Co-Producing Narratives and Indicators as Catalysts for Adaptive Governance of a Common-Pool Resource within a Protected Area.

The theory and practice of adaptive management and adaptive governance have been widely studied in the complex social contexts that mediate how humans interact with ecosystems. Adaptive governance is thought to enable adaptive management in such contexts. In this study, we examine four often-used principles of adaptive governance (polycentric institutions, collaboration, social learning and complexity thinking) to develop a framework for reflecting on adaptive governance of a social-ecological system-the Knysna Estuary in South Africa. This estuary is a priority for biodiversity conservation, as well as a common-pool resource central to livelihoods. We used the framework to structure dialogue on the extent to which the four principles of adaptive governance were being applied in the management of the Knysna Estuary. The dialogue included diverse stakeholders, from those who have the power to influence adaptive management to those most dependent on the resource for their livelihoods. Based on a combination of theory and current reality we then identified eight indicators that could be used to guide a transition towards improved adaptive governance of the estuary. These indicators were assessed and supported by most stakeholders. The main contributions of our research are (a) a process for combining theory and stakeholder dialogue to reflect on adaptive governance of a social-ecological system; (b) a set of indicators or conditions that emerged from our participatory process that can be used for reflexive monitoring and adaptation of adaptive governance of Knysna Estuary; and (c) a real-world example of seeking complementary links between adaptive governance and adaptive management to promote effective management of complex social-ecological systems.

Appraising strategic adaptive management as a process of organizational learning.

Adaptive management is a systematic approach for linking learning with implementation to facilitate ongoing improvement in natural resource management. The idea of learning from experience and adapting subsequent policies, strategies and actions, is intuitively appealing. However, application of adaptive management has been hindered by several obstacles, including a paucity of documented lessons from existing adaptive management practices and inadequate attention to the complex social aspects of learning. Here we address these two impediments through (i) a case study of an established version of adaptive management and its application in the context of protected area management plans, and (ii) its critical comparison and conceptual integration with the seminal theory of organizational knowledge creation (TOKC), which emphasizes the social aspects of learning. As case study, we focus on Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM), which has been iteratively developed and implemented by South African National Parks for more than 20 years. We used TOKC as a conceptual sounding board to reflect on and appraise the learning that takes place through SAM. A comparison of the main steps of the SAM cycle with corresponding stages outlined by TOKC revealed remarkable complementarity between these two approaches, but also important differences. The conceptual comparison deepened our understanding of SAM's learning performance as well as potential, revealing strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. Key insights include that valuable and different forms of learning takes place during each step of the SAM cycle. This learning can be enhanced through careful attention to approaches for creating, sharing and making explicit the tacit knowledge of individuals. Furthermore, dialogue and co-learning with stakeholders should be maintained beyond the visioning and objectives setting step of SAM. Based on insights gained, we developed a new and complementary conceptualization of SAM, as a spiraling process of organizational learning enabled by the interplay between tacit and explicit forms of knowledge, which in turn is mediated by different types of social interactions, media and engagement with practice. We believe that this conceptualization can help to better acknowledge and enable learning as one of the most fundamental purposes and outcomes of SAM, and adaptive management more generally.

Shifted distribution baselines: neglecting long-term biodiversity records risks overlooking potentially suitable habitat for conservation management.

Setting appropriate conservation measures to halt the loss of biodiversity requires a good understanding of species' habitat requirements and potential distribution. Recent (past few decades) ecological data are typically used to estimate and understand species' ecological niches. However, historical local extinctions may have truncated species-environment relationships, resulting in a biased perception of species' habitat preferences. This may result in incorrect assessments of the area potentially available for their conservation. Incorporating long-term (centuries-old) occurrence records with recent records may provide better information on species-environment relationships and improve the modelling and understanding of habitat suitability. We test whether neglecting long-term occurrence records leads to an underestimation of species' historical niche and potential distribution and identify which species are more vulnerable to this effect. We compare outputs of species distribution models and niche hypervolumes built using recent records only with those built using both recent and long-term (post-1500) records, for a set of 34 large mammal species in South Africa. We find that, while using recent records only is adequate for some species, adding historical records in the analyses impacts estimates of the niche and habitat suitability for 12 species (34%) in our dataset, and that this effect is significantly higher for carnivores. These results show that neglecting long-term biodiversity records in spatial analyses risks misunderstanding, and generally underestimating, species' niches, which in turn may lead to ill-informed management decisions, with significant implications for the effectiveness of conservation efforts. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The past is a foreign country: how much can the fossil record actually inform conservation?'