ORIGINAL ARTICLE Collaborative governance for climate change adaptation in Canada: experimenting with adaptive co-management Julia Baird 1 • Ryan Plummer 1,2 • O ¨ rjan Bodin 2 Received: 16 April 2014 / Accepted: 17 March 2015 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Abstract The search for strategies to address ‘super wicked problems’ such as climate change is gaining urgency, and a collaborative governance approach, and adaptive co-man- agement in particular, is increasingly recognized as one such strategy. However, the conditions for adaptive co-manage- ment to emerge and the resulting network structures and re- lational patterns remain unclear in the literature. To address these identified needs, this study examines social relationships from a network perspective while initiating a collaborative multiactor initiative aimed to develop into adaptive co-man- agement for climate change adaptation, an action research project undertaken in the Niagara region of Canada. The project spanned 1 year, and a longitudinal analysis of par- ticipants’ networks and level of participation in the process was performed. Evidence of support for climate change adaptation from the process included the development of de- liberative and adaptive responses to opportunities presented to the group and the development of a strong subgroup of participants where decision-making was centered. However, the complexity of the challenge of addressing climate change, funding constraints, competing initiatives, and the lack of common views among participants may have contributed to the group, highlighting the finding that beneficial network structural features and relational patterns are necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of an adaptive co- management process. The context of climate change adapta- tion may require a different social network structure and processes than other contexts for adaptive co-management to occur, and there may be limitations to adaptive co-manage- ment for dealing with super wicked problems. Keywords Collaborative governance Á Adaptive co-management Á Social network analysis Á Climate change adaptation Introduction The resistance of many contemporary environmental issues to resolution poses considerable challenges. Descriptively labeled as ‘wicked’ problems, they entail considerable scientific uncertainties, enormous interdependencies, and deep-seated conflicting positions (e.g., Rittel and Webber 1973; Lazarus 2009; Balint et al. 2011). The status of cli- mate change has been heightened further to the class of ‘super wicked problems’ because it has several exacer- bating features: Time is not costless, continuation of pre- sent emissions will precipitate exponentially larger consequences in the future to meet emission targets, those in positions to resolve the problem have the least amount of incentive to do so in the short term, and there is a lack of institutional and legal frameworks that correspond to the scope of climate change in space and time (Lazarus 2009). Editor: Nicolas Dendoncker. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10113-015-0790-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Ryan Plummer rplummer@brocku.ca Julia Baird jbaird@brocku.ca O ¨ rjan Bodin orjan.bodin@stockholmresilience.su.se 1 Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada 2 Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Kra¨ftriket 2B, 114 19 Stockholm, Sweden 123 Reg Environ Change DOI 10.1007/s10113-015-0790-5