Adaptive Management: From Theory to Practice edited by J.A.E. Oglethorpe. 2002. Published by IUCN, Gland Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. vi and 166 pages. Available from IUCN
Reviewed by Philip Tipping

This collection of 14 essays from different authors looks at the application of adaptive management to conservation and use of natural resources. The volume reports the proceedings of workshops held in 1999, one preceding the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the other at the International Agricultural Centre in Norway. Most papers draw in part on examples, all but one located in a developing country. The contributions are diverse in emphasis and only loosely linked to each other, allowing the different contributions to be read and understood in isolation.

Adaptive management is about learning by doing. Some of the concept’s most articulate and persuasive proponents, notably distinguished resource management scientists like Carl Walters and Buzz Holling, argue that good adaptive management is much more than the loose form of trial and error that the phrase “learning by doing” might imply. “Trials” should be informed by quantitative models, or other clear articulation of how and why the managed system is expected to respond to proposed management actions. If plausible, the options for management should be presented as strongly contrasting alternatives that can be compared by doing, so that the “errors” point reliably to paths for improved performance. Managing resources should be treated as large scale, long term experimentation, subject to the discipline demanded by science and the experimental method. Consistent with this position, resource management agencies in the US and Canada with direct control over major resources (especially forests) particularly stress the importance of adaptive management experiments to understanding the dynamics of exploited populations.

Most of the individual papers in this volume have little to say about this more formal view of adaptive management. Indeed some papers make only the sketchiest direct references to the concept. The inclusion of adaptive management sometimes appears as an after-thought, rather than driving or being strongly integrated into the argument. Initially, I found this unsettling, a feeling strengthened by the sequencing of papers, which placed some of the essays that touched only indirectly on adaptive management near the beginning. Deeper into the volume, others had much more to say about adaptive management theory (e.g., Jiggins and Roling) and the potential for application (Anderson; Warner; Wiersum and de Hoogh). Only one paper showed very explicitly how adaptive management principles had contributed to the design and performance of management systems (Danks), and that example was from the US.

The obliqueness of some treatments and tenuous linkages among papers probably illustrate, better than any comment from me, the difficulty of making the adaptive management concept operate in a highly structured way. All of those whose interests are directly affected and whose behaviour must change to improve management should be engaged with the process and so have the opportunity to influence goals and to learn from the experience. But developing a coherent framework to bring together numerous, sometimes confrontational and often vocal interests, ranging from the well-organised to the chaotic, and then encouraging them to work collaboratively, is far from simple. Despite being supported by the world’s richest economy, a well-educated population, comprehensive policy frameworks endorsed at the highest levels of Government, and strong resource management institutions at the Federal and provincial levels, adaptive management in the US is still seen to be in a developmental phase, lacking the “enduring institutional arrangements” needed to make it work effectively (Danks). How much more difficult in developing countries, where participants in the resource management process are often drawn from very different cultures, bring diverse value systems to the setting of objectives, and the financial capacity and institutional robustness needed to implement agreements is sparse? It is not surprising that there are few good working examples of formal experimental adaptive management in action.

It would be wrong to conclude from these comments that I found the volume unrewarding. My initial discomfort probably says more about my personal expectations and experiences than it does the volume’s contribution to understanding the role of adaptive management at a global scale. In their contribution to this volume, Wiersum and de Hoogh make the point that the “classic” frame for adaptive management has been taken up mostly in developed nations, while various forms of community-based collaborative management tend to be used by development agencies and conservation NGOs in developing (chiefly tropical) nations. This volume focuses almost entirely on resource use in developing nations. The authors have mostly taken a community-based collaborative management framework as their starting point, a perspective which provides a quite distinct view of the relevance of adaptive management and how the related ideas can be most usefully applied.

For example, a number of contributors discuss the relative merits of seeking consensus, as distinct from embracing – or at least grappling with – plural (multiple) views of appropriate practice and outcome. Much literature about participatory approaches to development emphasises the search for consensus (Lescayer) and avoiding or deflecting conflict. However, an important feature of adaptive management (see Walters 1986) is a preparedness to accept conflict as inevitable. Highlighting difficult choices and testing the options that flow from them is critical to the adaptive management experiment. The importance of the consensus versus pluralism debate to adaptive management is therefore obvious, even if the authors of this volume sometimes did little to make the connection explicit. The contributions that focus on managing rather than denying conflict in resource management (e.g., Anderson) are particularly useful.

In my view, the most important issues to emerge from this diverse collection of papers (with relevant contributions identified in parentheses) are that:
1. adaptive management is a useful way to involve all relevant actors in resource management for long term sustainability;
2. is in one form or another is indispensable for sustainability, because both biological and social systems are too complex and dynamic for any recipe to hold unchanged over the long term (Dankelman; Bridgewater);
3. is more about people and the way they learn and reach decisions (Gonzales; Wiersum and de Hoogh) than about ecological science, so effective models will vary among cultures;
4. requires recognition of multiple interests and power relations at all social and institutional levels as decisive influences on outcomes (Warner; Sithole and Frost), and requires mechanisms for coping with rapid shifts in the distribution and significance of those influences;
5. is not well served by efforts to achieve superficial consensus at the expense of working out ways to manage multiple interests (Anderson);
6. acknowledges the limitations of science, leaving space for other forms of knowledge, including traditional or customary knowledge (Dankelman; Argumedo and Mamen), to influence decision-making, implementation and review;
7. adaptive management models developed for application by resource agencies in developed countries are probably unsuitable for community-based management; new models are required (Dankelman; Wiersum and de Hoog);
8. adaptive management requires support from the highest levels of Government and non-Government institutions to require their agencies to work closely with communities (Danks; Agrawal); and
9. adaptive management works best if the social units that influence decisions and receive benefits are carefully matched to the scale and nature of the resource management issue (Orians): using existing political or administrative structures can be counter-productive over the long term, because inequities are created in distribution of costs and benefits (Sithole and Frost).

The dominant message to emerge from this volume is therefore that adaptive management is a useful addition to the sustainable use toolbox, but requires creative and sometimes substantial modification and then highly skilled and flexible application to work in different contexts.

To conclude that one or even a collection of highly refined arrangements cannot be specified for universal application presents conundrums for international conservation agencies such as the IUCN World Conservation Union, its Sustainable Use Specialist Group and similar bodies operating under the Conventions on Biological Diversity and International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Their charters to assist nations to achieve better conservation outcomes would be rendered much simpler if it were possible to provide simple prescriptive advice – like comprehensive users’ “manuals”. Experience indicates that this is simply unrealistic. Efforts to frame axioms, principles, guidelines and analytical frameworks for promoting sustainability of use have all come to the same endpoint: that the key ingredient is flexibility backed by support to ensure that the knowledge gained through experience is effectively captured so that participants can learn rapidly.

Local problems and the institutional, social and ecological dynamics that determine the shape of relevant responses demand unique, well-crafted local solutions. These solutions are unlikely to emerge reliably from a collection of generic rules from external “experts”, no matter how well-intentioned. Thoughtful review of informative case studies and making that analysis widely available, as done in this volume, are much more useful activities. Managers can use the experience of others to identify the sorts of approaches they think most likely to apply to their own unique circumstances, adapting those approaches as they themselves gain experience.

This volume on adaptive management is part of a process for the WCU to itself adapt its role: to learn that the technical, social and cultural complexities of resource management and its interactions with biodiversity conservation are beyond simple recipes. This volume and its contributing authors have made an important contribution to that process.

Reference cited: Walters, C. 1986. Adaptive management of renewable resources. Macmillan, New York.

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