Sixteen years of social and ecological dynamics reveal challenges and opportunities for adaptive management in sustaining the commons.

ABSTRACT: Efforts to confront the challenges of environmental change and uncertainty include attempts to adaptively manage social-ecological systems. However, critical questions remain about whether adaptive management can lead to sustainable outcomes for both ecosystems and society. Here, we make a contribution to these efforts by presenting a 16-y analysis of ecological outcomes and perceived livelihood impacts from adaptive coral reef management in Papua New Guinea. The adaptive management system we studied was a customary rotational fisheries closure system (akin to fallow agriculture), which helped to increase the biomass of reef fish and make fish less wary (more catchable) relative to openly fished areas. However, over time the amount of fish in openly fished reefs slowly declined. We found t

SUBMITTER: Cinner JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6936519 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature