Using adaptive governance to rethink the way science supports Australian drought policy

Adaptive governance: Towards a stable, accountable and responsive government

“…Adaptive governance is suited to dealing with problems and projects that are complex, uncertain and in which many actors are involved (Nelson, Howden, & Smith, 2008). Adaptive governance recognizes that technology projects are inherently complex, surrounded by a high level of uncertainty and different interests that might even be conflicting.…”

“…Adaptive governance is used as a principle in areas like climate-induced community relocations (Bronen & Chapin, 2013), ecological systems (Dryzek, 1987;Folke, Hahn, Olsson, & Norberg, 2005) and drought policies (Nelson et al, 2008). Adaptive governance is a way to cope with unpredictability which due to, among other things, the complexity, non-reducibility, spontaneity, variability, and collective quality of ecosystems (Huitema et al, 2009).…”

The Climate Adaptation Frontier

“…Many forms of adaptation will be contested, necessitating mechanisms to reconcile conflicting values if effective adaptation planning and implementation is to proceed. The extensive literatures of risk governance, adaptive governance and policy sciences provide guidance for how to approach such decision challenges [131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139]. A common feature of such approaches to problem solving is active participation by civil society in sharing and shaping knowledge regarding societal objectives, perceptions and tolerance of risk to those objectives and appropriate responses by different actors.…”

Dealing with flood damages: will prevention, mitigation, and ex post compensation provide for a resilient triangle?

“…Social-ecological resilience has been referred to as the ability of a certain mechanism to develop further and reorganize following a disturbance, in casu floods (Folke et al 2005). Adaptability is thus a key concept in achieving resilience and is recognized both within the context of environmental policy sciences (Dietz et al 2003, Folke et al 2005, Nelson et al 2008) and legal studies of environmental governance (e.g., Cosens 2013, Garmestani and Benson 2013, Chaffin et al 2014. Furthermore, one of the indicators related to resilience of a social-ecological system is that there is sufficient coordination across different scales and between different aspects of decision making (Folke et al 2005, Cosens 2010, Reed et al 2010).…”