Building trust through collaboration, institutional development, and social learning enhances efforts to foster ecosystem management and resolve multi‐scale society–environment dilemmas. One emerging approach aimed at addressing these dilemmas is adaptive co‐management. This method draws explicit attention to the learning (experiential and experimental) and collaboration (vertical and horizontal) functions necessary to improve our understanding of, and ability to respond to, complex social–ecological systems. Here, we identify and outline the core features of adaptive co‐management, which include innovative institutional arrangements and incentives across spatiotemporal scales and levels, learning through complexity and change, monitoring and assessment of interventions, the role of power, and opportunities to link science with policy.

Purpose – The goal of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to understand the processes by which rural communities are using commons-based social enterprises to engage global actors and forge local places. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a four-step conceptualization of commons-based social enterprises within a complex world: deal with communities as complex systems embedded in larger complex systems, understand cross-scale linkages between communities and other levels of organization, identify drivers of change, and build adaptive capacity to increase the resilience of communities in the face of globalization. The paper draws upon an international set of cases undertaken by the Centre for Community-based Resource Management to illustrate each step. Findings – Social enterprises are one means by which rural communities are negotiating with global actors through recent processes of globalization. The social enterprise provides a mechanism for rural people to secure tenure for common-pool resources and allows them to make direct decisions regarding their management. Research limitations/implications – To further develop the understanding of commons-based social enterprises will require further integration of theory regarding commons and social enterprises. Practical implications – States and development agencies lack enabling policies for commons-based social enterprises that support the multiple goal strategies of rural communities for natural resources. Originality/value – Commons and social enterprise literature have tended to exist in separate domains and this paper makes a first step toward their integration.

Relations between external researchers and indigenous communities have been increasingly strained by differences in understanding and in expectation about the relevance of research. In the field of resource management, the potential for conflict over research is increased by the politics surrounding control over the resource management decision making processes. In this article, we propose the creation of dialogic networks that engage researchers and indigenous people as collaborators in a process of knowledge production. Such an applied research process can produce context-specific knowledge networks that support management and planning decisions by indigenous people; these networks we refer to as place-based learning communities. We present a researcher's perspective on this approach through our experience with the Shoal Lake Resource Institute of Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation located in northwestern Ontario.

Davidson-Hunt, I. and F. Berkes 2003. Learning as You Journey: Anishinaabe Perception of Social-ecological Environments and Adaptive Learning. Conservation Ecology 8(1):5. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-00587-080105