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Adaptive management wiki: Difference between revisions
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→Defining Adaptive Management
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The concept of adaptive management has been widely debated and different definitions exist. This presents a challenge to practitioners who must reach a common understanding with partners, stakeholders, managers, scientists and decision makers. In order to bring some consistency to what the British Columbia Forest Service means by “adaptive management”, the following standard working definition was adopted: ''Adaptive management is a systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operational programs'' (British Columbia, Ministry of Forests and Range). | The concept of adaptive management has been widely debated and different definitions exist. This presents a challenge to practitioners who must reach a common understanding with partners, stakeholders, managers, scientists and decision makers. In order to bring some consistency to what the British Columbia Forest Service means by “adaptive management”, the following standard working definition was adopted: ''Adaptive management is a systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operational programs'' (British Columbia, Ministry of Forests and Range). | ||
The adaptive management approach assumes natural resource management policies and management actions are not static but adjusted based on the combination of new scientific and socio-economic information in order to improve management by learning from the ecosystems being affected. Often people think adaptive management simply means “trial and error”, in which management policies and practices evolve in response to past performance and changing priorities, but in fact this misses an essential element of the concept which is deliberate experimentation. | The adaptive management approach assumes natural resource management policies and management actions are not static but adjusted based on the combination of new scientific and socio-economic information in order to improve management by learning from the ecosystems being affected. Often people think adaptive management simply means “trial and error”, in which management policies and practices evolve in response to past performance and changing priorities, but in fact this misses an essential element of the concept which is deliberate experimentation. | ||
Although definitions of adaptive management vary by source, several key characteristics of the concept are universal and fundamental: | |||
1. Learning; reducing key uncertainties | |||
There is explicit acknowledgement of uncertainties and knowledge gaps about the response of the system to management actions. Reducing these uncertainties (i.e. learning) becomes one objective of management. | |||
2. Using what is learned to change policy and practice | |||
Process in place to make certain that what is learned informs decisions (i.e. closing the loop). It is essential to have a good idea at project design stage of what policies and practices may change and what institutional mechanisms are in place to support that change. | |||
3. Focus is on improving management | |||
AM integrates the worlds of science and management, ensuring applied science is well directed to key uncertainties and scientific advances are transferred to managers (i.e. this is where the learning is applied) | |||
4. Often called experimental management | |||
AM is about thoughtfully applying management activities as experiments to see which are most effective in achieving desired goals. | |||
5. It is formal, structured, systematic | |||
AM is a deliberate process, not ad-hoc or simply reactionary. Some flexibility in the approach is important to allow the creativity in management that is crucial to dealing with uncertainty and change. | |||