The increasing impacts of climate change necessitate the urgent development and implementation of policies and governance frameworks to increase disaster resilience. Adaptive governance has emerged as a potential strategy for regulating social-ecological systems amidst prevailing uncertainties and changes in environmental conditions. This research asks how adaptive governance can be effectively leveraged to enhance disaster resilience in practice. A systematic literature review was conducted via the PRISMA approach, with a focus on the intersections and synergies between adaptive governance and disaster resilience. A thematic analysis and qualitative synthesis were performed on the selected articles. The study reveals that adaptive governance fosters disaster resilience through improved information flow, increased cooperation, and flexible decision-making. However, it faces significant obstacles such as institutional restrictions, funding shortages, and challenges in stakeholder engagement. Opportunities lie in leveraging regional expertise, integrating advanced technologies, and promoting cross-scale cooperation. Despite its potential, the implementation of adaptive governance requires nuanced and context-specific strategies due to the complexity of social-ecological systems. It necessitates the integration of local knowledge, investment in capacity development, and the establishment of collaborative initiatives. Our findings confirm that adaptive governance offers a flexible, participatory pathway to resilience – but real-world implementation requires addressing institutional constraints and fostering enabling conditions. Practitioners and policymakers should consider adaptive governance as a foundational strategy for disaster management, allocating resources to capacity building and encouraging multilevel cooperation.
Sarker et al. (Sun,) studied this question.