Environmental Assessment in a Time of Rapid Change and High Uncertainty: The Addition of Resilience Assessment to NEPA

This Article turns to ecological resilience theory to understand the behavior of SES [socioecological system] undergoing change. Informed by the emergent and surprising behavior of these complex systems, this Article argues for the option of resilience assessment under NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] for use in application to climate adaptation measures in the United States. The amendment also provides an alternative approach to pre-project judicial review to ensure legitimacy within a more flexible process. To this end, Part I addresses why an alternative approach to environmental assessment is needed in the context of climate adaptation by providing an overview of the dynamics of complex SES understood through the lens of resilience theory. Part II addresses what type of assessment is needed in situations of high uncertainty and ongoing change by introducing resilience assessment as a means to understand change in complex SES and to identify, measure, and ultimately enhance the adaptive capacity of rising and future generations. Part III addresses how resilience assessment can be used in agency programs and decisionmaking under NEPA, including model amendments. Climate mitigation is essential, but many aspects are technology-related and lend themselves to traditional NEPA review, whether expedited or not. In contrast, climate adaptation requires management of complex SES facing change that includes sea level rise, changing wildfire regimes, greater extremes in flood and drought, changes in water supply and timing, and increasing temperature extremes. System response will be contextual, potentially nonlinear, with high levels of uncertainty. As a result, climate adaptation must focus on measures that build long-term adaptive capacity rather than short-term results. This Article addresses the why, what, and how this may be facilitated through NEPA. This abstract has been taken from the authors\u27 introduction

A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions

Adaptive governance is an emergent form of environmental governance that is increasingly called upon by scholars and practitioners to coordinate resource management regimes in the face of the complexity and uncertainty associated with rapid environmental change. Although the term “adaptive governance” is not exclusively applied to the governance of social-ecological systems, related research represents a significant outgrowth of literature on resilience, social-ecological systems, and environmental governance. We present a chronology of major scholarship on adaptive governance, synthesizing efforts to define the concept and identifying the array of governance concepts associated with transformation toward adaptive governance. Based on this synthesis, we define adaptive governance as a range of interactions between actors, networks, organizations, and institutions emerging in pursuit of a desired state for social-ecological systems. In addition, we identify and discuss ambiguities in adaptive governance scholarship such as the roles of adaptive management, crisis, and a desired state for governance of social-ecological systems. Finally, we outline a research agenda to examine whether an adaptive governance approach can become institutionalized under current legal frameworks and political contexts. We suggest a further investigation of the relationship between adaptive governance and the principles of good governance; the roles of power and politics in the emergence of adaptive governance; and potential interventions such as legal reform that may catalyze or enhance governance adaptations or transformation toward adaptive governance.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the author(s) and published by the Resilience Alliance. The published article can be found at: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/.Keywords: literature review, adaptive governance, environmental governance, resilienc

Avoiding Decline: Fostering Resilience and Sustainability in Midsize Cities

Eighty-five percent of United States citizens live in urban areas. However, research surrounding the resilience and sustainability of complex urban systems focuses largely on coastal megacities (\u3e1 million people). Midsize cities differ from their larger counterparts due to tight urban-rural feedbacks with their immediate natural environments that result from heavy reliance and close management of local ecosystem services. They also may be less path-dependent than larger cities due to shorter average connection length among system components, contributing to higher responsiveness among social, infrastructural, and ecological feedbacks. These distinct midsize city features call for a framework that organizes information and concepts concerning the sustainability of midsize cities specifically. We argue that an integrative approach is necessary to capture properties emergent from the complex interactions of the social, infrastructural, and ecological subsystems that comprise a city system. We suggest approaches to estimate the relative resilience of midsize cities, and include an example assessment to illustrate one such estimation approach. Resilience assessments of a midsize city can be used to examine why some cities end up on sustainable paths while others diverge to unsustainable paths, and which feedbacks may be partially responsible. They also provide insight into how city planners and decision makers can use information about the resilience of midsize cities undergoing growth or shrinkage relative to their larger and smaller counterparts, to transform them into long-term, sustainable social-ecological systems

Regime shifts and panarchies in regional scale social-ecological water systems

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate those interactions. The case studies show different ways that adaptive governance may be triggered, facilitated, or constrained by ecological and/or legal processes. The resilience assessments indicate that complex interactions among the governance and ecosystem components of these systems can produce different trajectories, which include patterns of (a) development and stabilization, (b) cycles of crisis and recovery, which includes lurches in adaptation and learning, and (3) periods of innovation, novelty, and transformation. Exploration of cross scale (Panarchy) interactions among levels and sectors of government and society illustrate that they may constrain development trajectories, but may also provide stability during crisis or innovation at smaller scales; create crises, but may also facilitate recovery; and constrain system transformation, but may also provide windows of opportunity in which transformation, and the resources to accomplish it, may occur. The framework is the starting point for our exploration of how law might play a role in enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt to climate change

Resilience and Water Governance: Addressing Fragmentation and Uncertainty in Water Allocation and Water Quality Law

The U.S. EPA reports that almost half of the nation\u27s rivers and twothirds of its lakes are use-impaired due to poor water quality (U.S. EPA 1998, 2002, 2010; Houck 2002). The Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission identified both poor water quality and unhealthy aquatic systems among the water challenges facing the West (Western Water Policy Review Advisory Commission 1998). The water quality impairment is caused both by chemical pollution and physical alteration of streams. Nutrients and excess sediment impair water quality in 30 percent of the nation\u27s streams (U.S. EPA 2011). In the Great Basin nearly two-thirds of the native fish are either listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) or considered of concern by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Water development is considered second only to the introduction of nonnative fish in causing these problems (Doremus 2001)

The 1997 Water Rights Settlement between the State of Montana and the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boy's Reservation: The Role of Community and of the Trustee

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Legitimacy, Adaptation, and Resilience in Ecosystem Management

Ecologists have made great strides in developing criteria for describing the resilience of an ecological system. In addition, expansion of that effort to social-ecological systems has begun the process of identifying changes to the social system necessary to foster resilience in an ecological system such as the use of adaptive management and integrated ecosystem management. However, these changes to governance needed to foster ecosystem resilience will not be adopted by democratic societies without careful attention to their effect on the social system itself. Delegation of increased flexibility for adaptive management to resource management agencies must include careful attention to assuring that increased flexibility is exercised in a manner that is legitimate and responsive to the social system. Similarly, democratic systems proceed in incremental steps and are not likely to adopt wholesale changes to achieve integrated ecosystem management. This paper uses the concept of legitimacy in governance as a necessary component of any change to achieve greater social-ecological resilience and will turn to network theory as a means to facilitate legitimacy across multiple jurisdictions

The Measure of Indian Water Rights: The Arizona Homeland Standard, Gila River Adjudication

On November 26, 2001, the Arizona Supreme Court concluded that Indian reservations were established as homelands. By articulating a homeland standard for the measure of reserved water rights based on tribal economic development plans, cultural needs, and historic water uses, the Arizona Supreme Court has eliminated many of the blatant inequities plaguing the current approach to Indian water rights quantification. Nevertheless, there are concerns with wholesale adoption of the Arizona standard, including the effect on those who have devoted resources in reliance on the previous standard, the introduction of uncertainty in the method of quantification, and the impact on federal funding. Courts may address these concerns by retaining the current practicably irrigable standard for quantification of the agricultural water right, and by turning to experience gained in settlement processes to quantify other aspects of a homeland water right. The effect of the standard on the method for calculation of federal funding to develop Indian water highlights the need to change that method to reflect the obligation to provide the water infrastructure necessary to render a reservation a home