Introduction to the Handbook on Adaptive Governance

Even though there has been much discussion of the interconnectedness and interdependence of societies globally, the COVID 19 pandemic has illustrated in a most revealing way how events in one part of the world cascade across the globe. The concept of adaptive governance emerged around the turn of the century to vision the way of governing that stresses the coupled nature of biophysical and social systems and their dynamics to ensure more desirable governance outcomes. This Handbook brings together the current state of the art in terms of adaptive governance. It is an an exciting collection of contributions, ranging from theoretical and conceptual ones to presenting and demonstrating the richness of methodological approaches applied in the study of adaptive governance. This volume also illustrates the variety of governance fields engaged in adaptive governance research, from more traditional ones to entirely new fields.