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Full-Text Articles in Law
Designing Law To Enable Adaptive Governance Of Modern Wicked Problems, Barbara Cosens
Designing Law To Enable Adaptive Governance Of Modern Wicked Problems, Barbara Cosens
Articles
In the twenty-first century, our planet is facing a period of rapid and fundamental change resulting from human domination so extensive it is expected to be visible in the geologic record. The accelerating rate of change compounds the global social-ecological challenges already deemed "wicked" due to conflicting goals and scientific uncertainty. Understanding how connected natural and human systems respond to change is essential to understanding the governance required to navigate these modern wicked problems. This Article views change through the lens of complexity and resilience theories to inform the challenges of governance in a world dominated by such massive and …
Incorporating Social System Dynamics In The Columbia River Basin: Food-Energy-Water Resilience And Sustainability Modeling In The Yakima River Basin, Barbara Cosens
Articles
In the face of climate change, achieving resilience of desirable aspects of food-energy-water (FEW) systems already strained by competing multi-scalar social objectives requires interdisciplinary approaches. This study is part of a larger effort exploring “Innovations in the Food-Energy-Water Nexus (INFEWS)” in the Columbia River Basin (CRB) through coordinated modeling and simulated management scenarios. Here, we focus on a case study and conceptual mapping of the Yakima River Basin (YRB), a sub-basin of the CRB. Previous research on FEW system management and resilience includes some attention to social dynamics (e.g., economic and governance systems); however, more attention to social drivers and …
Introduction To The Special Feature Practicing Panarchy: Assessing Legal Flexibility, Ecological Resilience, And Adaptive Governance In Regional Water Systems Experiencing Rapid Environmental Change, Barbara Cosens
Articles
This special feature presents articles on the cross-scale interactions among law, ecosystem dynamics, and governance to address the adaptive capacity of six watersheds in the United States as they respond to rapid environmental change. We build on work that assesses resilience and transformation in riverine and wetland social-ecological systems across the United States at a variety of scales, levels of development, and degrees of degradation, focusing specifically on the Anacostia River, Central Platte River, Klamath River, Columbia River, Middle Rio Grand River, and the Everglades wetlands. All of these cases involve complex institutional systems, histories involving ecological and social regime …
Regime Shifts And Panarchies In Regional Scale Social-Ecological Water Systems, Barbara Cosens
Regime Shifts And Panarchies In Regional Scale Social-Ecological Water Systems, Barbara Cosens
Articles
In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate …
Avoiding Decline: Fostering Resilience And Sustainability In Midsize Cities, Barbara Cosens
Avoiding Decline: Fostering Resilience And Sustainability In Midsize Cities, Barbara Cosens
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Eighty-five percent of United States citizens live in urban areas. However, research surrounding the resilience and sustainability of complex urban systems focuses largely on coastal megacities (>1 million people). Midsize cities differ from their larger counterparts due to tight urban-rural feedbacks with their immediate natural environments that result from heavy reliance and close management of local ecosystem services. They also may be less path-dependent than larger cities due to shorter average connection length among system components, contributing to higher responsiveness among social, infrastructural, and ecological feedbacks. These distinct midsize city features call for a framework that organizes information and …
Making "Conservation" Work For The 21st Century: Enabling Resilient Place, Jerrold A. Long
Making "Conservation" Work For The 21st Century: Enabling Resilient Place, Jerrold A. Long
Articles
During the New Deal, as part of a larger effort implementing Progressive Era "conservation" regimes, the federal government authorized the structurally-invasive Flood Control Act of 1936. At the same time, the Standard State Soil Conservation Districts Law promoted the creation of local, place-based efforts to protect or restore locally-valued resources. "Conservation" thus came to signify both the invasive, structural, engineering approach of mid-20th Century flood control, and the local, more responsive and flexible nature of soil conservation districts. But our understandings of our place in the natural world have changed subtly but significantly over the past century. Any legitimate natural …
Symposium Introduction: Resilient Cities: Environment, Economy, Equity, Stephen R. Miller
Symposium Introduction: Resilient Cities: Environment, Economy, Equity, Stephen R. Miller
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No abstract provided.
Assessing System Resilience And Ecosystem Services In Large River Basins, Barbara Cosens
Assessing System Resilience And Ecosystem Services In Large River Basins, Barbara Cosens
Articles
No abstract provided.
Legitimacy, Adaptation And Resilience In Ecosystem Management, Barbara Cosens
Legitimacy, Adaptation And Resilience In Ecosystem Management, Barbara Cosens
Articles
Ecologists have made great strides in developing criteria for describing the resilience of an ecological system. In addition, expansion of that effort to social-ecological systems has begun the process of identifying changes to the social system necessary to foster resilience in an ecological system such as the use of adaptive management and integrated ecosystem management. However, these changes to governance needed to foster ecosystem resilience will not be adopted by democratic societies without careful attention to their effect on the social system itself. Delegation of increased flexibility for adaptive management to resource management agencies must include careful attention to assuring …
Resilience In Transboundary Water Governance: The Okavango River Basin, Barbara Cosens
Resilience In Transboundary Water Governance: The Okavango River Basin, Barbara Cosens
Articles
When the availability of a vital resource varies between times of overabundance and extreme scarcity, management regimes must manifest flexibility and authority to adapt while maintaining legitimacy. Unfortunately, the need for adaptability often conflicts with the desire for certainty in legal and regulatory regimes, and laws that fail to account for variability often result in conflict when the inevitable disturbance occurs. Additional keys to resilience are collaboration among physical scientists, political actors, local leaders, and other stakeholders, and, when the commons is shared among sovereign states, collaboration between and among institutions with authority to act at different scales or with …
Resilience And Water Governance: Adaptive Governance In The Columbia River Basin, Barbara Cosens
Resilience And Water Governance: Adaptive Governance In The Columbia River Basin, Barbara Cosens
Articles
The 1964 Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada is currently under review. Under the treaty, the river is jointly operated by the two countries for hydropower and is the largest producer of hydropower in the western hemisphere. In considering the next phase of international river governance, the degree of uncertainty surrounding the drivers of change complicates efforts to predict and manage under traditional approaches that rely on historical ecosystem responses. At the same time, changes in social values have focused attention on ecosystem health, the decline of which has led to the listing of seven salmon and …
Transboundary River Governance In The Face Of Uncertainty: Resilience Theory And The Columbia River Treaty, Barbara Cosens
Transboundary River Governance In The Face Of Uncertainty: Resilience Theory And The Columbia River Treaty, Barbara Cosens
Articles
No abstract provided.