OPERATIONALIZING POLYCENTRICITY FOR LANDSCAPE RESILIENCE

Abstract

Landscapes are complex adaptive social-ecological systems that encompass human and natural and built environments, and provide essential public and common goods to societies. Facing fast socio-economic, environmental, and policy changes and increasing uncertainties, building resilience has emerged as a main objective for landscape planning, design, and management. A key strategy to make landscape social-ecological systems resilient is to form appropriate governance forms that can be responsive and adaptive to external shocks and other stressors. Polycentricity is such a form that has been proven to enhance resilience. By analyzing a variety of cases, it demonstrates polycentricity - both its breadth of inclusion and collaborative degree - can affect governance outcomes. This is the best of times to become more plural in theory and methodology in order to have a stronger capacity of navigating the complexities of landscape social-ecological systems.