A Framework for Resilience-based Governance of Social-Ecological Systems

Ahjond S Garmestani, Environmental Protection Agency, USA
Melinda Harm Benson, University of New Mexico, USA

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-05180-180109

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Abstract

Panarchy provides a heuristic to characterize the cross-scale dynamics of social-ecological systems and a framework for how governance institutions should behave to be compatible with the ecosystems they manage. Managing for resilience will likely require reform of law to account for the dynamics of social-ecological systems and achieve a substantive mandate that accommodates the need for adaptation. In this paper, we suggest expansive legal reform by identifying the principles of reflexive law as a possible mechanism for achieving a shift to resilience-based governance and leveraging cross-scale dynamics to provide resilience-based responses to increasingly challenging environmental conditions.

Key words

adaptive governance; adaptive management; environmental governance; intermediaries; panarchy; reflexive law; resilience; resilience-based governance

Copyright © 2013 by the author(s). Published here under license by The Resilience Alliance. This article is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt the work for noncommercial purposes provided the original author and source are credited, you indicate whether any changes were made, and you include a link to the license.