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Actualizing panarchy within environmental policy: mechanisms for tweaking institutional hierarchies to mimic the social-ecological systems they manage
Citation:
GARMESTANI, A. AND M. Benson. Actualizing panarchy within environmental policy: mechanisms for tweaking institutional hierarchies to mimic the social-ecological systems they manage. Presented at Law for Social-Ecological Resilience Conference, Stockholm, SWEDEN, November 17 - 19, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the EPA
Description:
Environmental law plays a key role in shaping approaches to sustainability. In particular, the role of legal instruments, institutions, and the relationship of law to the inherent variability in social-ecological systems is critical. Sustainability likely must occur via the institutions we have in place, combined with alterations in policy and regulation within the context of these institutions. The most effective approach is adaptive, in terms of both management and governance. Policy is not a linear process producing optimal results. Rather, policy is an iterative process that requires monitoring and recalibration of the parameters driving policy formulation. This ecosystem management arrangement is best characterized as a panarchy, with research on sustainability specific to the scale of interest. This paper examines how can we “tweak” institutions to behave more like the systems they manage for purposes of environmental management. There are several mechanisms (e.g., bridging organizations, informal networks) that have been utilized to actualize panarchy as environmental policy, and we touch upon those in this paper. Within this context, adaptive capacity in management entities is critical, and is characterized by open and frequent lines of communication between institutions at multiple scales. Here we offer options for formalizing adaptive capacity as a means for improving environmental management of cross-scale issues.
