Human institutions--ways of organizing activities--affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences. Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex, redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning, and change.

Integrated studies of coupled human and natural systems reveal new and complex patterns and processes not evident when studied by social or natural scientists separately. Synthesis of six case studies from around the world shows that couplings between human and natural systems vary across space, time, and organizational units. They also exhibit nonlinear dynamics with thresholds, reciprocal feedback loops, time lags, resilience, heterogeneity, and surprises. Furthermore, past couplings have legacy effects on present conditions and future possibilities.

This article describes and presents initial empirical tests of a theory that links values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior within a preference construction framework that emphasizes the activation of personal environmental norms. Environmental concern is related to egoistic, social‐altruistic, and biospheric value orientations and also to beliefs about the consequences of environmental changes for valued objects. Two studies generally support the hypothesized relationships and demonstrate links to the broader theory of values. However, the biospheric value orientation postulated in the theoretical literature on environmentalism does not differentiate from social‐altruism in a general population sample. Results are discussed in terms of value change, the role of social structural factors (including gender) in environmentalism, theories of risk perception, and the mobilization strategies of social movements, including environmental justice movements.