摘要：Panarchy theory focuses on improving theories of change in natural and social systems to improve the design ofpolicy responses. Its central thesis is that successfully working with the dynamic forces of complex adaptive natural and socialsystems demands an active adaptive management regime that eschews optimization approaches that seek stability. This is a newapproach to resources management, and yet no new theory of how to do things in environmental and natural resourcesmanagement, particularly one challenging entrenched ways of doing things and the interests aligned around them, is likely togain traction in practice if it cannot gain traction in the form of endorsement and implementation through specific laws andregulations. At some point, that bridge must be crossed or the enterprise of putting panarchy theory into panarchy practice willstall. Any effort to operationalize panarchy theory through law thus comes up against the mission of law to provide social stabilityand the nature of law itself as a complex adaptive system. To state the problem in another way, putting panarchy theory intopractice will require adaptively managing the complex adaptive legal system to adaptively manage other complex adaptivenatural and social systems, all in a way that maintains some level of social order. Panarchy theorists have yet to develop anagenda for doing so. It is time for lawyers to join the team
关键词：adaptive management; environmental law; panarchy theory
