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Adaptive management (AM) emerged in the literature in the mid-1970s in response both to a realization of the extent of uncertainty involved in management, and a frustration with attempts to use modelling to integrate knowledge and make predictions. The term has since become increasingly widely used in scientific articles, policy documents and management plans, but both understanding and application of the concept is mixed. This paper reviews recent literature from conservation and natural...

This paper provides a 30 year retrospective on the development of the adaptive management system for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (Australia). It describes the historical background, key influences and stages that paved the way to establishment of adaptive management. It outlines how effectiveness monitoring, evaluation and reporting are integrated with the management plan for the Area to establish an ongoing adaptive management cycle. The chapter presents figures and tools...

This report reviews the extensive and growing literature on the concept and application of adaptive management. Adaptive management is a central element of the Northwest Forest Plan and there is a need for an informed understanding of the key theories, concepts, and frameworks upon which it is founded. Literature from a diverse range of fields including social learning, risk and uncertainty, and institutional analysis was reviewed, particularly as it related to application in an adaptive...

Adaptive management is an approach for simultaneously managing and learning about natural resources, by acknowledging uncertainty and seeking to reduce it through the process of management itself. Adaptive decision making can be applied to pressing issues in conservation biology such as species reintroduction, disease and invasive species control, and habitat restoration, as well as to management of natural resources in general. After briefly outlining a framework and process for adaptive...

Mercy Corps finds adaptive management is supported by four different but interconnected elements: Culture, People & Skills, Tools & Systems, and Enabling Environment. These elements are discussed in the context of one of Mercy Corps’ complex programmes in pastoral Ethiopia.

Adaptive management, an approach for simultaneously managing and learning about natural resources, has been around for several decades. Interest in adaptive decision making has grown steadily over that time, and by now many in natural resources conservation claim that adaptive management is the approach they use in meeting their resource management responsibilities. Yet there remains considerable ambiguity about what adaptive management actually is, and how it is to be implemented by...

Despite a swathe of critiques of logframes and other blueprint approaches to development over the last 30 years, most aid infrastructure continues to concentrate on the design and subsequent implementation of closed models. This article does not propose an alternative to blueprints, but challenges the inflexibility of their implementation, which is inadequate given the complex nature of social change. It proposes a supplementary management and learning approach which enables implementers to...

The loss of biodiversity is a mounting concern, but despite numerous attempts there are few large scale conservation efforts that have proven successful in reversing current declines. Given the challenge of biodiversity conservation, there is a need to develop strategic conservation plans that address species declines even with the inherent uncertainty in managing multiple species in complex environments. In 2002, the State Wildlife Grant program was initiated to fulfill this need, and while...

Adaptive management is a framework for resource conservation that promotes iterative learning-based decision making. Yet there remains considerable confusion about what adaptive management entails, and how to actually make resource decisions adaptively. A key but somewhat ambiguous distinction in adaptive management is between active and passive forms of adaptive decision making. The objective of this paper is to illustrate some approaches to active and passive adaptive management with a...

The increasing popularity of adaptive programmes in the development sector in the past decade is partly a response to the complex and interconnected challenges facing many developing countries, including the impacts of climate change. The pathway to adapting to climate change is unknown, and there are many deep-rooted institutional, political, economic and social barriers. Adaptive programmes provide the flexibility to allow those delivering the technical assistance to support governments to...

Management of threatened and endangered species would seem to be a perfect context for adaptive management. Many of the decisions are recurrent and plagued by uncertainty, exactly the conditions that warrant an adaptive approach. But although the potential of adaptive management in these settings has been extolled, there are limited applications in practice. The impediments to practical implementation are manifold and include semantic confusion, institutional inertia, misperceptions about...

Environmental water is often a contentious investment in the environment that must be delivered under uncertainty regarding the ecological and social benefits they deliver. Adaptive management can be used to facilitate decision making under uncertainty, and use new knowledge and understanding to improve management decisions and outcomes over time. However, there is a perception that adaptive management has failed to deliver improvements in decision making and learning. Monitoring and...

This paper examines the tension within international development programmes between traditional task-oriented approaches to development and the wider view of programmes as sites for adaptability and learning. It characterises it as a set of inter-related tensions between recursive and adaptive tendencies that exist at individual actor, programme and institutional levels. Drawing on a multiple interpretive case study of partnership based programmes between an international non-government...

This paper examines adaptive approaches in aid programming in a fragile, conflict and violence-affected setting (FCVAS), namely Myanmar. A combination of desk review and field research has been used to examine some of the assertions around the ‘adaptive management’ approach, which has arisen in recent years as a response to critiques of overly rigid, pre-designed, blue-print and linear project plans. This paper explores if and how adaptive approaches, including rapid learning and planning...

Adaptive management in wildlife conservation emerged from the wildlife profession's search for better solutions to increasingly complex conservation challenges. Adaptive management is an effective process for wildlife managers to employ to (1) deal with uncertainty in the management system, (2) learn from their management actions, and (3) achieve desired results. Being adaptable or flexible in your management approach is not the same as managing adaptively or conducting adaptive management....

Habitat conservation plans (HCPs) allow incidental take of threatened or endangered species in exchange for conservation measures that minimize and mitigate such taking. Habitat conservation plans entail a compromise between regulatory certainty and scientific uncertainty. This compromise is controversial because many HCPs are thought to inadequately address scientific uncertainty. Adaptive management is the systematic acquisition and application of reliable information to improve natural...

Adaptive management is increasingly seen as critical capability for development programmes and policies that are more effective, efficient, relevant and sustainable. There is increasing recognition that such work requires significant changes to the organizational structures, management processes, accountability and performance cultures and indivi

Resolving uncertainties in managed social-ecological systems requires adaptive experimentation at whole-ecosystem levels. However, whether participatory adaptive management fosters ecological understanding among stakeholders beyond the sphere of science is unknown. We experimentally involved members of German angling clubs (n = 181 in workshops, n = 2483 in total) engaged in self-governance of freshwater fisheries resources in a large-scale ecological experiment of active adaptive management...

The conversation on adaptive management has grown fast amongst development actors. These conversations often focus on designing, commissioning, and managing large-scale development programmes. Exactly how this impacts the frontline, the implementers, and day-to-day project delivery is still being debated. Yet, perspectives drawn directly from practice are often largely missing within these debates. This paper is written by two development practitioners. Through this paper, we reflect on the...