156 Agroecology and Sustainability
The self-organizing process was triggered by the perceived threats to the area’s cul-
tural and ecological values among people of various local steward associations and
local government. A key individual provided visionary leadership in directing
change and transforming governance. The transformation involved four phases
1 preparing the system for change;
2 the opening of an opportunity;
3 navigating the transition;
4 charting a new direction for building resilience of the new governance
regime.
Trust-building dialogues, mobilization of social networks with actors and teams
across scales, coordination of ongoing activities, sense-making, collaborative learn-
ing and creating public awareness were part of the process. A comprehensive
framework with a shared vision and goals that presented ecosystem management
as development and turned problems into opportunities was developed and con-
tributed to a shift in values and meaning of the broader agricultural-urban-wetland
landscape among key actors. When a window of opportunity at the political level
opened, it was possible to tip and transform the governance system into a trajec-
tory of adaptive co-management with extensive social networks of practitioners
engaged in multi-level governance. The transformation took place within the exist-
ing legal and formal institutional framework (Hahn et al, 2006). Currently adap-
tive capacity is built to make the new social-ecological configuration resilient to
change. Strategies for adaptive capacity are presented in Table 7.3.
Understanding the sources of resilience that allow for mobilization of social
capital and memory to generate novelty and innovation for transformation of
social-ecological systems into improved pathways of development is a central issue
for sustainability research.
Conclusions
We have only scratched the surface of an immense research challenge that promises
to provide a much richer understanding of not just human–environment interac-
tions but of how the world we live in actually works and the implications it has for
current policies and governance. The chapter emphasizes that the social landscape
should be approached as carefully as the ecological in order to clarify features that
contribute to the resilience of social-ecological systems. In this context, Pretty and
Ward (2001) find that relations of trust, reciprocity, common rules, norms and
sanctions, and connectedness in institutions are critical. We have similar findings
that include vision, leadership and trust; enabling legislation that creates social
space for ecosystem management; funds for responding to environmental change
and for remedial action; capacity for monitoring and responding to environmental