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Abstract
Adaptive management has become one of the catchphrases of the sustainable development
literature, and is referred to increasingly in natural resource policy deliberations. Its advocates
argue that natural resource sustainability issues are addressed more realistically and usefully as
complex adaptive systems than as mechanistic systems. Resource economics has conventionally
analysed such issues mechanistically, through the method of comparative statics. This paper
explores the consequent limitations of conventional resource economics in supporting adaptive
management, and offers signposts towards a resource economics with fewer of these limitations.