Anticipatory governance for social-ecological resilience

Anticipation and resilience in Social-Ecological Systems

The IPCC (2012) defines resilience as “the ability of a system and its component parts to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a hazardous event in a timely and efficient manner.” Broadly, literature points toward SES resilience encompassing anticipation, e.g., in an examination of the effects of climate change in Africa; Conway (2008) argues that building resilience starts with anticipation, surveying, and forecasting (as has long been used in addressing natural disasters). Anticipation was mentioned, but not elaborated on, as a key challenge in the seminal book Navigating Social–Ecological Systems (Berkes et al. 2003). Rogers (2011) highlights how anticipation and assessment, alongside preparation and prevention, are key features of pre-emergency event aspects of resilience. Rogers defines anticipation as “horizon scanning to identify potential dangers, registering those in a formal typology and recognition of the changing nature of risks that need to be continually identified and re-assessed”. Rogers argues that hazard anticipation should be included, with risk assessment, into the strategic framework for emergency management. Tschakert and Dietrich (2010) describe anticipatory learning, which falls under the umbrella of ‘action learning’, as a crucial element for climate resilience. However, they argue that resilience thinking and anticipatory learning have occurred in parallel rather than in synergistic ways and could be more effectively integrated.

There is some consistency in the definition of anticipation in the context of resilience, but definitions vary between anticipation meaning foresight, preparedness, and planning practices (Wardekker et al. 2010), and being predictive/proactive, in contrast to adaptation (Nuttall 2010). Nuttall (2010) describes anticipation as being about foresight, rather than expectation, as anticipation draws upon predictive capabilities, knowledge, experience, and skill. Anticipation is described as being about “intentionality, action, agency, imagination, possibility, and choice; but it is also about being doubtful, unsure, uncertain, fearful, and apprehensive.” This literature distinguishes between foresight and prediction, with foresight emerging as an important strategy in building adaptive capacity. As Wardekker et al. (2010) note, “planning and foresight/research are important instruments of anticipatory adaptation, which is specific to human rather than natural systems,” and other scholars such as Hill (2013) have similar distinctions. In building resilience, Wardekker et al. (2010) emphasize the importance of the flow of foresight information/research both from and to local practitioners.

Gómez-Baggethun et al. (2012) explain that according to resilience theory, traditional ecological knowledge (defined as, “the body of knowledge, beliefs, traditions, practices, institutions, and worldviews developed and sustained by indigenous, peasant, and local communities in interaction with their biophysical environment”) evolves over time, on the basis of long-term observation and responses to crises. Long-term observation can therefore feed into traditional knowledge, necessary for resilience, suggesting links between traditional knowledge, anticipation, and resilience. However, little literature makes these linkages in a climate resilience context. An understanding of ecological knowledge seems to only be implicitly stated in current resilience literature on climate futures. Nuttall (2010) also notes that little of the anthropology of anticipation appears to have entered climate change discussions. Using the example of a mine spill of the Aznalcollar tailings dam, Gómez-Baggethun et al. (2012) state that in order to deal effectively with increased uncertainty due to environmental change, new governance approaches should use traditional ecological knowledge and utilize the social–ecological memories (the accumulated experience of knowledge and institutions) of local cultures. This memory complements current science and technology in creating governance systems relevant to local contexts, contributing to long-term social–ecological resilience. Unlike much of the extant resilience literature, Gómez-Baggethun et al. attempt to tease out what needs to be done to build resilient governance structures.

Wyckhuys and O’Neil (2010) emphasize the importance of combining farmers’ and scientists’ ecological knowledge in mutual learning systems, to better understand the workings of local agroecosystems. While the relationship between anticipation and traditional ecological knowledge is broadly missing from resilience literature, Valdivia et al. (2010) make the more explicit linkage between traditional knowledge with anticipation, implying that new traditional local knowledge informs adaptive processes. This requires an assessment of traditional knowledge, development of future scenarios, and use of participatory research to identify alternative adaptation strategies.

The literature clearly indicates that anticipation is a critical component for building resilience. The use of local ecological knowledge in the design of governance frameworks for climate resilience is important. Anticipation systems may be more effective if an understanding of local ecological knowledge is considered. Folke et al. (2005) describe networks and social learning in a less-defined way, whereas futures studies and some other resilience scholars are more prescriptive.

Anticipation and governance

Over the past decade, resilience scholars have focused on the concept of adaptive governance when studying how societies interact with and govern ecosystems (Folke et al. 2005). Adaptive governance encompasses and identifies adaptive response strategies associated with uncertain environmental risk, and an important feature is that societies are flexible in their responses to environmental crises. Governance includes “all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization or territory and whether through laws, norms, power or language” (Bevir 2013). Adaptive governance requires that governing processes take place through nested and networked governance structures. Polycentricity contrasts with traditional top-down approaches and requires the creation and dissemination of detailed and current bottom-up information to support central decision-making processes (Ostrom 2010). This is evident in the emergence of ‘citizens as sensors’ (Goodchild 2007). Citizen science describes bottom-up communities/networks of citizens acting as observers in some scientific domain. For instance, in the US, many farmers now have more elaborate, detailed, and current mapping and monitoring systems for their fields and crops than those held by central agencies. In a successful climate, early warning system in the Sahel, a bridging organization facilitated a network of government, scientists, NGOs to provision and process real-time monitoring (RTM) rainfall data relevant to communities, with those who could take preemptive early action to build resilience in the face of recurring crisis (Boyd et al. 2013). Understanding adaptive governance has helped different communities to better coordinate practices of living with uncertain futures.

More recently, there has been a policy shift toward understanding climate adaptation and uncertainty in the context of forecasting/predicting change. This is aligned with growing knowledge about attributing impacts of extreme events to greenhouse gas emissions (Stott et al. 2013). As someone must bear the costs of the consequences of climate change, it becomes more imperative to forecast or anticipate the future based on current knowledge, models, and creative imagination. Methods and approaches for better anticipating future changes are in demand. Tschakert and Dietrich (2010) state that “identifying and monitoring slowly changing variables such as rainfall patterns and integrating and reflecting on new knowledge allows for a better understanding of processes that are already underway. The same is true for anticipating possible events assuming observed trends continue. Monitoring enhances flexibility during times of disturbance and boosts the capacity for anticipatory action.” In alternative Futures Studies for the healthcare sector, Bezold and Rowling (2008) find that biomonitoring devices could play a large role in achieving disparity reduction across income and racial/ethnic lines in the US.

Anticipatory governance is a new concept that has significant relevance for developing strategies under uncertain environmental futures. Anticipatory governance involves changing short-term decision making to a longer-term policy vision, including the notion of foresight. Quay (2010) states that a wide range of futures is anticipated in anticipatory governance—assessment/analysis is undertaken across a range of scenarios (using criteria of aggregation, extremes, sensitivity, risk assessment). Multiple strategies are anticipated, which are appropriate in the short and long term, given the range of possible futures. Changing conditions are monitored over time. Key precursors are identified, associated with various possible futures. It is important for managing events instead of waiting until a climate-related or regulatory/socio-economic event results in crisis. For example, the health sector has shown that coupling anticipatory governance with RTM can ground anticipatory outlooks in important ways. This involves “co-production” of knowledge, jointly designed by experts and citizens linking the evidence base or informed decision making to management. While the concept of anticipatory governance is important, it is also important to calibrate predictions. In the context of resilience and governing ecosystem services (e.g., water) under climate change, such a framework has yet to be articulated.

Anticipatory governance also features in Futures Studies, which includes all the ways to study, think, and use the future—ranging from visionary and utopian futures to pop futures, from participatory, critical, or integral futures to the technicalities of simulations, formal modeling, and forecasting. Future Studies is inclusive. Every aspect, type, and way of including the future within one’s analysis, theories, or actions is a legitimate component of this field. However, some components of Future Studies are more subject to constraints than others. In particular, exercises conducted by professional futurists and the formalized transmission of existing knowledge through teaching require forms of accountability that need not constrain the field as a whole—such as responsibility toward clients and students, and basic research. Aspects of Future Studies address the human use of anticipation, either as an applied activity or as a learning process in the context of the environment.

Case background, ecosystem services, and regional Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) in Sweden

In Sweden, CCA has gradually become more important. Before 2008, no agencies had a mandate to work on CCA (Simonsson et al. 2011). The turning point was the instrumental Commission on Climate and Vulnerability (SOU 2007, p. 60) which highlighted the increased AQrisk of, e.g., flooding, and thus growing challenges for the region’s physical infrastructure and drinking water provisioning (RUFS 2010). It also recognized ecosystem challenges (Simonsson et al. 2011). In 2008, County Administrative Board was tasked with coordinating CCA (Government Bill 2008/2009, p. 162; Simonsson et al. 2011; André et al. 2012). Mälaren supplies drinking water to 2 million people (about a 1/5th of the Swedish population), but the region and its water ecosystem services are threatened by climate change. Importantly, in Sweden, there is no national authority with overarching responsibility, so CCA is primarily a regional level governance issue.

Actor networks, formal governance networks in water management

Most of the relevant formal actors for CCA and management of ecosystem services are part of established governance structures, rather than being a response to changing futures and unknowns. The County Administrative Board is the most central actor with a mandate to coordinate CCA (Fig. 1). However, the municipalities and local water councils and collaborations between these actors, when water crosses jurisdictional boundaries, are the most important actors for water management, and for realizing CCA. They have autonomy and planning responsibility, and a local understanding of problems and the municipalities. The Swedish setup is fairly tuned with theory highlighting the importance of government and central nodes in the network for overview and strategy, but smaller and more localized nodes are more important for generating timely and detailed understanding of the system. However, the question is how anticipatory are these governance structures in practice?

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Type of anticipatory practices identified

Three levels of anticipatory governance are recognized, from a minimal form, representing the constant gradual adaption to immediately foreseeable changes in discourses, to the most proactive, flexible, and open strategies.

Constant adaptation (incremental change) is the most grounded answer in the interview data across all actors when probing for explanations of dealing with uncertainty. “The processes that generate new knowledge about drinking water and ground water are in constant change” (Informant 12¹). Anticipation can, in this case, only be regarded as happening within the current framing of problems. In turn, the problem framings change gradually. Anticipation is therefore close to organizational change in the form of single-loop learning (Argyris and Schön 1978) defined as learning that “refers to an instrumental change in strategy within the constraints given by overall norms and beliefs” (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007). When crisis unfolds, adaptation can be more rapid: “With an extreme event, work [procedures] changes, e.g., flooding” (Informant 7, Stockholm County Board Administration). However, anticipation is limited, and flexibility is not necessarily pre-existing, but evoked when crisis strikes. Common examples given by actors interviewed at the regional level highlight the response structures and functions in place to manage urgent crises, such as larger accidents and weather events. “The high [water] levels of the winter 2000 that threatened the subway in Stockholm. It resulted in faster planning of renovating Slussen [the lock between Mälaren and the Baltic Sea in central Stockholm]. But this is a crisis situation, and the Emergency Response manages that together with the County Administrative Board. It is a different organization in the event of a crisis, not just planning” (Informant 1, Mälaren Water Council).

The forecasts and projections of environmental change may depend on issues being on the political agenda, and in the data, a strong theme is that global CCA is not prioritized. A focus on global and national CCA in general, and the challenges for ecosystems, and regional and local water ecosystem services, is clearly lacking. “We do not work explicitly with CCA. It is due to the [lack of] interests among the municipalities” (Informant 6). Anticipation, in terms of the forecast and scenarios developed across the formal actors in the regional network, are heavily focused on established political development priorities. The focus is currently on challenges for the built environment, such as flooding of infrastructure and saltwater intrusion from the Baltic Sea, rather than wider, global CCA. The authorities’ scenarios of regional development drive analysis of issues of key importance, e.g., water as drinking water. The clear difference in political support is expressed by Informant 19 at the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management National authority: “Climate adaptation has two sides. What is most talked about is to protect people and infrastructure, but climate adaptation for ecosystems is very seldom talked about.”

Learning/the way people are learning: Interactions lead to awareness of complexity, but learning as in feedback from other stakeholders and feedback from past changes (physical and organizational) is limited. There is evidence that knowledge generated is not fed forward to the next iteration of problem solving and learning. Since the problems are wicked and complex in character, and individual actors do not possess all the knowledge needed, feedback is necessary. Overall, the lack of feedback through time is one of the most problematic issues and a highly grounded theme in the case data. “We do have monitoring programs. […]. But these should be increased and strengthened. […] Actually, one should have a cycle. Plan, take actions, and then follow up” (Informant 8, Västerås County Administrative Board). This lack of feedback limits how knowledge can build and transmit social-ecological memory over time (Barthel et al. 2010).

Risks and trade-offs (barriers)

The most important barrier linked to futures and visions in Table 2 is that of real politics. CCA is on the agenda among some actors and in some regard. In a wider sense, and in relation to challenges to ecosystem services, CCA is much less developed. Since these complex problems require coordination, anticipatory governance developing vision hinges on a strong enough mandate being given to actors to coordinate. This is currently lacking at both the national and regional levels for CCA in a wide sense. The mandate of the County Administrative Board is clearly focused on CCA for physical infrastructure.

Lessons from the literature

We explored that an anticipatory approach is potentially helpful for improving our foresight capacity and in the co-design of solutions relevant to managing ecosystem services under climate change. The analysis mapped out different forms of anticipation from the literature and identified varied and conflicting understandings of predicting and forecasting futures. Definitions of anticipation vary and a unified definition does not exist (Poli 2010). In the relationship between anticipation and resilience, many of the literatures mention anticipation, but authors provide limited detail about how to build resilience using anticipatory systems/theory of anticipation. For example, Almedom (2009) define resilience as “the capacity of individuals, families, communities, and institutions to anticipate, withstand and/or judiciously engage with catastrophic events and/or experiences; actively making meaning out of adversity, with the goal of maintaining ‘normal’ function without fundamental loss of identity.” Anticipation plays a key role in this resilience research, but is treated in a superficial manner.

The review helped us to clarify how anticipation is both an active sense-making force and a way to anticipate dimensions of the present, with potentially important implications for the decision-making and choice-related questions at the heart of collective action (and inaction). It is imperative to continue unpacking the theory of anticipation with regard to how it features as a core of everyday social relations, affects the ability to plan under uncertainty, and contributes to adaptiveness (Folke et al. 2005; Boyd and Folke 2012). There is further scope to elaborate on a theory of anticipation and how it relates to social-ecological resilience. The review unearthed significant attention to the role of social–ecological memory, local knowledge, and anticipation. For example, Gómez-Baggethun et al. (2012) say that new environmental governance approaches should use traditional knowledge and social–ecological memories of local cultures. Linking research on social–ecological memory and anticipatory governance would benefit from further focus.

Many fields are looking at anticipatory governance, including public health (Ozdemir et al. 2009), geography (Goodchild 2007), biodiversity conservation (Barlow et al. 2010), and climate change (Boyd and Cornforth 2013). Themes are emerging around citizen science, networks, and volunteering of data sharing. In many parts of the world, networks act as local early warning systems in the face of a changing environment, ranging from disease detection, e.g., Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) dieback, and RTM to help governments detect early onset of famine (Boyd et al. 2013). To avoid a narrow framing of anticipation, it will be important to draw insights from Futures Studies to develop further explanations, with relative clarity, of anticipation, and anticipatory governance. Borrowing methods and tools from Futures Studies, we hope to better understand critical relationships, e.g., between the role of anticipatory governance and agency in building adaptive capacity. Future Studies is generally considered to be strong on practice and facilitation rather than on theoretical foundations. Thus, we can also draw on the rapidly emerging field of ‘sustainability transitions’ (McGrail 2012) informed by complex systems and governance theory (Loorbach 2010). Sustainability transition adopts a long-term perspective for short-term development (i.e., developing long-term visions and backcasting from them) and focuses on alternative ‘images of sustainability’ and associated possible ‘transitions paths’, and seeks to mobilize actors and instigate associated experiments.

Lessons from the case study

Our case of Lake Mälaren explored the anticipatory elements used by formal actors in a developed country pursuing initial work to adapt governance to anticipated future climate change. The case study shows that managing complexity for problems where anticipatory governance is needed, such as climate change, is inherently difficult; it requires both the openness and participation of adaptive governance, and coordination and simplification of knowledge to be able to make credible predictions and create and share future visions/scenarios. There is inbuilt tension between the need for complexity and the requirement for such anticipatory elements being comprehensible and easily accessible. Problem awareness is often high, and the lack of priority given to CCA and the challenges for ecosystem services is more due to lack of capacity to imagine and comprehend complex futures than out of ignorance. A longitudinal temporal framework matters to improve governance actions to respond to CCA combined with RTM of environmental events (through networks).

Collective and complex collaboration in anticipatory forms of governance puts even more requirement on coordination. Stakeholder integration with active participation and adaptive forms of governance is an increasingly common approach and observed in our case, but knowledge and learning are limited by the lack of feedback over time. As concluded by others, there is a great risk that social learning approaches does not give lasting effects (Nilsson et al. 2012). Long-term time horizons are found in the anticipatory elements of our case, and we believe that time scale per se is not the problem. Policy makers are well aware of the challenge with analyzing problems across space and time and the uncertainties this introduces. The challenge lies at the limited capacity to develop a wider range of discourses and policy problems simultaneously.

We are left with a profoundly political question of “how are the overall goals of government or society chosen in the first place?” (Toffler 1970). What will it take to move toward an anticipatory approach in which agency of individuals is connected into systems of governance genuinely producing effective social-ecological outcomes? Ultimately, the challenge is to reconcile the ‘enclaves’ of the past and future—i.e., overcome societal resistance to change and find mechanisms for societies to break away from unsustainable traditions, and learn and build decision support that engages with uncertain futures. This may require “a revolution in the very way we formulate our social goals” (Toffler 1970).