Table 1. Factors that constrain bridging, and strategies that are used in the KVBR to deal with and overcome these factors. Factors that constrain bridging (from Yaffee et al. 1997)   Strategies for dealing with constraining factors in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve (KVBR) Situational factors Power imbalances   Using a landscape perspective and ecosystem approach to help actors perceive their interdependencies and understand the need to work together to produce solutions to problems.   Providing participants with joint ownership of processes and outcomes— participants are directly and jointly responsible for making and implementing the decisions that are reached.   Lack of communication, chemistry, or trust   Organizing interactions among actors to develop personal relationships and build trust.   Facilitating face-to-face communication and dialog among actors.   Providing opportunity for continuous interaction among actors.   Technical and scientific issues   Sense making to facilitate the sharing of information.   Engaging actors in monitoring and conducting inventories.   Acknowledging and integrating different types of knowledge.   Public opposition   Creating public awareness of problems and a sense of urgency by communicating about critical issues and potential crises.   Fundamental differences that separate the stakeholders   Envisioning the future together with actors.   Identifying common problems and goals.   Using the KVBR to develop a sense of place and identity among actors. Process-related factors Lack of focus on process   Using an adaptive co-management approach, a collaborative process that continuously evaluates and responds to the effects of management actions and incorporates lessons learned in a new set of strategies to improve management.   Lack of process management or interpersonal skills   Providing leadership and focusing on social factors that enable ecosystem management.   Initiating, coordinating, and sustaining social networks of key actors.   Making sense of and guiding the management process.   Resistance to collaborative management styles   Starting small, producing small early successes.   Initiating projects and selecting problems that can be turned into possibilities for trust building and partnerships.   Convening actors to participate in collaborative processes.   Structuring incentives for actions.   Assessing actors’ potential for advancing their self-interest through collaboration.   Difficulty securing the involvement of all stakeholders   Defining the problem together with actors.   Encouraging and facilitating information sharing among actors.   Synthesizing and mobilizing multiple sources of knowledge for ecosystem management. Societal context Cultural norms   Facilitating norm-building around the new management approach.   Using different pedagogical tools for communicating the links between ecosystem health and human well-being.   Stereotypes and intergroup attitudes   Focusing on individuals of actor groups that can help change attitudes of people within their own groups.   Challenging actors’ mental models and frames of reference.   Polarization arising from traditional process   Initiating a collaborative process of problem solving and decision making.   Identifying and activating key individuals of actor groups necessary for tackling a particular problem.   Opposition by public interest groups   Participating in international programs like UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere program and scientific assessments like the Millennium Assessment to strengthen and build public support for the adaptive co-management approach and the KVBR.   Using the media to communicate progress and global relevance of the work in the KVBR to build public support and change people’s attitudes.   Politics   Continuous dialog with all major political parties, including the ones not currently in power, at all levels to build support for the adaptive co-management approach and the KVBR.   Building political support for legitimacy of the adaptive co-management approach. Institutional context Conflicting agency goals and missions   Encouraging agencies to participate to produce superordinate goals at the landscape level.   Providing processes to overcome sectoral approaches to managing ecosystems and landscape.   Organizational norms and culture   Bringing actors together in problem-driven projects to change organizational norms and cultures.   Offering the Man and the Biosphere program as a new arena for interactions.   Lack of top level support for collaboration   Influencing decision makers and politicians at higher levels to maintain governance structures that allow for adaptive co-management of the KVBR.   Resource constraints   Maintaining diverse funding sources; not depending on only one source.   Including financers in the policy networks of the KVBR.   Government policies and procedures   Using the KVBR as an arena where new processes can be used to overcome restraining government policies and procedures.   Relying on governance networks for adaptive co-management. Incorporating government agencies, with access to legal and financial support schemes, into the policy network.   Differing decision-making authority among participants   Assisting actors in navigating formal institutions.   Providing participants with joint ownership of processes and outcomes—participants are directly and jointly responsible for making and implementing the decisions that are reached.   Inadequate opportunities for interaction   Providing arenas and opportunity for actors to meet face to face.   Managing social networks and creating multiple ties at multiple levels.