With climate change and global warming becoming an ever more apparent threat to environmental and ecological management systems institutions have in place, adaptive management may now be more relevant than ever. As temperatures and uncertainties continue to increase due to unstable climate and socio-economic strife, natural resources have begun to dwindle, decrease in quality, and become commodities worth fighting for, especially water. With all these global changes taking place, a significant amount of research and money has been poured into studies and bureaucracies to better comprehend more adaptive methods for water conservation and digress from more traditional ones. Environmentalist Claudia Pahl-Wostl in her paper “Transitions towards adaptive management of water facing climate change and global change”, defines adaptive management as “learning to manage by managing to learn” and later goes on to argue that, while effective, it is this definition that could inhibit its widespread adoption. The reason? People simply do not like change, and especially do not like change when the topic is a valuable resource, in this case water. The main goal of adaptive water management is to accurately predict key motivators influencing an ecosystem’s water needs and the subsequent response/behavior of that system, taking into account anthropocentric water requirements as well. Rather than the traditional “take as we need” approach which leaves greater possibilities for Type II errors and policy management failure, since it fails to plan for factors such as exponential growth, disaster, and economic overexploitation, adaptive management takes these dynamics into account and actively attempts to diffuse them. Of course, the whole “best guess” part of this contemporary management system is what is keeping some countries suspicious about adapting adaptive management itineraries, but as of right now it may be the best option for effective future management of municipal and natural water resources not just here in the states, but perhaps across the world.
Pahl-Wostl Paper:Transitions towards adaptive management of water facing climate and global change