| Adaptive management has become one of the catchphrases of the sustainable development literature, and is referred to increasingly in natural resource policy deliberations. Its advocates argue that natural resource sustainability issues are addressed more realistically and usefully as complex adaptive systems than as mechanistic systems. Resource economics has conventionally analysed such issues mechanistically, through the method of comparative statics. This paper explores the consequent limitations of conventional resource economics in supporting adaptive management, and offers signposts towards a resource economics with fewer of these limitations. |
