Adaptive management and adaptive governance in the everglades ecosystem

Lance Gunderson () and Stephen Light

Policy Sciences, 2006, vol. 39, issue 4, 323-334

Abstract: The Everglades is an intensively managed ecosystem where control of the water has allowed agricultural, urban and economic development, while struggling to meet biodiversity conservation goals. The over 100 year history of control began in response to a disastrous series of floods and droughts followed by environmental crises at an ecosystem scale. Each of these events precipitated technological fixes that extended control of water resources. Institutional structures have been continually reorganized over the last century to meet shifting social objectives, the latest of which is ecosystem restoration. However, the basic response, which employs engineering and technological solutions, is a type of social trap, where governmental mandates, planning-based paradigms and vested interests all interact to inhibit the resolution of chronic environmental issues. Experience from other resource systems indicates that in such an inherently complex system wrought with multiple uncertainties, restoration must be discovered through experimentation and learning embraced by adaptive management. Though minimal steps towards adaptive management have been made, we argue that adaptive forms of experimentation and governance are needed to resolve chronic resource issues and achieve restoration goals. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLP 2006

Keywords: Water management; Adaptive management; Adaptive governance; Everglades (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11077-006-9027-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:policy:v:39:y:2006:i:4:p:323-334

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11077/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11077-006-9027-2

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Sciences is currently edited by Michael Howlett

More articles in Policy Sciences from Springer, Society of Policy Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().