| This case study evaluates and recommends improvements to the adaptive management programs within Washington State forest policy. I focus on the Watershed Analysis program, 1992 to 1997, a program for cooperative landscape assessment and forest practices rule-making at the watershed scale. However, I also take a longer-term history of Washington State forest policy, from 1987 to 2001, as essential context for understanding the functioning and outcomes of Watershed Analysis as a tool for social learning. I use the concepts of complex adaptive systems theory as a heuristic for understanding program and context as an integrated social system.; My findings put in question the value of science-based management and formal program design---called "scientific adaptive management"---as a means of improving social learning in complex cases. The case history demonstrates that, given time and some basic formal arrangements, remarkable policy learning can also arise from informal and ad-hoc processes. The relevant dynamics include social processes that span many more levels of social structure than can be captured in a formal system. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
