Adaptive governance good practice: Show me the evidence!

Area of Science:

• Environmental governance
• Social-ecological systems
• Policy implementation

Background:

• Adaptive governance is a key approach for managing complex environmental issues.
• Existing research highlights conceptual and practical gaps, especially in real-world applications.
• There is a need to identify methods that facilitate successful adaptive governance in practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and analyze methods that contribute to successful adaptive governance processes and outcomes.
• To assess these methods across various cases and contexts.
• To provide evidence-based insights for adaptive governance practice.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review of empirical studies on adaptive governance.
• Analysis of methods used in the governance of social-ecological systems.
• Summarization of patterns-in-use and lessons learned from real-world cases.

Main Results:

• Methods supporting adaptive governance include collaboration, coordination, social capital, empowerment, capacity building, knowledge-decision linkage, leadership, and exploiting governance opportunities.
• These methods align with previous theoretical recommendations.
• Analysis reveals specific patterns of successful and unsuccessful application in practice.

Conclusions:

• Effective adaptive governance requires practical implementation of established methods.
• Understanding patterns-in-use is crucial for successful application across diverse sectors and contexts.
• This study offers lessons for evidence-based adaptive governance good practice.