Rammel 2007, Managing Complex Adaptive Systems - A Co-Evolutionary Perspective On Natural Resource Management

E CO L O G I CA L E CO N O MI CS 63 ( 20 0 7 ) 92 1
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METHODS
Managing complex adaptive systems A co-evolutionary perspective on natural resource management

Christian Rammela,, Sigrid Staglb , Harald Wilfinga
a b
Department for Anthropology, Human Ecology Research Group, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Althanstrae 14, Austria SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QE, UK
AR TIC LE I N FO
Article history: Received 26 October 2005 Received in revised form 14 December 2006 Accepted 22 December 2006 Available online 17 April 2007 Keywords: Co-evolution Complex adaptive systems Social institutions Natural resource management Evolutionary theory Sustainable development
ABS TR ACT
The overexploitation of natural resources and the increasing number of social conflicts following from their unsustainable use point to a wide gap between the objectives of sustainability and current resource management practices. One of the reasons for the difficulties to close this gap is that for evolving complex systems like natural and socioeconomic systems, sustainability cannot be a static objective. Instead sustainable development is an open evolutionary process of improving the management of social ecological systems, through better understanding and knowledge. Therefore, natural resource management systems need to be able to deal with different temporal, spatial and social scales, nested hierarchies, irreducible uncertainty, multidimensional interactions and emergent properties. The co-evolutionary perspective outlined in this paper serves as heuristic device to map the interactions settled in the networks between the resource base, social institutions and the behaviour of individual actors. For this purpose we draw on ideas from complex adaptive systems theory, evolutionary theory and evolutionary economics. Finally, we outline a research agenda for a co-evolutionary approach for natural resource management systems. 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.
1.
Introduction
Natural resource management systems are core to sustainable development. Characterised by a high level of complexity, and shaped by unpredictable external and internal changes, these management systems aim to address sustainability conflicts, which we face from global to local scales. These conflicts reflect the urgent need to change our current modes of production, consumption patterns and technological choices to balance human well being with ecological and social resilience. Overexploitation of natural resources, devastation of environmental services and an increasing number of social conflicts following the unsustainable use of natural resources demonstrate the wide gap between the objectives of sustainability and current resource management practices.
Corresponding author. E-mail address: christian.rammel@univie.ac.at (C. Rammel). 0921-8009/$ - see front matter 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2006.12.014
On the one hand, this gap results from the shortfalls of static approaches based on standard economic models like the maximum sustainable yield (Carpenter et al., 2002), short-term optimisation (Becker and Ostrom, 1995) and the related limitations of mono-disciplinarity (Berkes et al., 2003). In particular, neo-classical resource economics extends this gap as it deals with ecological and environmental systems by analysing the threats arising from scarcity constraints by reference to a mechanical corset based on closed systems, reductive science, reversibility and an a-historic worldview (Nicolis and Prigogine, 1977; RamosMartin, 2003; Rammel and van den Bergh, 2003). Driven by neo-classical equilibrium models that are characterised by their theoretical elegance and aesthetics (Nelson, 1995) rather than by their potential to understand the complexity
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of evolving systems, conventional resource management systems often focus exclusively on myopic optimisation and gains of efficiency rather than on the capacity to foster socialecological resilience in the long-run. On the other hand, sustainable management of complex evolving systems (Allen, 1990, 2001; Giampietro, 2004) is challenged by different temporal, spatial and social scales, nested hierarchies, inevitable uncertainty, multidimensional interactions and emergent properties (Berkes et al., 2003; Gunderson and Holling, 2002; Mayumi and Giampietro, 2006). Consequently, sustainable resource management must be an integrated and interdisciplinary process aiming at the interdependencies between institutions, environmental dynamics, economic processes, applied technologies and dominant cultures in managing and administrating natural resources. But how to understand and how to model the complexity of natural resource management systems? Sustainability is not a fixed ideal, but an evolutionary process of improving the management of systems, through improved understanding and knowledge (Cary, 1998:12). A growing body of literature points to the potential of evolutionary thinking in economics in general and in resource management in particular (Hodgson, 1993; Nelson, 1995; Heino et al., 2000; Allen and McGlade, 1987; Jeffrey and McIntosh, 2002; MacGlade, 2002; Rammel and van den Bergh, 2003; Henrich, 2004). Ramos-Martin (2003: 390) points out, that ecological economics is an evolutionary science and as such deals with complex adaptive systems (Holland, 1995; Levin, 1999). In the following we argue that a co-evolutionary approach is necessary to understand natural resource management systems and to enhance sustainability in the long run. In this paper, we aim to develop an interdisciplinary framework for mapping the co-evolutionary interactions settled in natural resource management systems, which we perceive as complex adaptive systems. For this purpose we focus on the interactions between the natural resource base, social institutions and the behaviour of individual actors and draw on co-evolutionary theories from different disciplines that are relevant for natural resource management systems. The structure of this paper is as follows: Section 2 briefly introduces complex adaptive system (CAS) theory as theoretical basis for analysing the dynamics of socialecological systems. Section 3 presents an overview about the use of the concept of co-evolution in different disciplines. In search for theories to underpin natural resource management, special attention is given to the understanding of co-evolutionary dynamics in biology, technology studies and economics. Section 4 presents a co-evolutionary framework of natural resource management systems. Section 5 gives an outlook of a future research agenda on co-evolution and natural resource management systems. We conclude in Section 6.
express large macroscopic patterns which emerge out of local, small-scale interactions. In general, CAS are based on complex behaviour that emerges as a result of interactions among system components (or agents) and among system components (or agents) and the environment. Through interacting with and learning from its environment, a complex adaptive system modifies its behaviour to adapt to changes in its environment (Potgieter and Bishop, 2001: 1). In CAS, nested hierarchies, multiplicity of cross-scale interactions and feedback loops between different hierarchical levels imply a high degree of complexity and non-linear behaviour that predictive equilibrium models fail to calculate (Van den Bergh and Gowdy, 2003). Analysing CAS means to incorporate variability, adaptations, uncertainty and nonlinearity while heading for improved understanding of how co-evolutionary processes and dynamic patterns emerge and interact across hierarchical levels and across different spatial, temporal and social scales (Hartvigsen et al., 1998). As CAS theory deals with evolving, self-organising systems, it is also concerned with resilience, path dependence and system memory offering a conceptual framework for applying the insights and data from small-scale analysis to understand larger-scale patterns and processes (Cross et al., 2003). Addressing complex interactions across various levels such as ecosystem dynamics and institutional change, CAS theory aims at enhancing the understanding of co-evolving social ecological systems1 (Berkes et al., 2003) in general, and natural resource management systems in particular (Abel et al., 2000; Levin, 1999). For natural resource management systems, a CAS approach emphasises that their rules, behaviour and structures vary over time as they adapt to changing external environments (e.g. climate effects or resource prices), just as the particular sub-systems adapt to micro-level emergences (e.g. new management routines or changing local administrations). In these systems, due to their evolutionary and adaptive behaviours, two important systemic properties emerge, which oppose any static, predictive approach: Firstly, the emergence of novelty, which is the creative foundation of sustainable development (Holling, 1994). Secondly, non-linear behaviour that emphasises systems far from equilibrium and the irrelevance to calculate any form of unique equilibrium. The results are hierarchical aggregations, dispersed crossscale interactions and an ongoing process of creating novelty, selection and adaptation, and in particular the existence of inevitable uncertainty (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990; Stirling and Mayer, 2001). Far from exhibiting static equilibria, natural resource management systems have been disrupted and changed in the past and they express a dynamic interplay between transitions and maintained structural configurations. This interplay inhibits the dynamics of network evolution, and reveals a particular optimisation problem: on the one hand,
1 Socialecological systems include social and ecological subsystems. They incorporate an integrated focus on the various linkages between both systems. In natural resource management, applying the concept of socialecological systems emphasises the objective to relate management practices based on ecological understanding, to the social mechanisms behind these practices, in a variety of geographical settings, cultures, ecosystems (Berkes et al., 2003: 4).
2.
Complex adaptive systems
There is an increasing awareness in natural and social sciences that ecological, physical as well as socio-economic systems share the characteristics of CAS (Arthur et al., 1997; Levin, 1998; Janssen, 1998; Ramos-Martin, 2003). Characterised by self-organisation and co-evolutionary dynamics, they
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due to their different attributes and interrelations, subsystems or agents depend on particular co-operative and mutual interactions which drive various co-evolutionary developments and optimisation processes. On the other hand, long enduring evolutionary network must contain cooperative links that lead to an overall systemic performance that is adaptive and successful in its surrounding environment (Allen, 2002). Between micro-level interactions and macro-level adaptivity, sustainability arises, if each subsystem fits successfully in the network, and if the network successfully fits into the wider environment. In contrast, adaptations of particular agents or sub-systems initiate cascadic change across the particular hierarchies and could cause qualitative change of the behaviour or structures of the overall CAS which may prove unsustainable and fail to cope with its external environment. In short, any adaptation which enhances a specific optimisation process of an individual subsystem could fail to enhance the resilience of the whole system. This illustrates the importance of hierarchical feedback loops across scales and the capacity of CAS (such as natural resource management systems) to create and benefit from innovative variability of different evolutionary trajectories2 starting at small system scales while constraining those innovations that destabilise the overall system because of their nature or excessive exuberance (Holling, 2001; Gunderson and Holling, 2002). For natural resource management systems this tension between adaptation, innovations and feedback loops emphasises the need for maintaining diversity and enhancing participatory stakeholder processes through greater transparency and a shared contextual understanding. Both will be described in more detail in Section 5. Traditionally, neo-classical resource economics (and even ecology) tend to neglect the dynamics of CAS and replace nonlinearities, complexity and uncertainty through the clarity of precise numbers and interventions heading for the optimisation of specific key variables (Cross et al., 2003). However, in CAS like natural resource management systems, disturbances and selection processes are winnowing system components, leading to adaptations and to system reorganisation to accommodate change. Throughout time the evolutionary trajectories of CAS are the result of these adaptations and are the reflection of a permanently changing and co-evolving world. Consequently, major problems of unsustainable resource management are linked with human influence on these evolutionary trajectories by attempting to stabilise and control pre-selected key variables. As these attempts are fundamentally static and unevolutionary they have generally failed and led to rigid institutions, which were unable to manage ecosystems sustainably (Holling et al., 2002). In contrast, acknowledging the dynamics of CAS means also to refer to a co-evolutionary potential which reflects the ability to perceive and respond to feedback in terms of establishing mutual and dynamic interactions between the particular sub-systems or evolving elements. In natural resource management systems, this potential enhances reciprocal adaptations between and within socio-economic
In human systems, evolutionary trajectories include technological innovations, behavioural preferences as well as institutional arrangements.
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systems and natural systems, with adaptations often driven by crisis, conflicts, learning and redesign (Rammel and Staudinger, 2004). Therefore, in CAS, sustainable management comes close to initiating a co-evolutionary dialogue where a continuous learning process is driven by the mutual and reciprocal interactions among the interlinked sub-systems and agents. Alongside this dialogue, the ability to form new relations and new emerging properties enhances the chances of adaptive change and socialecological resilience. Blann et al. (2003) illustrate this point very well by reference to the control strategies and management skills that had developed in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; by use of case studies of forestry, water management and agriculture their research studies new practitioners in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources who focus on learning and change by creating open and respectful platforms for dialogue, learning, relationship building and experimentation.
3.
The interdisciplinary use of co-evolution
The term co-evolution was coined by Ehrlich and Raven (1964) to describe genetic change of one species in response to the evolution of a second species. Since then several kinds of coevolutionary interactions between species or genes, promotional and inhibitory, were described by scholars of biology ( Janzen, 1980; Futuyama and Slatkin, 1983; Thompson, 1994). Starting from strict gene-for-gene-co-evolution, over a more general definition as reciprocal evolutionary change up to recent approaches of gene-culture-co-evolution which stretches the term to include the reciprocal effects of genetic and cultural change within the human species the metaphorical use was successively developed and extended (Van Valen, 1973; Durham, 1991; Lalland et al., 1999). This made a transfer of coevolutionary theory into other research areas such as technology studies and socio-economic analysis possible. Subsequently, over the last 20 years, there has been growing awareness that technology is co-evolving with its socio-economic and bio-physical environment. This emphasises the inevitable interdependencies between technologies, institutions, values and the bio-physical environment (Nye, 1992; Vicenti, 1994; Mokyr, 1990; Basalla, 1988; Nelson and Winter, 1982). These studies focus on the analysis of path dependence, adaptive technologies and lock-in situations (Arthur et al., 1997). In economics the co-evolutionary metaphor is probably most widely used for the interrelations between technologies with industrial structures (Dosi and Kogut, 1993; Nelson, 1994a,b; Antonelli and Marchionatti, 1998; Nelson and Sampat, 2001; von Tunzelmann, 2003). Norgaard (1994), Kemp (1997), Minsch (1997) and Rennings (2000) highlight the importance of co-evolutionary interactions between technology and the related institutional setting which is of particular importance in the case of ecoinnovation, sustainable management systems and green technologies. Focussing on the policy arena, Kemp and Rotmans (2001) developed a co-evolutionary framework for sustainable technology development, which was adopted by Dutch environmental policy makers who aim to orientate private and public actors toward sustainable transition goals.
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At another level the co-evolutionary metaphor is applied for conceptualising interrelationships between human behaviours and institutions. Actors influence each other directly or indirectly via social institutions. In a co-evolutionary process, [...], the adaptive landscape of one actor heaves and deforms as the other actors make their own adaptive moves (Kauffman, 1993: 238). However, the co-evolutionary behaviour is not limited to attaining point attractors which are local optima, nor is it clear that co-evolving systems must be optimising anything whatsoever [ibid]. For recent reviews in this area see Van den Bergh and Stagl (2003), and Gintis (2003). In environmental management co-evolutionary concepts are adopted to highlight the role of individual and social learning for adaptive management (Norgaard, 1988; Hadfield and Seaton, 1999; Janssen et al., 2000a,b; Keen et al., 2005; Stagl, in press). Anderies et al. (2004) developed a coevolutionary framework for identifying parts of a social ecological system which are potentially vulnerable to internal disturbances and to identify design principles for institutions which lead to robust socialecological systems. After reviewing a large number of historical cases they conclude that whether or not the multilevel and multi-scale aspects of a socialecological system provide benefits or incur costs depends delicately on the institutional arrangements and that a diversity of adaptive institutions will be necessary for fostering sustainable development (Ostrom, 2005).
4. A co-evolutionary framework of natural resource management systems as complex adaptive systems

4.1. The conceptual base
Natural resource management systems as complex adaptive systems (CAS) are characterised by their dynamic interdependencies across various scales and are driven by mutual interactions between institutional, ecological, technological and socio-economic domains. Hence, we argue that sustainable management requires interdisciplinary analysis and improved understanding of multi-dimensional feedbacks and, more generally, of the dynamics of the interrelations between the particular interacting subsystems. To achieve such an understanding and to broaden our analytical scope, we consider a coevolutionary perspective on natural resource management as an operational focus that shall provide an appropriate conceptual umbrella to tackle key aspects of sustainability. However, using a co-evolutionary umbrella does not necessarily mean the application of a new methodology; for a start it emphasises the need for a novel and interdisciplinary combination of existing tools (such as agent-based system modelling, institutional analysis, multi-criteria appraisal and / or dynamic system modelling) to capture co-evolutionary interactions and complex dynamics inherent in natural resource management. Certain tools are, however, based on specific paradigms and show a great dependency on the mental models of actual tool users. Some methods and tools providing a co-evolutionary umbrella may prove useless in the hands of those trained in normal (reductive) science. Facing these constraints of reductive approaches to natural resource management, researchers are
increasingly calling for a new dynamic paradigm; such a new paradigm is meant to, firstly, help understand how these systems interact across different scales, and secondly, how to manage them (Holling, 1995; Costanza et al., 1997; Cumberland et al., 1997; Lubchenco, 1998; Patterson and Williams, 1998; Allison and Hobbs, 2006). Consequently, this new paradigm which emerges from the quest for a better understanding of the complex interaction across hierarchies and domains of natural resource management systems requires a range of new tools as well as better use of exisiting ones; both approaches need researchers and natural resource managers with new mental models of systemic approach and skills to apply them. Clearly, a co-evolutionary approach to natural resource management systems is neither deterministic nor will it encourage any predictive policy to control or correct resource management problems. Even though a co-evolutionary perspective focuses more on understanding the past (ex-post analysis), this does not limit its potential. To understand how today's conditions and problems were created in the past, analysing notions such as emergences, path-dependencies or co-evolutionary developments increases our ability to maintain our options for sustainable futures and enhances adaptive management in order to contribute to socialecological resilience. At a general level, we conceive co-evolution as dynamic interactions between two or more interdependent systems, which account mutually for each other's development. In detail, co-evolution can be seen as the evolutionary process among two or more elements/sub-systems/systems driven by reciprocal selective pressures and adaptations between these elements/sub-systems/systems. Thus, a co-evolutionary system can be defined by the totality of all the interacting elements/sub-systems (see also Jeffrey and McIntosh, 2002). Moreover, co-evolutionary dynamics reflect different temporal, spatial and social scales, nested hierarchies, inevitable uncertainties, multidimensional interactions and contain emergent properties (Janssen et al., 2000a,b; Gowdy, 1994; Stokes, 1994). In applying a co-evolutionary perspective to natural resource management, we perceive natural resource management systems as hierarchically arranged mosaics of coevolving social, technological and environmental processes or elements. As socialecological systems they express an essential part of human-environment interactions in which both sides modify one another continuously by mutual feedback creating a dynamic process shaped by qualitative change, error making, ignorance, learning and adaptation (Allen, 1990; Norgaard, 1994; Berkes et al., 2003). There is a common understanding that research on coevolutionary dynamics implicates a systemtheoretic approach which allows coping with dynamic interrelations, uncertainty and qualitative change (Norgaard, 1994; Jeffrey and McIntosh, 2002; McClade, 2002). Referring to CAS, these dynamic interactions take place across hierarchical overlapping levels (Holland, 1995), which can express a great diversity of possible sub-systems. From a heuristic point of view, these levels can be aggregated into (1) natural resources, (2) institutions and social organisations (including technological systems) and (3) individual behaviour. The classical dichotomy between exogenous and endogenous factors of resource management systems can be overcome as these
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factors as well as their feedback can be found across all three hierarchical levels. Drawing on the work of Simon (1974), we use the term hierarchies not in the meaning of top-down sequences of control and power, hierarchies are rather seen as semiautonomous levels that are created by interactions among variables that share similar spatial and temporal attributes. These hierarchies are by no means static structures, their interconnected levels could instead be understood as transitory structures (Holling et al., 2002) that are conserved by interactions of changing processes and structures across various scales. These transitory structures can consist of particular entities of ecosystems as well as cover elements in technological systems, individual corporations, industrial sectors or socio-ecological systems. Across these three hierarchical levels, today's natural resource management faces very complex, challenging problems but also opportunities. We perceive them as natural elements of co-evolutionary processes and, in this context, natural resource management as a regulation system that links (at diverse scales) two sub-systems: human societies on the one hand and bio-physical systems on the other. We call the whole co-evolving system humannature-system which expresses the characteristics of socialecological systems (Berkes et al., 2003). In general, co-evolving humannaturesystems contain a high level of inevitable complexity in terms of dynamic, cross-scale and interdependent interactions between particular sub-systems of natural resource management, which must be considered simultaneously when aiming for sustainable development. Additionally, as CAS, humannature-systems are characterised by unpredictable change affecting the structure, quality, rules and behaviour of the particular natural resource management as well as its external conditions. Consequently, management for sustainability must tackle the key notion of adaptive capacity to deal with change in a socially, economically and ecologically sound way. In short, adaptive capacity refers to the design and potential of natural resource management (expressed in institutions, knowledge, policies and technologies) to change and adapt in response to altered conditions, crises, emergences and unpredictable effects of (co)evolutionary dynamics. Hence, adaptive capacity is the capacity to perceive stimuli and to send signals for adaptive change, i.e. to respond to balancing feedback. Facing the challenges of complex and co-evolving natural resource management systems, such as unpredictable qualitative change and uncertainty, it is the diversity3 of opportunities and systemic properties that provides the capacity to enhance adaptivity in terms of buffering and reorganising after disturbance and change (Stirling, in press; Folke et al., 2002; Elmqvist et al., 2003; Rammel, 2005). The importance of maintaining diversity for a future research agenda on natural resource management systems will be outlined in Section 5.
4.2.
Environment and the co-evolution of institutions
3 That diversity is a crucial property not only for the resilience and sustainability of natural resource management systems, but is also an important and very special feature of sustainable socioeconomic development was shown in this journal by several authors across various disciplines (e.g. Schtz, 1999; Matutinovi, 2001; Rammel and van den Bergh, 2003).
Heading for an evolutionary understanding of the interactions between social institutions and the environment, we face the risk entering in the controversy about nature or nurture. Since the rise of Darwinism, there has been a long and bloody Hundred Years War among anthropologists (Fracchia and Lewontin, 1999) over whether human culture (and its inherent institutional features) is evolving through differential survival and reproduction of cultural elements or whether human culture is a self-perpetuating and autonomous human product explicable in terms of unfolding and intrinsic directionality (Biersack, 1999; Dunbar, 1999). Without exploring this debate here fully it is obvious that human ability to build institutions is a fundamental base for the societal efforts to utilise and manage ecological niches and natural resources. In principle, institutions evolve over time either by deliberate design or spontaneously, constrained by both context and path dependencies. This means that their structures, rules and objectives reflect past conditions and reveal the process of adaptation over time (Hodgson, 1993). Shaped and selected by environmental as well as cultural factors they enfold a multidimensional process (Van den Bergh and Stagl, 2003), which specifies the way and intensity of exploitation of natural resources and their further utilisation and distribution within the socio-economic system (Matutinovi, 2006). Since the advent of the very first agricultural settlements institutional features covering issues of governing, distributing and accessing resources became crucial elements in the human struggle for survival. Due to environmental changes or increasing population, institutional arrangements played a major role to find adaptive answers to new challenges in the form of intensification of natural resource usage, sociopolitical reorganisations or access rights, to list only a few (Boserup, 1981; Stone and Downum, 1999). Consequently, these efforts of cultural adaptations influenced the evolutionary paths of bio-physical systems. Hence, co-evolution theory stresses that bio-physical settings and institutional features change together; the evolution of each is reflected in the evolution of the other (Norgaard, 1994). Institutions such as community-based management systems have co-evolved with their natural resource base and developed adaptive knowledge to live with environmental change and surprise (Berkes et al., 2003). Referring to the mutual interrelations within humannature-systems, we understand this situation as co-evolutionary dialogue, which is expressed by different hierarchical levels with different spatial, temporal and social scales. Within this dialogue, changes in the environmental setting will partly be related to institutional adjustments and adaptations that emerge within the socioeconomic systems and vice versa. As integrative part of cultural evolution, norms, social conventions, social and economic rules co-evolved with environmental conditions as well as with technological trajectories and economic prosperity (Dalton and Coats, 2000). Consequently, institutional arrangements are constrained and shaped by the multidimensionality of society's history. Thus, neither can the right institutional form be chosen without limitations nor is the intended outcome of
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institutional change autonomously achieved (Ostrom et al., 1994). Moreover, institutions are following a continuous process of trial-and-error learning about the selective pressure of environmental settings as a stimulus of improvement, the operational rules and the transformation costs of changing these rules. Following evolutionary dynamics, these learning processes (based on adequate information about the environmental impact) will by no means reach adaptive success automatically as is shown by numerous cases, for example in the area of water management systems (Hauchler et al., 1999; Shiva, 2002). On the one hand, the timeliness and quality of the selective feedback that institutions obtain vary according to how natural resources are used and affected by the anthropogenic intervention and they vary across different types of environments (e.g. using invisible groundwater or using visible surface water). Additionally irreducible uncertainty is present when dealing with CAS and with the nonlinear dynamics of socialecological systems. On the other hand, culture and institutions create their own social reality where the criteria of success and selection are orientated on non-environmental issues such as social coherence, wellbeing, power or psychological satisfaction (Stuart-Fox, 1999; Rulye, 1973). For the case of water management, the perception of the situation (Do people believe that there is a water shortage?), the perception of the change of the situation (Did water demand rise quickly or steadily over a long period?) and perceived responsibilities (Should water companies repair the leaks and forego a share of their profit? Or should businesses and households limit their water use?) are only a few examples which help shape specific social realities. The more complex and powerful institutional arrangements become, the more societies are faced with the dilemma of two dimensions of reality: one social and one ecological, expressing two interdependent issues of individual survival and well-being (Rammel and Staudinger, 2002). Thus, much of institutional preoccupation is focused at achieving goals whose underlying values emerge apart from their environmental relevance. The selectivity of ecological settings affects the co-evolution of institutions, therefore the environment encountered by norms, rules and social conventions does not just act as static template to which institutions adapt. Given the potential of institutions to manage processes of ecosystem engineering (Jones et al., 1997) they are highly able to construct or modify their relevant niches (for the evolutionary importance of niche constructing see also Odling-Smee et al., 1996; Lalland et al., 1999). Hence, constructing niches refers to an active process of altering the environmental setting, which is followed by a sometimes highly significant (positive or negative) selective feedback in terms of an ecological inheritance (Odling-Smee, 1988). However, institutions that manage and use natural resources do not need to face the consequences of the ecological inheritance immediately. The more niche construction is advanced in terms of technological and institutional power, the more it temporally damps negative environmental feedback expressing some kind of co-evolutionary time-lag. The benefits of institutions modifying or constructing ecological niches are obvious. Facing greater independence and different time scales in terms of slow environmental
changes enhances steady accumulation of adaptive knowledge and a more efficient control over natural resources and ecological functions. Additionally it supports institutional stability and cohesiveness as it pays each institutional member to invest in mutually beneficial niche constructing (Lalland et al., 1999). Furthermore, shielding the immediate selective pressure gives room for creativity accompanied by an increased variety of alternative innovations. This variety could enable rapid adaptive changes, if the niche construction breaks down. Nevertheless, co-evolutionary time-lags do not avoid the necessity of adaptive institutional change and the high importance of continuous learning by interacting, which is primarily based on the process of perception. Physical changes and the ecological inheritance do not generate the significant societal response until they are recognised as problems. In general, the driving force behind institutional change and learning is the perceptual system which emerges out of a co-evolutionary process between environmental triggers, accumulated knowledge, political objectives, and the controversial and mutual communication between individual and aggregate appreciative systems (Hadfield and Seaton, 1999). Thus, to orientate the co-evolutionary dialogue along the lines of a smooth steady state of change, successful longenduring institutions must invest in comprehensive systems of perception and monitoring as the foundation of adaptive management (Walters, 1986; Walker et al., 2002). As shown in the literature on common property resources, institutions coevolving with the environment in an adaptive and sustainable way express the ability to modify their operational rules over time in light of past experience and new perceptual emergence (Ostrom et al., 1994).
4.3.
Institutions and co-evolving behaviour
The previous section showed that institutions are shaped by their environment and that they shape the environment. Social institutions and organisations impact the environment via management activities. Additionally they shape people's behaviour by limiting behavioural options and at the same time enabling the pursuit of (possibly new) behaviours. As outlined above, co-evolutionary interactions between individual behaviours and institutions are mainly channelled via knowledge, norms and values which bridge the collective outcomes of far from equilibrium interactions and heterogeneous learning at the behavioural level with the established mechanisms at the institutional level that shape, constraint and initiate low-level behaviour. From an evolutionary point of view, institutions and the cognitive structures enabling individual behaviour to perform similar functions, which provide the capacity to simplify complexity, classify phenomena, dissolve uncertainty and collect information to orientate and constrain our choices (Morand and Stagl, 2001). However, individual behaviour is embedded in and actively forms the institutional context meaning that knowledge, norms and rules start to emerge as individually generated patterns based on individual learning and personal experience. In a bottomup process these behavioural patterns and conventions shape and influence institutions as higher level entities, when people make use of other's experience and benefit from
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reducing complexity and uncertainty through adapting conventions in order to govern given aspects of social life. The co-evolutionary dynamics between emergences, embeddedness and mutual feedback shape a process of social selection, which, as an essential factor driving cultural evolution, is characterised by hierarchically structured processes of eliminating or supporting alternatives (Rammel and Staudinger, 2002). From individual cognitive selectivity based on personal life trajectories, over already learned knowledge which biases subsequent learning, to personal practice where actions are differentially expressed in relation to their selective environment, to actions of social groups and institutions, this social selective process transforms culturally dependent models into social reality (Campbell, 1991; Gellner, 1993; Stuart-Fox, 1999). Consequently, social reality can neither reflect the true nature of things nor can it describe the complexity of ecosystems and natural resources. As institutions regulate the relationships and interactions among individuals as well as between ecological and socioeconomic systems (Gatzweiler and Hagedorn, 2002), they filter and generate the reality of natural resource management systems, define management problems (and ignore others) and finally direct possible paths of solutions. As discussed briefly in Section 3 the relationship between social actors and institutions has recently received much attention within the socio-economic research community by way of developing novel analytical frameworks as well as conducting laboratory experiments. Notably, it was shown, that the sustainable use of natural resources often requires cooperation and institutions fostering cooperative behaviour (Axelrod, 1997) and the development of pro-social norms (Bowles and Gintis, 1998). The emergence of different outcomes in the context of common pool resources and cooperative behaviour was analysed by Deadman et al. (2000), Jager et al. (2000) and Ostrom et al. (2002). In fact, some of the most sophisticated and successful co-evolving natural resource management systems are common pool institutions that enhanced behavioural responses towards long-term sustainability. Examples in this area include Swiss grazing commons (Ostrom et al., 1994), or the Spanish irrigation systems called huertas (Glick, 1970). Recently, agent based modelling (ABM) has proven to be a remarkably versatile tool for understanding behaviour in socialecological systems (Gilbert and Conte, 1995; Berger, 2001; van der Veen and Otter, 2001; Walker and Janssen, 2002; Parker et al., 2003; Sengupta and Bennett, 2003; Hodgson and Knudsen, 2004; Happe et al., 2006). It enables us to address the fundamental issues of the agency-structure debate, which highlighted that systems consist of both agents and structures, each of which has an impact on the other (Giddens, 1979). In particular, ABM can capture the co-evolutionary interactions at the micro level within natural resource management systems and their institutional environments4. This approach gives special attention to the co-evolutionary dynamics of the organisational levels (of resource consumers and providers), which interact through rules and agents. As it was shown by Janssen et al. (2000a, b) for the case of resource
4 For an up-to-date list of references on ABM in land use research see:http://www.complexityscience.org/NoE/ablum.htm.
management in complex rangeland systems, the mutual interactions between individual actors, institutional regimes and different policies in CAS can be analysed by adaptive agent models which emphasise that behavioural rules at the level of individual agents lead to emergent properties at the macro level. Instead of traditional deterministic equilibrium seeking models, adaptive agent models evolve, leading to irreversible structural change. External and internal disturbances prevent the system from reaching equilibrium (Janssen et al., 2000a,b: 250). An area of natural resource management, to which ABM was frequently applied, is participatory water management (Tillman et al., 1999; Tillman et al., 2001; Pahl-Wostl, 2002; Barreteau et al., 2003; Becu et al., 2003); it contributes to the development of an interface of analytical modelling and participatory stakeholder approaches. This approach also offers a potential resolution of the duality between individual and collective levels of a system is offered. Especially, the potential to support participatory resource management through linking modelling with the quality of the process of decision-making, rather than to aim at final objective results is a fundamental issue of a co-evolutionary approach and will be crucial to a future research agenda on natural resource management.
5. A future research agenda on natural resource management

Recalling the recent developments in natural resource management, we perceive a lack of dynamic approaches based on CAS and co-evolutionary theory. However, the multi-dimensional nature of natural resource management systems calls for interdisciplinary bridges and communication about general phenomena such as complexity and cross-scale interactions. In the following we suggest two complementary issues, which, in our opinion, represent promising areas within a future research agenda on natural resource management.
5.1. Enhancing participative stakeholder processes through greater transparency: modelling co-evolutionary dynamics
Due to the very nature of CAS, in natural resource management our knowledge is always incomplete and surprise inevitable. In fact, we face complex co-evolving systems which act as moving targets, continuously evolving at multiple spatial, temporal and social scales. At best we can hope to understand the evolution of natural resource management systems after the fact, but any attempt to control or predict is arbitrary and indeed bears the risk to erode the resilience of the overall socialecological systems (Holling and Meffe, 1996; Gunderson et al., 1995). If fundamental uncertainty and potential costs (stakes) are high, traditional science is inadequate and ethical judgement is ubiquitous (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990). As part of post-normal science, Funtowicz and Ravetz suggest participatory procedures with all relevant stakeholders for decision making (see also Renn et al., 1995; O'Connor, 2000; Kasemir et al., 2003; Smith, 2003). For natural resource management
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such participatory processes are key to sustainability as it is a crucial means for addressing existing conflicts and achieving the co-evolution of stakeholder preferences heading for shared goals and a compromise decision (Sherwill and Rogers, 2001). Therefore, a central idea of a co-evolutionary approach must be to enhance a shared contextual understanding about natural resource management systems in such a way, that researchers provide the stakeholders involved in the decisionmaking process with integrative information about the system in question, but letting them their own way to reach compromise solutions. By integrative information we mean offering a greater degree of transparency of CAS. Obviously, sustainable use of natural resources is unlikely without improved understanding of cross-scale interactions, lagged responses and non-linear behaviour pointing at the necessity to expand from knowledge about structures to knowledge about co-evolutionary processes that enhance the capacity of natural resource management systems to address change and surprise (Berkes et al., 2003; Gunderson and Holling, 2002). To understand how such systems respond to and trigger change, to understand how particular sub-systems (including particular stakeholder groups) of natural resource management systems interact across different spatial, temporal and social scales is central for improving the quality of decision-making processes and for enhancing participation. Greater transparency and improved understanding of the dynamics of natural resource management systems points at systems modelling which help to unravel complexity in CAS. Recently, systems modelling has made crucial advances to map co-evolutionary dynamics in CAS proving information about qualitative change, emergences and non-linear behaviour (Janssen et al., 2000a,b; Bonabeau, 2002; Parker et al., 2003). It was shown, that models incorporating the coevolutionary dynamics of CAS are viable exploratory tools for the formalisation process of coupled, co-evolving human nature systems, as well as the exploration of trajectories of possible scenarios (Goldstein, in press). However, modelling CAS must be interdisciplinary, integrative, focussing at appropriate scales, stakeholder oriented and must incorporate change and uncertainty, rather than present truth through images of closed and mechanic systems which fail to reflect real life phenomena. Modelling of natural resource management systems can be highly valuable to participatory resource management, as long as we remember that even the knowledge that we can obtain from any model of CAS is always context dependent (Clark et al., 1995). For example, participatory multicriteria appraisal tries to present and organise multidimensional and varied information about complex issues (e.g. water systems of a region) in such a way that it encourages stakeholders to explore options and deliberate about them before making a decision (Munda, 2000). In short, modelling CAS must be along the lines of science, which heads for integrating parts, rather than along the traditional science of parts (Abel, 1998). This emphasises the involvement of relevant stakeholders at the earliest stage of modelling (choosing relevant indicators, identification and ranking problems, revealing hidden conflicts, etc.) as well as providing user-friendly models and visual interfaces that have the potential to communicate dynamic interactions across
scales and support social learning processes. Improved knowledge is neither effective in isolation nor will it contribute to sustainability if not translated to local stakeholders. As stressed by Haag and Kaupenjohann (2001:46) [m]odelling for decision-making may have to take into account requests for transparency and participation and the validity of model products will be judged according to their capacity of providing context-sensitive knowledge for specific decision problems. After all, modelling co-evolutionary dynamics in resource management must provide an interface between science, users and management (Rogers, 1998; Videira et al., 2003) in order to overcome the split of academic science and managerially useful and applicable science.
5.2.
Maintaining diversity
Facing the challenges of co-evolving natural resource management systems, which express high levels of complexity and irreducible uncertainty, we have to learn to include periods of change, surprise, disturbance and crises, followed by times of renewal and reorganisation in our management. In fact, sustainable resource management should be able to understand and enhance the mechanisms that maintain and conserve the ability to adapt to changing conditions, respectively include the notion of adaptive capacity as a fundamental hallmark of sustainability (Abel et al., 2000; Jeffrey and McIntosh, 2002; Blann and Light, 2003; Folke et al., 2002; Gallopin, 2006). As increasing body of literature and empirical research shows, in CAS, and especially in natural resource management systems, it is diversity as a fundamental system property that provides the potential to enhance adaptivity in terms of buffering and reorganising after disturbance, crisis and change (Folke et al., 2002; Elmqvist et al., 2003; Stirling, 2005). Thus, the challenge for natural resource management is to learn to live with change and surprise and to nurture diversity for renewal and reorganisation (Berkes et al., 2003). From an evolutionary point of view, diversity is related to the co-evolutionary potential as the capacity of systems (sub-systems or agents) to establish new evolutionary interactions which might initiate future development trajectories (Rammel and Staudinger, 2004). It is also the potential to perceive and respond to feedback in terms of establishing mutual and dynamic interactions between the particular systems or evolving elements. In natural resource management systems, co-evolutionary potential supports mutual relations between and within socio-economic entities and natural systems, with adaptations often driven by crisis, emergences, conflicts, learning and redesign. Following from the diversity of alternative futures, learning and redesign is a co-adaptive process which is driven by permanently adjusting the rules that underpin natural resource management in order to cope with uncertainties and fundamental change (Folke et al., 2002). Notably, as neo-classical resource economics advances optimal management based on the short term success of increasing yield in homogenised environments and stabilised ecosystem outputs (Gunderson and Pritchard, 2002), the coevolutionary potential as well as continuous learning and redesign is not sufficiently reflected in conventional resource management. However, evolution does not lead to individuals
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with optimal behaviour, but to diverse populations with the resulting ability to learn. The real world is not only about efficient performance but also the capacity to adapt. What is found is that variability at the microscopic level, individual diversity, is part of evolutionary strategy, and this is precisely what mechanistic systems representations do not include. In other words, in the shifting landscape of a world of continuous evolution, the ability to climb is perhaps what counts, and what we see as a result of evolution are not populations with optimal behaviour at each instant, but rather actors that can learn (Allen, 1990: 563). Putting the objective of maintaining diversity at the very core of sustainable natural resource management, a broad field of future research opens up. Referring to the question how to nurture diversity in socialecological systems to cope with disturbance uncertainty and crisis, major advances were made through the pioneer work of authors such as Berkes et al. (2003), Berkes and Folke (1998) and Gunderson and Holling (2002). Among others, these studies showed expressively, that notions such as sustaining and enhancing the socialecological memory, creating opportunities for self-organisation or combining different types of learning and knowledge are crucial in preserving diversity and adaptive change (see also McIntosh et al., 2000). Obviously, these notions bridge to current research fields in ecological economics concerned with multi-level governance, institutional learning, behavioural analysis and vulnerability analysis to name only a few. The real world is not only about efficient performance but also the capacity to adapt (Allen, 1990: 563). Even as we strongly emphasise the essential role of diversity, and deplore the lack of adequate integration of diversity in standard economic approaches, efficient performance must be high on the agenda of natural resource management. However, as in every evolving complex system, natural resource management faces an implicit trade-off between short-term local optima, to achieve specific criteria of efficiency, and maintaining the co-evolutionary potential, to achieve adaptability and resilience in the long-run. Investing in adaptivity lowers the efficiency gains of today and investing in efficiency reduces the chances to cope with tomorrows change. Two ecological economists, Giampietro (1997) and Mayumi and Giampietro (2001), addressed this trade-off between efficiency and diversity, by emphasising that redundant diversity of obsolete activities expresses a maintained repertoire of alternative meanings of efficiency which increases the capacity to adapt to changing conditions, emergent properties or disturbances. The distinction between the roles of efficiency, effectiveness and resilience goals are also well addressed in the organisation analysis (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983) and political science literature (Sabatier and Mazmanian, 1980; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993). As shown by Holling and Meffe (1996) and Gunderson and Holling (2002), natural resource management systems5 express a global tendency to increase efficiency and standardised routines, while losing their co-evolutionary potential and their
5 For a general perspective on this phenomena in CAS see also the notion of adaptive cycles expressing the tension between exploitation and renewal, which is essential for preserving resilience at the overall system level (Holling, 2001).
ability to change adaptively and tackle emerging change and conflicts. This tendency reflects a gradual shift from management where weak institutions are mainly concerned with responding passively to external variability towards management where strong institutions control external variability through advanced technologies and intensified internal connectivity and standardisation. Evolving systems are easily locked into their own success and selection criteria, which were built in the past and constrain the future through selective perception and path dependency. Hence, short term success of rising yield in increasingly controlled environments and evolving routines towards optimisation of current management objectives create a lock-in situation of more and more inflexible management patterns. Paradoxically, this represents a situation where initial success of resource management can lead to unsustainability and vulnerability in the long run. Sustainable management of natural resources implies striving for a sound balance between efficiency and adaptability while keeping an institutional design which incorporates adaptive change, learning and renewal. A striking example for this trade-off can be found in energy policy. For strategic reasons a variety of energy technologies are supported under R&D and other non-market schemes; they produce not only technologies that enable us to generate energy services more efficiently, but also the adaptive capacity of our economies to respond to various disturbances (Stirling, 1994). For example, Brazil benefitted from its capacity to generate biofuels once world oil prices increased; for years this technology had been considered as secondary. The more drastic the disturbances that we face, the further away from current technologies future solutions may be found. Energy policy based on CAS would treasure the diversity of technologies more than current policies do. For future research it means to support processes that increase efficiency in natural resource management, obtained by reinforcing the highest performing activities without the complete elimination of the obsolete ones. However, it means also to shift the focus from current research from a short-term to a long-term horizon, where co-evolutionary potentials and innovative diversity can be linked to sustainability.
6.
Conclusions
Natural resource management systems can be described as CAS. Embedded in a range of hierarchical levels with different spatial and temporal scales, the particular elements are shaped by a mutual yet non-deterministic co-evolutionary dialogue. In this dialogue, environmental changes will partly be related to adjustments and adaptations that emerge within the socio-economic systems in terms of altered institutions, technologies, policies, perceptions and behaviours. However, co-evolution does neither mean progress nor being well on the way to sustainable resource management. Future sustainability is not preordained; it emerges from different co-evolutionary interactions and alternative beliefs about it. Although a coevolutionary approach has the ability to support the objectives of sustainable natural resource management, further research is necessary to develop stronger linkages between co-evolutionary theory and natural resource management.
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To improve our understanding of sustainable resource management systems a co-evolutionary framework seems to be useful to focus future research. We argued that there is a strong need to model co-evolutionary dynamics in natural resource management systems to enhance stakeholder participation. Modelling co-evolutionary interactions across scales helps to unravel complexity in natural resource management systems and supports a shared contextual understanding among stakeholders as base for dialogueoriented methodologies. Additionally, explorative and evidence-based research on the linkages between sustainability and diversity and the related trade-off between efficiency and adaptivity is needed. Adopting a co-evolutionary perspective enables us to capture dynamic patterns of human-environment interactions in resource management systems and supports interdisciplinary learning. Hence, the co-evolutionary approach improves our understanding of the co-evolutionary dialogue among the interlinked sub-systems and agents, but also facilitates an iterative process of knowledge exchange between disciplines. This provides stakeholders with multidimensional, process-oriented and contextual knowledge about the natural resource systems. The co-evolutionary approach addresses complexity by (i) capturing qualitative change and cross-scale interactions, (ii) refering to the whole spectrum of uncertainty, and (iii) focusing on learning processes.
Acknowledgements
We thank Jeroen van den Bergh for inspiring discussions on the paper's subject and John Gowdy for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers and their helpful comments.
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E CO L O G I CA L E CO N O MI CS 63 ( 20 0 7 ) 92 1

Managing complex adaptive systems A co-evolutionary perspective on natural resource management

Complex adaptive systems

The interdisciplinary use of co-evolution

4. A co-evolutionary framework of natural resource management systems as complex adaptive systems

Environment and the co-evolution of institutions

Institutions and co-evolving behaviour

5. A future research agenda on natural resource management

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