Systems integration and innovation

Abstract

This chapter explores complex adaptive systems and why management strategies need to be adaptive as well in order to achieve long-term sustainability. Each landscape has its own dynamics that can lead to environmental degradation and food security problems if management efforts are not coordinated across all system levels. When leadership and behaviors become a team effort, these cross-scale interactions allow for networks to be formed which create a positive synergy that leads to effective solutions. Successful collaborative adaptive management is a learning process of coordinated decisions, actions, and evaluations that is essential for addressing the problems that emerge from complex adaptive systems.