The sustainability transition - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 94

the part of the member states. Useful as it is, however, adaptive management
emphasizes the value of making adjustments at the margin without calling into
question key elements of prevailing governance systems. In dealing with socio-
ecological systems that are turbulent and subject to regime shifts that occur
over relatively short periods of time, we need to go beyond adaptive manage-
ment to emphasize social learning as a mechanism for making more extensive
changes in the character of the institutions we rely on to manage interactions
between biophysical systems and social systems (Social Learning Group 2001).
Wherever rates of change in biophysical systems exceed the normal capacity
of social systems to respond in a timely manner, the need for social learning is
apparent. What is called for in such cases is an enhanced capacity to make major
changes in institutional arrangements to ensure that the gap between biophysi-
cal changes and social responses does not become too great.
Although the need for social learning is easy to document, it is often dif-
ficult to achieve success in this realm. What exactly is social learning and
how does it work? Simple examples of this type of learning involve collective
but unguided shifts in word usage and vocabulary more generally as well as
well-defined changes in norms regarding such matters as smoking in public
places. As these examples suggest, social learning can - but need not - occur
in the absence of conscious efforts. The need for social learning in conjunction
with socio-ecological systems arises, in large part, from the growing human
domination of these systems. Whereas it once made sense to focus on human
adaptations to more or less uncontrollable biophysical processes, we now find
ourselves in a situation in which human actions are major driving forces in
these systems. Although there is much to be learned about the biophysical
processes involved, the key to success at this stage lies in learning how to
manage human actions that pose problems for socio-ecological systems, e.g.
emissions of greenhouse gases or activities that degrade habitat critical to
endangered species. A primary focus of attention in this realm is the impor-
tance of learning how to design and implement institutions or governance
systems to regulate human actions that disrupt biophysical processes.
Treat crises as periods of opportunity
Crises are periods of danger. Not only do they call into question systems that
had been considered immutable previously, they can also compress into short
time periods changes that would normally take decades to occur. Sometimes
crises are largely socio-political in character. The fall of the Berlin Wall and
the collapse of the Soviet Union during the period 1989-1991 are striking
cases in point. Similar bursts of change, triggering what observers often call
regime shifts, are common in biophysical systems as well. A contemporary
example involves rapid changes in the Bering Sea ecosystem in recent years
(National Academy of Sciences 1996). Scientists examining the turbulence
of this system talk about cascading changes and turn to the idea of regime