Learning for social-ecological change: a qualitative review of outcomes across empirical literature in natural resource management

Learning is considered as a promising mechanism to cope with rapid environmental change. The implications of learning for natural resource management (NRM) have not been explored in-depth and the evidence on the topic is scattered across multiple sources. We provide a qualitative review of types of learning outcomes and consider their manifestations in NRM across selected empirical literature. We conducted a systematic search of the peer-reviewed literature (N = 1,223) and a qualitative meta-synthesis of included articles, with an explicit focus on learning outcomes and NRM changes (N = 53). Besides social learning, we found several learning concepts used, including policy and transformative learning, and multiple links between learning and NRM reported. We observe that the development of skills, together with a system approach involving multi-level capacities, is decisive for implications of learning for NRM. Future reviews could systematically compare how primary research applies different learning concepts and discusses links between learning and NRM changes.

学习被视为应对快速环境变化的极具前景的机制。然而，学习对自然资源管理（natural resource management，NRM）的影响尚未得到深入探索，相关研究证据散见于各类文献来源中。本研究对各类学习成果类型展开质性综述，并结合精选的实证文献，探讨其在自然资源管理中的具体表现形式。本研究对同行评议文献进行了系统检索（检索文献总量N=1223），并对纳入的53篇文献开展质性元综合分析，重点聚焦学习成果与自然资源管理的变化情况。除社会学习外，本研究还识别出多种被应用的学习概念，包括政策学习与转型学习，同时发现了学习与自然资源管理之间存在的多维度关联。本研究发现，技能培养与涵盖多层级能力的系统方法，对学习在自然资源管理中的作用发挥具有决定性影响。未来的综述研究可系统性对比不同原始研究对各类学习概念的应用方式，以及其对学习与自然资源管理变化之间关联的讨论。