Collective Action for tackling complexity: An Evolutionary Model for Watershed Management

Abstract

Watershed management is a complex process by which a number of actors pursue their own interests in a shared space. Selfish behaviors ina watershed often cause the tragedy of the commons, which refers to collective failure. To avoid the collective failure requires collective action for the actors to coordinate their action for the pursuit of the survival of the whole watershed. In taking the system perspective, this article looks for the room for improvement in prior discussion and suggests the two: (1) the improvement of the system’s capacity to cope with complexity and (2)the learning of the actors to adapt for the avoidance of collective failure.