Highlights•The-seven dimensions of institutional adaptive capacity are identified.•Adaptation
requires harnessing synergies and trade-offs between capacity dimensions.•Addressing …

Institutions, the rules of the game that shape repeated human interactions, clearly play a
critical role in helping groups avoid the inefficient use of shared resources such as fisheries …

On-going efforts to understand the dynamics of coupled social-ecological systems and
common pool resources have led to the generation of numerous datasets based on a large …

Water, as a common pool resource, is threatened by the possibility of overextraction
generating a negative economic impact, conflicts among users, and greater income …

Reducing human impacts on Earth's biological systems is an urgent global priority.
However, while the necessary technical solutions are now very well understood, the social …

Within the literature on common-pool resource management, one of the primary
methodologies used is the meta-analysis of case studies, due to the difficulties of otherwise …

Communities throughout the globe are increasingly being given the responsibility of
resource management, making it necessary to understand the factors that lead to success in …

Governance of water use for irrigation is a challenging topic, due to alteration in climatic
patterns and the resulting resource scarcity in arid and semi-arid regions. Success stories …

Sustainability depends in part on our capacity to resolve dilemmas of the commons in
Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS). Thus, we need to know more about how to incentivize …

Some of the most challenging problems that modern societies face involve social dilemmas
related to natural resources and the environment. Readers of this journal will be intimately …