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Reviewing and synthesizing how an interdisciplinary network perspective can inform on governance and adaptation processes in regions undergoing rapid social-, economical-, and environmental changes. Increasing and intensifying the use of land represents a prominent sustainability challenge of particular importance in regions undergoing rapid change while at the same time exhibiting large natural and anthropocentrically induced variability. To reconcile the needs for both human prosperity and healthy ecosystems, a more integrated understanding of key biophysical and adaptation processes is paramount in such dynamic and deeply entangled social and environmental contexts. Interdisciplinary research utilizing a network perspective provides a novel methodological and theoretical approach to that end. We review and synthesize recent network-centric studies, and use this network perspective to show how rangeland managers in a dynamic pastoral region in the Qinghai Province of China form social relationships based on geographic proximity, social status and shared grazing areas. The results indicate that adaption to biophysical and socioeconomic changes is partly a social process in that rangeland managers develop their adaptive capacity jointly and in concert with others they trust and with whom they share grazing areas. Avenues for further development of this network perspective, in terms of how it might contribute important new insights about how to sustainably use land in dynamic landscapes undergoing rapid change, are suggested.

The global hydrological cycle is characterized by complex interdependencies and self-regulating feedbacks that keep water in an ever-evolving state of flux at local, regional, and global levels. Increasingly, the scale of human impacts in the Anthropocene is altering the dynamics of this cycle, which presents additional challenges for water governance. Earth system law provides an important approach for addressing gaps in governance that arise from the mismatch between the global hydrological cycle and dispersed regulatory architecture across institutions and geographic regions. In this article, we articulate the potential for Earth system law to account for core hydrological problems that complicate water governance, including delay, redistribution, intertwinements, permanence, and scale. Through merging concepts from Earth system law with existing policy and legal principles, we frame an approach for addressing hydrological problems in the Anthropocene and strengthening institutional fit between established governance systems and the global hydrological cycle. We discuss how such an approach can be applied, and the challenges and implications for governing water as a cycle and complex social-hydrological system, both in research and practice.

Large hydrologic basins involve multiple stakeholders, and coupled dynamic social and ecological processes. Managing such basins has long been a challenge. Balancing the demand for water from nature against that from humans is always difficult, particularly in arid watersheds. Here, we analyze potential institutional causes of ecological degradation and how it can be reversed by introducing new forms of governance. The framework and assumptions are illustrated using China's second-largest endorheic basin, where empirical evidence shows that the introduction of a new governing authority connecting midstream and downstream actors facilitated the establishment of a new governance regime that is better aligned with the biophysical scales of the watershed. A trans-regional water allocation project initiated by the new higher-level authority successfully rescued downstream oases and restored a dried terminal lake. These outcomes suggest that when social and ecological structures are better aligned our ability to manage the interplay between social and ecological processes increases. However, the lack of direct connection between the actors of the middle and lower reaches resulted in the paradox of an increase in water demand. We therefore suggest that measures to stimulate the emergence of horizontal social ties linking different critical groups of actors across the watershed could further the alignment of the institutional and biophysical structures-without these changes sustainable management of river basins and other common pool resources will remain problematic.

Local governments, or municipalities, play a key role in water governance around the world owing to the many administrative competencies they hold, ranging from water service delivery to urban planning. However, the ability of municipalities to carry out their competencies effectively depends in large part on the characteristics of the institutional arrangements in which they are embedded. In particular, the relationship between municipalities and watershed governance institutions has received little attention in the literature on polycentric and multilevel governance. Drawing on insights from diverse cases around the world, we argue that empirical research must pay closer attention to the links, or lack thereof, between municipalities and watershed governance institutions to improve the sustainability of water governance outcomes in practice. We identify a set of critical issues affecting municipalities' engagement in governance at the watershed scale that broadly apply across different contexts, and which we argue deserve more attention in future research: (1) disconnect and ambiguities of authority across hierarchical levels; (2) internal and external challenges to municipalities engaging in effective collaborations; (3) barriers to expanding the scope of traditional municipal affairs; and (4) misalignment of biophysical, institutional, and political timescales.

Emerging environmental threats often lack sufficient governance to address the full extent of the problem. An example is ocean acidification which is a growing concern in fishing and aquaculture economies worldwide, but has remained a footnote in environmental policy at all governance levels. However, existing legal jurisdictions do account for some aspects of the system relating to ocean acidification and these may be leveraged to support adapting to and mitigating ocean acidification. We refine and apply a methodological framework that helps objectively evaluate governance, from a social-ecological systems perspective. We assess how well a set of extant US institutions fits with the social-ecological interactions pertinent to ocean acidification. The assessment points to measured legal gaps, for which we evaluate the government authorities most appropriate to help fill these gaps. The analysis is conducted on United State federal statutes and regulations. Results show quantitative improvement of institutional fit over time (2006 to 2013); but a substantial number of measured legal gaps persist especially around acknowledging local sources of acidification and adaptation strategies to deal with or avoid impacts. We demonstrate the utility of this framework to evaluate the governance surrounding any emerging environmental threat as a first step to guiding the development of jurisdictionally realistic solutions.

The problem of institutional fit in social-ecological systems has been empirically documented and conceptually discussed for decades, yet there is a shortage of approaches to systematically and quantitatively examine the level of fit. We address this gap, focusing on spatial fit in an urban and peri-urban regional landscape. Such landscapes typically exhibit significant fragmentation of remnant habitats, which can limit critical species dispersal. This may have detrimental effects on species persistence and ecosystem functioning if land use is planned without consideration of the spatial patterns of fragmentation. Managing habitat fragmentation is particularly challenging when the scale of fragmentation reaches beyond the control of single managers, thereby requiring different actors to coordinate their activities to address the problem at the appropriate scale. We present a research approach that maps patterns of collaborations between actors who manage different parts of a landscape, and then relates these patterns to structures of ecological connectivity. We applied our approach to evaluate the fit between a collaborative wetland management network comprising all 26 municipalities in the Stockholm County in Sweden and an ecologically defined network of dispersed but ecologically interconnected wetlands. Many wetlands in this landscape are either intersected by the boundary between two or more municipalities, or are located close to such boundaries, which implies a degree of ecological interconnectedness and a need for intermunicipal coordination related to wetland management across boundaries. We first estimated the level of ecological connectivity between wetlands in neighboring municipalities, and then used this estimate to elaborate the level of social-ecological fit vis-a-vis intermunicipal collaboration. We found that the level of fit was generally weak. Also, we identified critical misalignments of ecological connectivity and intermunicipal collaboration, r, AuthorCount:3