Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia.
Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury, NSW, 2640, Australia.
Environ Manage. 2018 Mar;61(3):339-346. doi: 10.1007/s00267-017-0981-6. Epub 2018 Jan 23.
Adaptive management enables managers to work with complexity and uncertainty, and to respond to changing biophysical and social conditions. Amid considerable uncertainty over the benefits of environmental flows, governments are embracing adaptive management as a means to inform decision making. This Special Issue of Environmental Management presents examples of adaptive management of environmental flows and addresses claims that there are few examples of its successful implementation. It arose from a session at the 11th International Symposium on Ecohydraulics held in Australia, and is consequently dominated by papers from Australia. We classified the papers according to the involvement of researchers, managers and the local community in adaptive management. Five papers report on approaches developed by researchers, and one paper on a community-led program; these case studies currently have little impact on decision making. Six papers provide examples involving water managers and researchers, and two papers provide examples involving water managers and the local community. There are no papers where researchers, managers and local communities all contribute equally to adaptive management. Successful adaptive management of environmental flows occurs more often than is perceived. The final paper explores why successes are rarely reported, suggesting a lack of emphasis on reflection on management practices. One major challenge is to increase the documentation of successful adaptive management, so that benefits of learning extend beyond the project where it takes place. Finally, moving towards greater involvement of all stakeholders is critical if we are to realize the benefits of adaptive management for improving outcomes from environmental flows.
适应性管理使管理者能够应对复杂性和不确定性，并对生物物理和社会条件的变化做出响应。在环境流的效益存在相当大的不确定性的情况下，各国政府正在采用适应性管理作为决策的一种手段。本环境管理特刊介绍了环境流适应性管理的实例，并探讨了其成功实施的实例很少的说法。它源于在澳大利亚举行的第 11 届国际生态水力学研讨会上的一次会议，因此主要由来自澳大利亚的论文组成。我们根据研究人员、管理者和当地社区在适应性管理中的参与程度对这些论文进行了分类。五篇论文报告了研究人员开发的方法，一篇论文报告了社区主导的方案；这些案例研究目前对决策的影响很小。六篇论文提供了涉及水管理者和研究人员的例子，两篇论文提供了涉及水管理者和当地社区的例子。没有一篇论文的研究人员、管理者和当地社区都平等地参与适应性管理。环境流的适应性管理成功的情况比人们想象的要多。最后一篇论文探讨了为什么成功的案例很少被报道，认为对管理实践的反思不够重视。一个主要的挑战是增加对成功的适应性管理的记录，以便将学习的好处扩展到实施该管理的项目之外。最后，如果我们要实现适应性管理对改善环境流成果的好处，就必须让所有利益相关者更多地参与进来。
