics of environment and society. It is well known that the environment is currently responding to a variety of influences—from climate change to overexploitation and pollution—which alter its natural features, rhythms and cycles. Equally pervasively, socio-cultural and economic change has been sweeping across the planet. Today, even remote rural livelihoods are undergoing dynamic change, and all human communities increasingly express differentiated and evolving needs. In this context, adaptive management 1 is the only sensible approach. Adaptive management emphasises on-going learning through iterative processes and fitting solutions to specific contexts. It is based on systematic experimentation and careful analysis of feedback to policies and management interventions. Possibly more than any other regime, a co-management regime ought to follow its tenets, and the more the co-management actors will invest in joint learning processes, the more their collaboration will be relevant and effective. “Learning by doing” is thus an integral part of each stage of the co-management process, but it is truly the heart of the matter in the third phase—the one of implementation of the agreements.
In a context… [of continuous and pervasive change adaptive management is the only sensible approach.
