Adapting Institutions: Governance, Complexity and Social-Ecological Resilience

Emily Boyd · Carl Folke

oct 2011 · Cambridge University Press

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Global environmental change is occurring at a rate faster than humans have ever experienced. Climate change and the loss of ecosystem services are the two main global environmental crises facing us today. As a result, there is a need for better understanding of the specific and general resilience of networked ecosystems, cities, organisations and institutions to cope with change. In this book, an international team of experts provide cutting-edge insights into building the resilience and adaptive governance of complex social-ecological systems. Through a set of case studies, it focuses on the social science dimension of ecosystem management in the context of global change, in a move to bridge existing gaps between resilience, sustainability and social science. Using empirical examples ranging from local to global levels, views from a variety of disciplines are integrated to provide an essential resource for scholars, policy-makers and students, seeking innovative approaches to governance.

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Emily Boyd works, researches and teaches on climate change and development. She is a lecturer in environment and development in the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds and deputy director of the Global Development Centre, University of Leeds. She is also a research associate and a leader of the adaptive governance theme at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and an associate of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, Oxford University.

Carl Folke is among the founders of the Resilience Alliance and serves on the Executive Committee. The work of his research group in Stockholm emphasises the role that living systems at different scales play in social and economic development and how to govern and manage for resilience in integrated social-ecological systems. He received the 1995 Pew Scholar Award in Conservation and the Environment and in 2004 was awarded the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America.