Climate change has varying effects across the world. In North America, arid and semi-arid regions are subject to creeping warming together with more extreme climate variations, decreasing precipitation, and decreasing river flows that risk livelihoods of human populations living in these areas, and push their capacity to adapt beyond known boundaries. Environmental impacts act together with effects of socio-economic globalization and challenges imposed by institutional and policy events. These multiple forms of globally-driven changes interact with local communities and produce winners and losers depending on their levels of vulnerability and adaptive capacity, as well as on the specific stressors and shocks affecting the livelihood resources on which they depend. Rural communities often are hot spots of global change impacts because many livelihoods depend on the community’s natural resource base, and in several cases, they are also subject to market fluctuations and crashes due to their participation in international chains of food and producer goods. They will face a larger burden of the global change impacts due to this multi-tiered exposure. The socio-economic and institutional changes affecting rural communities have also produced de-agrarianization of livelihoods. Diversified livelihoods based on extractive industries and manufacturing or urban-based jobs coexist with traditional small-scale ranching and farming. In terms of water and land access and use, the modifications in user sectors and necessities, combined with increased demand by social and ecological components of the watershed systems, creates more complexity of environmental governance regimes and institutions. The purpose of this research is to identify and understand how rural communities of arid Northwest Mexico—with reference to the San Miguel Watershed (SMW) in central Sonora State—experience and respond to globally driven environmental, socio-economic, and institutional changes. The SMW is in a rapidly changing arid transboundary region, and exhibits a variety of institutional arrangements for land and water management, which makes it a case suitable for the study of adaptation in the face of global change. The study employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in three municipalities representing the upper, middle, and lower SWM. Rural households and producers, governmental agents, and local leaders were the participants of direct data collection, while documentary analysis and a broader literature review on rural adaptation in Mexico and the arid Southwest United States complemented primary data. The main contributions of the research are: 1) identifying multiple types of rural livelihoods and their importance in understanding adaptation to global change; 2) emphasizing institutional events and factors acting as both stressors and regulators in these adaptation processes, 3) describing how interactions between institutions can produce diverse governance outcomes in terms of access and management of resources for livelihoods' adaptation; and 4) providing empirical evidence for improving adaptation policies in rural arid Northwest Mexico, and other rural arid communities of the world. The study also includes a series of findings and lessons regarding advances in understanding human adaptation in rural communities, contributions to the theory and methods of adaptation science, and policy guidelines based on the findings.

Fire is a natural ecological process in the boreal forest, but also a threat to human lives, properties and other values at risk. The challenge is to find a way to manage fire where both the positive and negative aspects of fire are effectively balanced. This is especially important since more frequent and intense wildfires are predicted in the future due to climate change. There is also a need for increased cooperation across jurisdictions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Canadian fire management. To address the current and future challenges of fire management, this thesis argues that an effective and adaptive governance approach is needed.<p> The purpose of the study was to develop principles, criteria and indicators of adaptive governance and to apply this framework to fire management planning in Prince Albert National Park (PANP), Saskatchewan. Because of the need to include other agencies with fire responsibilities, the study also focused on the interagency cooperation with Saskatchewan Environment (SE), the provincial ministry responsible for wildfires.<p> Principles, criteria and indicators of adaptive governance were identified based on literature on good governance, adaptive management, adaptive governance, and wildfire specific literature. A qualitative research approach was then used to collect data mainly through semi-structured interviews with representatives from Parks Canada (both from PANP and at the national level) and SE, and document analysis of fire plans and strategies.<p> This study shows that many aspects of adaptive governance have already been implemented in PANP, so that principles and criteria of inclusiveness, legitimacy, foresight, leadership, and many aspects of performance-oriented and adaptiveness have been at least partially met. Yet, there is a need to improve information-sharing and communication, especially across jurisdictions. In terms of the interagency cooperation between PANP and SE, having different mandates is the biggest challenge, but it does not prevent cooperation. Throughout the years both agencies have worked out ways to deal with differences in their mandate and fire management strategies. Having a dialogue to try to understand each other�s mandate and respect each other has been and continues to be a key factor in the cooperation. Finally, maintaining and retaining social capital may be crucial to future success in fire management planning, both from an intra- and from an interagency perspective.

Fire is a natural ecological process in the boreal forest, but also a threat to human lives, properties and other values at risk. The challenge is to find a way to manage fire where both the positive and negative aspects of fire are effectively balanced. This is especially important since more frequent and intense wildfires are predicted in the future due to climate change. There is also a need for increased cooperation across jurisdictions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Canadian fire management. To address the current and future challenges of fire management, this thesis argues that an effective and adaptive governance approach is needed.<p> The purpose of the study was to develop principles, criteria and indicators of adaptive governance and to apply this framework to fire management planning in Prince Albert National Park (PANP), Saskatchewan. Because of the need to include other agencies with fire responsibilities, the study also focused on the interagency cooperation with Saskatchewan Environment (SE), the provincial ministry responsible for wildfires.<p> Principles, criteria and indicators of adaptive governance were identified based on literature on good governance, adaptive management, adaptive governance, and wildfire specific literature. A qualitative research approach was then used to collect data mainly through semi-structured interviews with representatives from Parks Canada (both from PANP and at the national level) and SE, and document analysis of fire plans and strategies.<p> This study shows that many aspects of adaptive governance have already been implemented in PANP, so that principles and criteria of inclusiveness, legitimacy, foresight, leadership, and many aspects of performance-oriented and adaptiveness have been at least partially met. Yet, there is a need to improve information-sharing and communication, especially across jurisdictions. In terms of the interagency cooperation between PANP and SE, having different mandates is the biggest challenge, but it does not prevent cooperation. Throughout the years both agencies have worked out ways to deal with differences in their mandate and fire management strategies. Having a dialogue to try to understand each other�s mandate and respect each other has been and continues to be a key factor in the cooperation. Finally, maintaining and retaining social capital may be crucial to future success in fire management planning, both from an intra- and from an interagency perspective.

The sustainable management of coupled social-ecological systems, such as water resource systems, requires institutional mechanisms for managing uncertainties and building more resilient social-ecological systems. Adaptive governance is an outcome of the search for a way to manage uncertainties and complexities within social-ecological systems. The concept of adaptive governance has emerged as a product of resilience theory and theoretical insights on common pool resources management. Adaptive governance refers to flexible multi-level institutions that connect state and non-state actors to facilitate a collaborative and learning-based approach to ecosystem management. As such, it has the potential to integrate social considerations into the decision process while also dealing with uncertainties in complex water resource systems. However, little is understood on how transitions toward adaptive governance systems take place and what criteria qualify a given institutional mechanism as an adaptive governance regime. This thesis presents results on a study that was aimed at understanding the process and outcomes of transitions toward adaptive water governance by using the Cache River Joint Venture Partnership (CRWJVP) within the Cache River Watershed in Southern Illinois as a case study. Qualitative data for the study were generated through key informant interviews among members of the CRWJVP and other knowledgeable actors, document review, and participant observation. The results revealed that the transformation of the governance of the Cache River watershed through the emergence of the CRWJVP was the result of ecological crises that began a citizen-led effort to preserve the Cache River wetlands. Additionally, the transition process was facilitated through trust-building, incentives, leadership, enabling legislation, and the role of bridging organizations. The results also showed that when compared to the attributes of an adaptive governance system, the current governance system of the Cache River watershed does not fully exhibit all the ideal attributes. However, the CRWJVP is moving towards an adaptive governance regime through the recent utilization of decision-making processes for recognizing and managing conflicts and uncertainties in the management of the watershed. Barriers in the transition process and recommendations for overcoming them are also discussed in the thesis. In all, findings from this study should be of relevance to scientists and decision-makers interested in understanding and enhancing transitions toward adaptive governance for the sustainable management of land and water resources in the Cache River watershed and elsewhere.

Adaptive governance must work "on the ground," that is, it must operate through structures and procedures that the people it governs perceive to be legitimate and fair, as well as incorporating processes and substantive goals that are effective in allowing social-ecological systems (SESs) to adapt to climate change and other impacts. To address the continuing and accelerating alterations that climate change is bringing to SESs, adaptive governance generally will require more flexibility than prior governance institutions have often allowed. However, to function as good governance, adaptive governance must pay real attention to the problem of how to balance this increased need for flexibility with continuing governance stability so that it can foster adaptation to change without being perceived or experienced as perpetually destabilizing, disruptive, and unfair. Flexibility and stability serve different purposes in governance, and a variety of tools exist to strike different balances between them while still preserving the governance institution's legitimacy among the people governed. After reviewing those purposes and the implications of climate change for environmental governance, we examine psychological insights into the structuring of adaptive governance and the variety of legal tools available to incorporate those insights into adaptive governance regimes. Because the substantive goals of governance systems will differ among specific systems, we do not purport to comment on what the normative or substantive goals of law should be. Instead, we conclude that attention to process and procedure (including participation), as well as increased use of substantive standards (instead of rules), may allow an increased level of substantive flexibility to operate with legitimacy and fairness, providing the requisite levels of psychological, social, and economic stability needed for communities to adapt successfully to the Anthropocene.

Annex 2 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Protocol calls for the collaborative development of a ‘nearshore framework’, but does not provide guidance with respect to nearshore governance. This thesis bridges this gap with a series of studies on the determinants for adaptive governance that will inform implementation of the Great Lakes Water Quality Protocol 2012. The principal focus of this work is on eutrophication, which is essentially a nearshore issue. The methodology includes a comprehensive literature review and 35 key informant interviews using a standardized questionnaire. The results assess Great Lakes governance, examine the strengths of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement Protocol 2012 and evaluate the effectiveness of the International Joint Commission. A major product of the research is the development of a framework for assessing adaptive capacity based on six determinants: public participation, science, networks, leadership, flexibility and resources. The framework is validated in the case study of eutrophication in Lake Erie and used to identify gaps in adaptive capacity for current eutrophication governance of Lake Erie. The framework was then tested on two additional case studies, the Chesapeake Bay and the Baltic Sea Region. These systems are both eutrophic and are similar in many other ways to the Great Lakes. This allowed exploration of issues of scale, from local (Chesapeake Bay) to binational (the Great lakes) to transnational (the Baltic Sea). The most important finding of this work is that the key barrier for building adaptive capacity for eutrophication governance in the Great Lakes is the lack of adequate leadership and resources. A key recommendation is therefore that the IJC be strengthened in its role to function as a collaborative leader to foster adaptive capacity. The findings from this research can inform the implementation of the Great Lakes Water Quality Protocol 2012. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Since the 1980s, approaches to managing forest resources in the US and around the world have been shifting from the conventional sustained yield approach towards ecosystem management. Ecosystem management is a resource management paradigm that seeks to employ a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to landscape scale conservation, as well as the integration of socio-economic and biophysical considerations with the overall goal of enhancing the health and resilience of coupled social-ecological systems. While the role of natural resource conflicts as drivers of the transition towards ecosystem management has received some research attention, the potential roles of ecosystem management in emerging natural resource conflicts have not been adequately explored. The effective implementation of ecosystem management requires adaptive governance mechanisms capable of integrating diverse stakeholder values and knowledge systems across scales. The absence of such institutional mechanisms could contribute to the emergence of wicked problems – a class of problems that defy clear definitions and definitive solutions. Using the Shawnee National Forest as a case study, the purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the role of natural resource conflicts in the transition towards ecosystem management, as well as the consequences of ecosystem management on emerging resource conflicts. The study also aimed to assess the extent to which the approaches and strategies used in managing natural resource conflicts meet the institutional requirements for managing wicked problems. In this regard, semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2021 among 24 key informants representing the US Forest Service and relevant stakeholder groups, such as environmental groups, recreationists, and local businesses. The interviews were preceded by a review of documents to understand the context of changing forest policies and evolving conflicts in the Shawnee National Forest since the 1980s. The data were analyzed with the NVivo software using a deductive coding approach. The results showed that the transition towards ecosystem-based forest management in the Shawnee National Forest was primarily triggered by conflicts between environmental groups and the US Forest Service over timber harvesting. Although the institutional framework for alternative dispute resolution existed at the time, these conflicts were largely managed through the national legal system. Since the transition to ecosystem management with the adoption of the 2006 Forest Plan, new conflicts have emerged, this time, mostly among various recreational groups. The lifting of the injunction on timber harvesting and the increased focus of the US Forest Service on active forest management as part of forest restoration efforts appear to have set the stage for the potential re-emergence of conflicts over timber harvesting. Regarding conflict management, the use of alternative conflict management techniques, such as negotiation and mediation have received increased attention since the adoption of the 2006 Forest Plan, although the effectiveness of these processes has been hampered by various institutional and attitudinal constraints, including conflicting procedural requirements, limited capacity, and lack of agency commitment towards meaningful stakeholder engagement. Meanwhile, the fear of lawsuits continues to shape forest management decisions on the Shawnee National Forest. These findings highlight the inadequacy of the national legal system in managing wicked problems and they highlight the need for investments in effective institutional mechanisms for conflict management, such as adaptive governance.

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Legal and institutional structures fundamentally shape opportunities for adaptive governance of environmental resources at multiple ecological and societal scales. Properties of adaptive governance are widely studied. However, these studies have not resulted in consolidated frameworks for legal and institutional design, limiting our ability to promote adaptation and social-ecological resilience. We develop an overarching framework that describes the current and potential role of law in enabling adaptation. We apply this framework to different social-ecological settings, centers of activity, and scales, illustrating the multidimensional and polycentric nature of water governance. Adaptation typically emerges organically among multiple centers of agency and authority in society as a relatively self-organized or autonomous process marked by innovation, social learning, and political deliberation. This self-directed and emergent process is difficult to create in an exogenous, top-down fashion. However, traditional centers of authority may establish enabling conditions for adaptation using a suite of legal, economic, and democratic tools to legitimize and facilitate self-organization, coordination, and collaboration across scales. The principles outlined here provide preliminary legal and institutional foundations for adaptive environmental governance, which may inform institutional design and guide future scholarship.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are changing the way people learn, do business, build relationships, and manage their lives. ICT allow easy and continuous access to open source intelligence (OSINT) that acts as force multipliers, enabling civilians to find new and more effective ways to participate in civil society and address disempowering strategies implemented by governments around the world to maintain stability. ICT and OSINT cultivate fluid intelligence and adaptive governance and can act as a catalyst to cultivate these capacities to transform conflict. The research question sought to determine whether fluid intelligence (cognitive ability to adapt and innovate) and adaptive governance (leadership and systems that work together with the governed to create favorable outcomes) are correlated with stability in gulf monarchies in the Middle East. This thesis examined the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the State of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, and the Sultanate of Oman using a complex adaptive systems analytic framework that drew upon the theories of adaptive governance and fluid and crystallized intelligence. Group grievance often indicates levels of stability in civilian populations. This study revealed a strong correlation between adaptive regimes with fluid populations and stability. Populations high in fluid intelligence in adaptive monarchical regimes had lower group grievance, but populations high in fluid intelligence in non-adaptive monarchical regimes had higher group grievance.