In this chapter, we explain the methodological frame and normative hypothesis of Resilient Property, drawing on wicked problem theory, vulnerability theory and equilibrium theory. Structuring methods drawn from wicked problem theory and “method assemblage” are adopted to support fuller analyses of the complex array of relations and practices, individual and institutional vulnerabilities that are at stake when homeless squatters occupy empty property. Resilient Property draws insights from “vulnerability theory”: adopting Fineman’s general approach to vulnerability and resilience; and building on her insights concerning institutional vulnerability, including the vulnerability of the state. This provides a central anchor for our analyses of state responses to squatting: that a necessary implication of recognizing that the state itself is a vulnerable institution is that we recognize the need for states (and governments) to act in ways that build their own resilience, to shore up their authority and legitimacy in the face of conflict or crises. This underpins our focus on “equilibrium” in Resilient Property: recognizing that states are not neutral arbiters in relation to competing claims to land but are required to negotiate their “other-regarding” responsibilities – adjudicating and allocating resilience to individuals and institutions – against the backdrop of their own “self-regarding” need for resilience. Through this approach, Resilient Property enables us to develop a realistic, contextualized, conceptualization of state action with regard to complex property problems.

Recent research in cognitive development has supported and built on Piaget’s idea that children’s active engagement with the physical and social world is a crucial component to their learning. In this chapter we offer an overview of the latest results from developmental, cognitive, computational, and educational research on children’s exploration and information search. In particular, we examine the various forms active learning can take across the life span. We start by describing the development of increasingly sophisticated forms of information solicitation in infants and preverbal children, and then draw a developmental trajectory of the effectiveness of children’s exploratory and sampling strategies as well as of their question asking. In doing so, we touch upon three main themes: Children’s sensitivity to environmental inputs, their competence as active learners, and their adaptiveness in tailoring their active learning strategies to different environmental structures. To conclude, we discuss some of the most pressing open questions and promising avenues for future developmental research on active learning and information search.

This chapter concludes the edited volume and its quest to harvest findings on the conceptual development of adaptiveness, as proposed by the Earth System Governance (ESG) Project. Adaptiveness is both a key attribute and goal of governance to anticipate, manage, and help steer complex societal, technological, and environmental changes towards more sustainable trajectories. Reiterating the main question of the book: How has adaptiveness, as an umbrella concept, been developed and applied in the context of earth system governance in the first decade after its inception, and what insights and practical solutions has it yielded? We have found that adaptiveness encompasses and relates to concepts including adaptive management and governance, adaptive capacity, vulnerability, resilience, robustness, and social learning. We elucidate how these concepts and further Harvesting Initiative findings relate to the 2018 Science and Implementation Plan of the ESG Project, in which adaptiveness is considered alongside the concept of reflexivity. We then look back on 10 years of progress to answer the so-called 'Utrecht Questions', exploring both the relevance of adaptiveness concepts in practice and their generalisability. Finally, we touch upon the 2009 ESG Science Plan and suggest how adaptiveness offers lessons for broader societal transformation and achieving global sustainability agendas.

The Earth System Governance (ESG) Project developed a Science and Implementation Plan in 2009. Adaptiveness has been introduced as an umbrella term for vulnerability, resilience, adaptation, robustness, adaptive capacity, and social learning. Adaptiveness refers to changes taken by social groups in response to, or in anticipation of, challenges created through environmental change. This chapter employs a systematic literature review (SLR) method to answer the question of how adaptiveness has been taken in the literature related to earth system governance. It first analyses research progress over time including conducting a keyword analysis. Through analysis of the most-cited papers, the chapter tries to answer the 2009 Science Plan questions: What are the politics of adaptiveness? Which governance processes foster adaptiveness? What attributes of governance systems enhance capacities to adapt? How, when, and why does adaptiveness influence earth system governance? The chapter finds that adaptiveness has not been taken up as a term, but rather as an umbrella concept. The political nature and the conflicts of adaptiveness recognise that responses to massive changes in the ecological systems substantially impact on political relations and power structures on different governance levels. The learning processes in adaptation governance have a particular interest in transformative change.

In the context of earth system governance today, experimentation is no longer merely a virtue but a basic survival skill.Administrative professionals – understood to include administrators national, international, and subnational, both governmental and nongovernmental, across the entire range of policy arenas – are in a position to engage in this best practice for learning from experience, perhaps to a greater degree than any other agents of governance. Protected by both their relative anonymity and their institutional affiliations, they enjoy the dual benefits of relative invisibility and administrative discretion.Administrative professionals can experiment with social and political arrangements that are not only adaptive but are also democratic and effective in reconciling humans to their environment.The volatility of their environments has meant that they face devolved responsibility in governance for both acquiring resources and achieving results.Administrative professionals succeed by being scavengers par excellence, such that approaches that work well anywhere are destined eventually to be tried everywhere.

The concept of consensus must be understood in a more complex and contingent way than it often is.Consensus is that level of agreement among all parties to the decision process that allows them to “hang together” as they move from one stage of that process to the next.Consensus in governance is not, and never could be usefully thought of as, synonymous with simple unanimity.The major elements of consensus – the normative, the political, and the social – all relate to different kinds of agreement, each with its own regulative standard.

Analysis of the concept of transparency provides an illustration of the role of consensus in democratic earth system governance, which must confront five core analytical problems identified in the first Science Plan of the Earth System Governance Project: architecture, adaptiveness, accountability, access and allocation, and agency.The character of each distinct analytical problem of governance places its own demands and limitations on governance by transparency policy.

− ESG–Agency scholarship reveals that diverse forms of agency are crucial to cultivating adaptiveness of governance systems within complex and changing contexts. − ESG–Agency scholars are well-positioned to apply extensive insights to major emerging questions in the social sciences about adaptiveness and renewal of political and governance systems across many spheres of society. − Greater focus is required concerning the effects of agency on adaptiveness of environmental governance systems in several ways: materially, normatively, and temporally.