The challenges of natural resource governance

It is generally agreed that adaptability – as in the capacity to react and respond to social and ecological change – is a desirable quality of systems governing natural resources (Holling, 1978; Walters, 1986; Folke et al., 2002). Even so, the complex nature of environmental problems makes adaptive governance a far from straightforward task. In addition to the inherent complexity and unpredictability of the natural environment, social processes related to natural resources are often ridden with conflict and feature great uncertainty regarding the substance of the problem, the strategies of other actors, and the overall institutions governing such processes (Koppenjan and Klijn, 2004). In striving for adaptability, governance is faced with various challenges originating from collective action problems, from the existence of divergent and competing interests, values, and problem definitions, and from the fact that ecological knowledge more often than not is contested (Olson, 1965; Hardin, 1968; Hoppe, 1999; Koppenjan and Klijn, 2004). These features significantly aggravate the processes of reaching a joint image regarding the state of the resource and appropriate management rules, which is absolutely essential for adaptive management to evolve. Thus, the social challenges of adaptive governance are many. There is therefore a constant search – among both policy makers and researchers – for the type of governance system that can promote the rise and subsistence of social processes dealing with these challenges in an efficient way.