Hot adaptation: What conflict can contribute to collaborative natural resource management

Abstract

We analyze the impact of conflict on the adaptive comanagement of social-ecological systems. We survey the risks and the resources that conflict creates and review experiences with public policy mediation as a set of practical hypotheses about how to work collaboratively under conditions of conflict. We analyze the significance of these features in the context of an approach to adaptive comanagement that we call "hot adaptation." Hot adaptation is organized to draw on the energy and engagement that conflict provides to enhance the capacity for deliberation and learning around the wicked problems that constitute the working terrain of adaptive comanagement. © 2014 by the author(s).