Robustness Trade-offs in Social-Ecological Systems

The governance of common-pool resources can be meaningfully exam- ined from the somewhat broader perspective of the governance of social-ecological systems (SESs). Governance of SESs invariably involves trade-offs; trade-offs be- tween different stakeholder objectives, trade-offs between risk and productivity, and trade-offs between short-term and long-term goals. This is especially true in the case of robustness in social-ecological systems - i.e. the capacity to continue to meet a performance objective in the face of uncertainty and shocks. In this paper we suggest that effective governance under uncertainty must include the ongoing analysis of trade-offs between robustness and performance, and between investments in robust- ness to different types of perturbations. The nature of such trade-offs will depend on society's perception of risk, the dynamics of the underlying resource, and the govern- ance regime. Specifically, we argue that it is impossible to define robustness in abso- lute terms. The choice for society is not only whether to invest in becoming robust to a particular disturbance, but rather, what suit of disturbances to address and what set of associated vulnerabilities is it willing to accept as a necessary consequence.