Abstract
Adaptive management and resilience have three features that make their application and theory different from traditional command and control application and equilibrium or growth theories. These are: (1) the Rule of Hand retains just sufficient complexity, and leads to sets of models, workshops, and as best as possible to integrative understanding; (2) appreciation of the inevitable unknown, such as incomplete knowledge and evolutionary change, drift, possibility of surprises, experiments, the back loop of the adaptive cycle, and confused futures; (3) panarchy means there are surprises from different scales of continual learning, rare or episodic events allows forgetting, fast innovation, slow memory (foundations), dominant role of slow variables (re: slices of time and spots in space).
This chapter represents a literary ‘adaptive’ project, where a reflective essay by C.S. Holling on the events that led to the development of adaptive management was expanded and refined in a series of interviews conducted by Sundstrom and Allen. As the story of adaptive management is inextricably connected to Holling’s development of resilience science and his decades of collaboration with institutions and scientists across the world, this chapter also provides a tantalizing glimpse into the mind of one of ecology’s greats. The chapter is narrated by Holling, so references to ‘we’ refer to Holling and his colleagues at that time, rather than the co-authors of this chapter.
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Holling, C., Sundstrom, S. (2015). Adaptive Management, a Personal History. In: Allen, C., Garmestani, A. (eds) Adaptive Management of Social-Ecological Systems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9682-8_2
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