Introduction

The chapters in Part II of this volume explored how resilience thinking helps ask questions regarding the adaptive capacity of institutions to deal with change. The chapters in Part III added the dimension of learning in adaptive management and co-management. The chapters in Part IV now turn to the topic of cross-scale interactions. In most of the cases in this volume, and in most cases in real life, there are external drivers, factors that impact local management systems. In an age of globalization, governance has become cross-scale. There is a need to analyze management institutions at more than one level, with attention to interactions across scale from the local level up. What used to be local management now has regional, national, and often international dimensions, leading to the emergence of new players with new power relationships. How can we approach the understanding of cross-scale relationships, and how do these relationships relate to resilience and sustainability?

Systems theory reminds us that a key factor for response is the presence of effective and tight feedback mechanisms or a coupling of stimulus and response in space and time. For example, it is relatively easy to get a neighborhood association to act on a problem. But as problems become broader in scale (e.g., the global greenhouse effect), the feedback loops become looser and the motivation to act becomes weaker. Incentives can be created by tightening cost/benefit feedback loops, for example by assigning property rights.