What is a key feature of adaptive governance?

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Adaptive governance hinges on handling change through flexible, collaborative decision-making that brings diverse stakeholders together and emphasizes learning from outcomes. This approach keeps rules and institutions capable of evolving as new information and conditions appear, using monitoring, feedback, and iterative adjustments to improve resilience. By involving communities, scientists, authorities, and other actors in co-management, it creates legitimacy, knowledge diversity, and better adaptation to ecological and social shifts. In contrast, rigid centralized rule-making, decisions by a single expert without input, or excluding stakeholders limit learning, reduce legitimacy, and hinder the system’s ability to respond to change.