Does Adaptive Management of Natural Resources Enhance Resilience to Climate Change?

TLDR

Emerging insights from adaptive and community‑based resource management show that building resilience into human and ecological systems effectively helps societies and communities dependent on natural resources cope with future climate change impacts that may exceed their prior experience. We argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies to respond to climate change, and we demonstrate the importance of social learning in accepting strategies that build social and ecological resilience. We review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management and illustrate this with a case of community‑based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago to inform climate response capacity. The case demonstrates that community‑based management enhances adaptive capacity by building networks essential for coping with extreme events and by preserving the resilience of underlying resources and ecological systems, underscoring the importance of social learning in accepting resilience‑building strategies.

Abstract

Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. We argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. We review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. We demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago. The case demonstrates that community-based management enhances adaptive capacity in two ways: by building networks that are important for coping with extreme events and by retaining the resilience of the underpinning resources and ecological systems