Adaptive Co-Management: Collaboration, Learning, and Multi-Level Governance

Around the world, governments are shifting away from regulatory models for governing natural and cultural resources. New concerns with adaptive processes, feedback learning, and flexible partnerships are reshaping the resource governance landscape. Meanwhile, ideas about collaboration and learning are converging around the idea of adaptive co-management.

This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of the core concepts, strategies, and tools of this emerging field, informed by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners with over two decades of experience. It offers a diverse set of case studies that reveal the challenges and implications of adaptive co-management thinking and synthesizes lessons for natural and cultural resource governance in a wide range of contexts.

Adaptive Co-Management is not only a timely book but also a useful concept for resource governance in a world marked by rapid socio-ecological change. It will be of interest to researchers, environmental practitioners, policy-makers, and students in fields across the political and environmental spectrum.

Derek Armitage is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Fikret Berkes is a professor and Canada Research Chair at the National Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba. Nancy Doubleday is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University.