Governing resilient ecosystems: an investigation of governance network level adaptive capacity

Abstract

The effects of climate change on ecosystems have considerable impacts on the communities that steward and depend on the services these ecosystems provide. Because ecosystems often span across ownership boundaries, a wide range of landowner stewards are implicated in ecosystem governance; usually, no centralized governing entity has unilateral authority over management. This range of public and private stewards across different land ownership types engaged in ecosystem management is known as a governance network. As climate change alters the ecosystems that these governance networks management, understanding their adaptive capacity is critical. Adaptive capacity in the context of climate change is commonly defined as: “the ability of a system to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes) to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences” (McCarthy et al., 2001; Siders, 2019). This paper focuses on adaptive capacity at the governance network level: the network of entities and institutions that are implicated in the management of natural resources in a given region (Lemos and Agrawal, 2006). While the study of adaptive capacity is robust, much of the current research focuses on the individual and household level (Siders, 2019) while far less has examined the governance network level. Because it is often governance networks that manage ecosystems, this lacuna represents a barrier to adequately understanding the ways in which ecosystem level adaptive capacity might be cultivated. To evaluate adaptive capacity, studies often employ indicator frameworks to measure it across a range of dimensions. For example, the “Five Capitals” framework (Scoones, 1998) has served as the foundation for numerous analyses of adaptive capacity at the individual and household level. Such framework-driven analyses focus on high-level indicators, rather than underlying conditions, an approach that has borne critique from political ecologists in recent years (Taylor, 2014; Watts, 2015). These underlying conditions are especially relevant in assessing adaptive capacity in governance network ecosystem management: networks are shaped by unique historical contexts and complex relationships among actors, and indicatordriven assessments shed little light on, for example, why some networks are characterized by greater social capital than others. Thus, to better understand the nature of adaptive capacity in this context, it is necessary to interrogate the underlying socio-political conditions that produce this variance in adaptative capacity measures. Few studies have thus far examined this. To address this gap in my understanding of governance network level adaptive capacity, I examined the adaptive capacity of three governance networks engaged in ecosystem management and climate change adaptation in the rural Pacific Northwest. In each region, a set of organizations had participated in an ecosystem-level adaptation plan. In addition to identifying the salient dimensions of governance network adaptive capacity, I investigated the socio-political conditions underlying these dimensions that contributed to and constrained adaptive capacity. I employed an inductive approach, using semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders engaged in the development of each adaptation plan to illuminate the conditions that contribute to the networks’ adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity in this context was realized through adaptation-oriented ecosystem management work. It was usually not primarily conceived of explicitly as climate adaptation work, but rather consisted primarily of conservation and restoration projects intended rebuild healthy ecosystems—but in so doing, these projects served climate adaptation purposes. Our study revealed three particularly salient features of adaptive capacity in this context: social capital, access to resources, and leadership. Furthermore, I found that these features were shaped by four socio-political conditions: political power, legal power, institutional support, and the extent of protected land. Revealing the influence of these underlying conditions demonstrates the value such an analysis in understanding the nature of adaptive capacity in this context.