Novel Methods,Novel Metrics: Using a Meta-Ethnography to Create a Plan Quality Framework for Sustainable and Resilient Social–Ecological Systems

Abstract

Social–ecological resilience (SER) and sustainable commons management (SCM) are process- and outcome-based paradigms for natural resource management. Resource management plans foster them, but traditional plan quality assessment typically omits process dimensions. We examined what constitutes an appropriate plan quality evaluation framework for resource management plans that reflect these SER and SCM paradigms. In order to create a plan quality instrument for assessing embedded SER and SCM processes, we employed a two-part methodology of a meta-ethnographic analysis and then used the results to augment current advances in plan quality evaluation to assess adaptation efforts. While methodologically novel in the academic planning canon, the meta-ethnographic approach has been used to inductively synthesize qualitative studies’ results in, for example, the fields of public health, medicine, and education. Our use advances plan quality evaluation with a new metric that combines the paradigmatic resource management strategies and addresses identified shortcomings in the more novel adaptive plan quality evaluation approach that builds on the former, traditional one.