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• Perceived adaptive capacity is scale dependent and varies across a system. • A psychometric approach can capture variations in adaptive capacity determinants.\ • Linking social capital is a critical determinant of perceived adaptive capacity. • A focus on social learning could help to build linking and bridging social capital. • Interventions should foster a balance between different types of social capital. In 2012 Sweden implemented a collaborative governance regime for managing moose (Alces alces). This was guided by the awareness that decentralization and stakeholder participation can help to reduce conflicts, foster systematic learning, and handle complexity. However, previous research has highlighted that there are no blueprint approaches to the governance and management of natural resources. In this case, diverse multi-use landscapes, ever-changing ungulate populations, and other external stressors (e.g. climate change, wildlife diseases) can create challenges for collaborative institutions. Adaptive capacity is therefore needed as it allows a system and the actors involved to react successfully to social-ecological changes and to develop even in times of no imminent change or risk. Using Swedish moose management as an example of a multi-level governance system, this research assesses the critical determinants of adaptive capacity across levels. We developed and applied a psychometric approach to measure actors' perceived adaptive capacity on two levels in the management system. A web-based survey was sent to Moose Management Groups (n = 765, response rate = 81 %) and Moose Management Units (n = 1,380, response rate = 71 %). Using structural equation modelling, we assessed the relative importance of governance aspects, different types of social capital, as well as human and financial capital on actors' perceived adaptive capacity. Linking and bridging social capital in the system had significant impacts on both levels. Actors felt more prepared to handle future challenges in moose management when they perceived benefits through collaborations with levels below and expressed social trust in authorities and the management level above. Besides those similarities between the two levels, fairness was a more important determinant of actors' perceived adaptive capacity on the lower management level. These results can contribute to a future improvement of the collaborative governance setting by finessing strategic interventions on different levels. Furthermore, our results illustrate the importance of scale when assessing the adaptive capacity of a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive and multi-level governance is often called for in order to improve the management of complex issues such as the provision of natural resources and ecosystem services. In this case study, we analyse the contemporary multi-level governance system that manages water resources and its ecosystem services in a fresh water lake in Sweden. We assess the relative importance and barriers of three commonly highlighted components of adaptive governance: 'feeding ecological knowledge into the governance system', 'use of ecological knowledge to continuously adapt the governance system', and 'self-organisation by flexible institutions acting across multiple levels'. Findings reveal that the trickiest aspect of adaptive governance capacity to institutionalise is the iterative nature of feedbacks and learning over time, and that barriers to the spread of knowledge on social-ecological complexity through the governance systems are partly political, partly complexity itself, and partly a more easily resolved lack of coordination. We call for caution in trusting crisis management to build more long-lasting adaptive capacity, and we conclude that a process of institutionalising adaptive capacity is inherently contingent on political process putting issues on the agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers of adaptive capacity and sustainable livelihoods have frequently used social, cultural, human, economic and institutional capitals to better understand how rural and resource-dependent communities address environmental, social and economic stresses. Yet few studies have considered how men and women contribute differently to these capitals to support community resilience overall. Our research sought to understand the differential contributions of Sami men and women to the adaptive capacity of reindeer husbandry and reindeer herding communities in northern Sweden. Our focus revealed a gendered division of labour in reindeer herding as an economic enterprise as well as gendered contributions to a broader conceptualization of reindeer husbandry as a family and community-based practice, and as a livelihood and cultural tradition. Based on our results, we recommend that community resilience be enhanced by generating more opportunities for men to achieve higher levels of human and economic capital (particularly outside of herding activities) and encouraging women to contribute more directly to institutional capital by participating in the formation and implementation of legislation, policies and plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between adaptive capacity and collaborative performance is a central issue within public management research but has rarely been subjected to systematic empirical testing. Using survey data on emergency preparedness collaborations in Swedish municipalities (N= 263), this article investigates the relationship between three adaptive capacity variables – diversity, interaction, and learning – and outcomes in terms of goal attainment, risk analysis, and public satisfaction with rescue services. The findings suggest a positive relationship between the number of collaboration partners and goal attainment, while learning and accessibility of collaboration venues were unassociated with service delivery variables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights: [•] We define the institutional framework for forest biodiversity protection in Sweden. [•] We identify implications regarding adaptive capacity. [•] The adaptive capacity of the formal institutional framework is relatively limited. [•] Successful implementation of policy depend on how law is framed and interpreted. [•] Site conservation is insufficient to protect biodiversity considering climate change. [•] Planning is an essential tool for long-term biodiversity protection. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article analyses local adaptation to climate change in the electricity sector in Norway and Sweden. More specific, this article analyses the adaptive capacity of four local grid-companies in the two countries, based on national context, company size, and experience with weather events. Further, the four cases' experience with, awareness of, and adaptations to climate change are described. The Swedish companies have a higher awareness to vulnerability to climate change than the Norwegian ones. They have also made more adaptations. The most important factors for explaining this are differences in the national regulations, along with differences between the companies in experience with extreme weather. The Norwegian regulatory scheme has moved further in the direction of cost efficiency than the Swedish one. This leaves a larger room for adaptation in the Swedish companies while reducing the ability to adapt in the Norwegian ones. In terms of size, the large companies clearly have a higher adaptive capacity to climate change than the smaller ones. The policy implications of the findings are that in order to encourage adaptation, regulatory models will have to allow for other considerations than economic efficiency, as well as include incentives for adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Coping or adaptation following large-scale disturbance may depend on the political system and its preparedness and policy development in relation to risks. Adaptive or foresight planning is necessary in order to account and plan for potential risks that may increase or take place concurrently with climate change. Forests constitute relevant examples of large-scale renewable resource systems that have been directly affected by recent environmental and social changes, and where different levels of management may influence each other. This article views disturbances in the forest sectors of Sweden and Canada, two large forest nations with comparable forestry experiences, in order to elucidate the preparedness and existing responses to multiple potential stresses. The article concludes that the two countries are exposed to stresses that indicate the importance of the governing and institutional system particularly with regard to multi-level systems including federal and EU levels. While economic change largely results in privatization of risk onto individual companies and their economic resources (in Canada coupled with a contestation of institutional systems and equity in these), storm and pest outbreaks in particular challenge institutional capacities at administrative levels, within the context provided by governance and tenure systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how local food systems in the form of farmers' markets can enhance adaptive capacity and build social-ecological resilience. It does this by exploring the learning potential among farmers and customers. Learning can enable actors to adapt successfully and thus build adaptive capacity. Three forms of learning are investigated: instrumental, communicative, and emancipatory. These forms of learning constitute the foundation for lasting changes of behaviors. Local food systems are characterized by close links and opportunities for face-to-face interactions between consumers and producers of food, and are also institutions where farmers and customers can express and act upon their ethical values concerning food. However, local food systems are still a marginal phenomenon and cannot be accessed by all consumers. Interviews were held with customers and farmers, and the interactions between farmers and customers were observed at two farmers' markets in Sweden. Customers and farmers were found to learn and adapt to each other due to the opportunities offered by the farmers' markets. We found that farmers and customers learned in the instrumental and communicative domains, but could not confirm emancipatory learning. We concluded that the feedback between customers and farmers offers the potential for learning, which in turn contributes to adaptive capacity. This can be a driving force for building resilience in the food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In working with local climate adaptation, questions are raised of how to increase the capacity for integrating climate considerations in planning and decision-making. As part of the institutional dimension of adaptive capacity, how to foster processes of learning and reflexivity among different administrative units and actors is particularly essential. The aim of this paper is to analyse how the call for systematic organizational learning is manifested in local climate adaptation in two Swedish municipalities, illustrating what forms of learning occur and what learning challenges are identified. Despite the distinct and often contrasting approaches to climate adaptation adopted in the two municipalities—reflecting a variety of learning approaches—there are striking similarities in terms of difficulties in moving beyond the specialized few and reaching general acceptability as well as in the inability to mediate tensions between local sector interests, values and priorities and thus bringing about reflexive learning through experience. The paper shows that the cross-cutting nature of climate change needs to be further acknowledged in practice, including to what extent learning takes place among a specialized few key actors or as part of a systematic and cross-sectoral organizational mainstreaming as well as to what extent learning 'on paper' is actually embraced as 'learning in use' in concrete working practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how local communities adapt to climate change and how governance structures can foster or undermine adaptive capacity. Climate change policies, in general, and disaster risk management in mountain regions, in particular, are characterised by their multi-level and multi-sectoral nature during formulation and implementation. The involvement of numerous state and non-state actors at local to national levels produces a variety of networks of interaction and communication. The paper argues that the structure of these relational patterns is critical for understanding adaptive capacity. It thus proposes an expanded concept of adaptive capacity that incorporates (horizontal and vertical) actor integration and communication flow between these actors. The paper further advocates the use of formal social network analysis to assess these relational patterns. Preliminary results from research on adaptation to climate change in a Swiss mountain region vulnerable to floods and other natural hazards illustrate the conceptual and empirical significance of the main arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though managing vulnerabilities posed by climate change calls for effective strategies and measures, its challenges have hitherto not been fully understood. In Sweden, municipalities have recently started incorporating vulnerability management into their political and administrative agendas. This study discusses such experiences and explores how institutional determinants may influence adaptive capacity within a local case study area, to illustrate emerging challenges and opportunities for Swedish municipalities in managing climate vulnerabilities. Specifically, formal institutional structure and the use of knowledge are analysed, concluding that vulnerability management often is focused on technical and reactive fixes, due to limited co-operation between local sector organisations, lack of local co-ordination, and an absence of methods and traditions to build institutional knowledge. Even so, opportunities, such as a high capacity to examine risks to technical systems and important establishments which in turn facilitates protection of technical infrastructure exposed to climate variability and change, also exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest certification, developed in the early 1990s, is a process in which independent assessors grant use of the certification label to producers who meet certain environmental and social criteria set for their forest products. This label was quickly seen to offer a market advantage and to signal corporate social and environmental responsibility. This paper focuses on international norms pertaining to environmental and indigenous rights, as manifested in cases of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)- and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)-compatible certification, and how these norms have been applied domestically and perceived locally in different states. Case studies are drawn from northern Sweden, northern Finland, and three regions in northwest Russia. The studies illustrate that the choice and implementation of certification type depend considerably on national infrastructure and market characteristics and result in substantial differences in the impact that international norms have at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested two consequences of a currently influential theory based on the notion of seeing adaptations to climate change as local adjustments to deal with changing conditions within the constraints of the broader economic–social–political arrangements. The notion leaves no explicit role for the strength of personal beliefs in climate change and adaptive capacity. The consequences were: (i) adaptive action to climate change taken by an individual who is exposed to and sensitive to climate change is not influenced to a considerable degree by their strength of belief in climate change and (ii) adaptive action to climate change taken by an individual who is exposed to and sensitive to climate change is not influenced to a considerable degree by their strength of belief in an adaptive capacity. Data from a 2004 questionnaire of 1950 Swedish private individual forest owners, who were assumed exposed to and sensitive to climate change, were used. Strength of belief in climate change and adaptive capacities were found to be crucial factors for explaining observed differences in adaptation among Swedish forest owners. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

How do different multi-level governance models influence the adaptive capacity of environmental management? This paper examines the connection between different types of governance models, distinguished by diverse institutional features, and elements of adaptive capacity. The task is undertaken through a comparative study of two differently organized management systems within the same national context: Swedish water and large carnivore management. The systems' governance models are defined through an institutional analysis of polycentric features, logics of design and knowledge arrangements. Assessments of adaptive capacity are based on survey data describing the involved actors' perceptions of the knowledge base, use of an experimental approach and the presence of learning. The empirical results suggest that institutional features influence some, but not all, elements of adaptive capacity. The results lend support to the idea that polycentric governance models, based on an ecological rationale, sustain participation in knowledge mobilization, support the use of an experimental approach and promote learning to a larger extent than more centralized and hierarchical governance models do; while there is no connection between governance model and the perceived reliability of knowledge base. The study contributes to environmental governance research, policy and practice by evaluating the adaptive capacity of current water and wildlife management systems in Sweden and by increasing our knowledge about how different governance models influence the adaptive capacity in environmental management. • Multi-level governance is introduced to increase adaptive capacity. • Multi-level governance systems diverge in regard to institutional design. • These differences influence some, but not all, elements of adaptive capacity. • Polycentrism, and an ecological rationale, enhance adaptive capacity. • Centralized, and more traditional systems, are less conducive for adaptive capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]