A Generalized Modeling Approach to the Stability of Natural Resource Governance Systems
Abstract
Many environmental challenges are ultimately rooted in natural resource governance. Polycentricism, in which multiple centers of decision-making operate semi-autonomously, has been identified as a promising approach to environmental governance, offering greater adaptation capacity, opportunities for inclusion, and redundancy. However, there is still a lack of understanding linking specific features of polycentric governance to these benefits. Here we identify the conditions that promote stability by developing a generalized dynamical systems model describing how groups of resource users interact strategically with institutions and governance actors through complex collaborative and competitive interactions that mediate their access to a resource. Through this generalized approach, we analyze how different network properties, such as the number of decision-making centers or the connectivity among actors, and the nature of these interactions, such as the sensitivity of institutions to actors' efforts, correspond to stability. We also consider how stability corresponds to desirable features of environmental governance, such as equity in influence over decision-making. This approach combines the ability to analyze nonlinear dynamics and interactions that static network analyses fail to capture with modeling more varied and complex systems than traditional dynamical systems analyses, making it a promising way of understanding complex environmental governance systems.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMGC013..03M
- Keywords:
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- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 6329 Project evaluation;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6339 System design;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES