Adaptive water governance for enhancing the transition towards ecosystem-based adaptation

The growing awareness of the shortfalls of conventional top-down, expert-driven, and narrow sectoral climate change adaptation policies has generated interest in the search for more sustainable and integrative forms of adaptation with the potential to enhance synergies and reduce trade-offs across sectors. In this regard, the concept of ecosystem-based adaptation has been receiving attention as an integrative framework for maintaining healthy ecosystems with the aim of building the resilience and reducing the vulnerability of social and ecological systems to climate change impacts. However, there is currently an inadequate understanding of the institutional requirements for the transition toward ecosystem-based adaptation. A promising institutional mechanism for addressing these governance challenges is adaptive governance, a governance mechanism that relies on flexible, multi-level institutions to connect actors across multiple scales in managing conflicting values and uncertainties in ecosystem-based management processes. The key attributes of adaptive governance, such as diverse, nested institutions and analytic-deliberation processes, could potentially contribute to enhancing the transition toward ecosystem-based adaptation through the mobilization of knowledge and resources, provision of incentives, and creation of opportunities for collective action. Yet, these potentials remain largely unexplored. This presentation addresses these knowledge gaps using results from a qualitative case study of the Cache River wetlands in southern Illinois that has been designated as a Wetland of International Importance. In response to various social and ecological crises, the Cache River Wetlands Joint Venture Partnership (JVP), a collaborative initiative composed of state and non-state actors, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service and The Nature Conservancy, was formed in the early 1990s with the goal of restoring and protecting 60,000 acres of wetland and forest along the Cache River. Using data generated from documents reviews and key informant interviews, this presentation assesses the current status of these restoration efforts and their perceived contributions to climate change adaptation strategies in the watershed. The roles of the JVP in these restoration efforts, as well as barriers and opportunities for the emergence/crafting of adaptive governance mechanisms in the watershed for enhancing the successful implementation of ecosystem-based adaptation and other nature-based solutions are also analyzed.