Governing complexity: Integrating science, governance, and law to manage accelerating change in the globalized commons

Abstract

The speed and uncertainty of environmental change in the Anthropocene challenge the capacity of coevolving social–ecological–technological systems (SETs) to adapt or transform to these changes. Formal government and legal structures further constrain the adaptive capacity of our SETs. However, new, self-organized forms of adaptive governance are emerging at multiple scales in natural resource-based SETs. Adaptive governance involves the private and public sectors as well as formal and informal institutions, self-organized to fill governance gaps in the traditional roles of states. While new governance forms are emerging, they are not yet doing so rapidly enough to match the pace of environmental change. Furthermore, they do not yet possess the legitimacy or capacity needed to address disparities between the winners and losers from change. These emergent forms of adaptive governance appear to be particularly effective in managing complexity. We explore governance and SETs as coevolving complex systems, focusing on legal systems to understand the potential pathways and obstacles to equitable adaptation. We explore how governments may facilitate the emergence of adaptive governance and promote legitimacy in both the process of governance despite the involvement of nonstate actors, and its adherence to democratic values of equity and justice. To manage the contextual nature of the results of change in complex systems, we propose the establishment of long-term study initiatives for the coproduction of knowledge, to accelerate learning and synergize interactions between science and governance and to foster public science and epistemic communities dedicated to navigating transitions to more just, sustainable, and resilient futures.

A framework for exploring futures of complex urban energy systems

“…13). Scholars prescribe incremental and continuous learning, adaptive policymaking/planning, and anticipatory governance for practicing complexity instead of deterministic strategies toward a specific end goal (Cooney and Lang, 2007;Sanderson, 2009;Wilkinson et al, 2013;SAPEA, 2019;Cosens et al, 2021). These approaches, in turn, automatically depend on collective intelligence across sectors, disciplines, scales, evidence, and viewpoints-necessitating a participatory approach (Ziegler, 1991).…”

Transformative adaptation and implications for transdisciplinary climate change research

“…While technological innovations are critical, enabling social, institutional and governance factors are the actual drivers of the transformative process. In this context, an intertwined social-ecological-technological systems approach holds potential for positive contribution to advancing a transdisciplinary climate change research agenda with a focus on governance, decision-making, partnerships and social networks (Cosens et al 2021, McPhearson et al 2021. This can enable researchers and food system practitioners to transform food systems by integrating social equity, environmental protection, and technology while building resilience to climate change.…”

Influences of Land Policy on Urban Ecological Corridors Governance: A Case Study from Shanghai

“…One of the two objectives of this study is to analyze how land use governance policies cause LUC within ecological corridors. As the policy process involves multiple policy tools and governance subjects interacting at different scales, the complexity of this policy “black box” poses a challenge to researchers trying to understand the impact of the policy operation [ 42 , 43 , 44 ]. The institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework [ 45 ] and the social–ecological system (SES) framework [ 42 ] have been proposed to solve this kind of problem.…”