Background
Aid programmes operating in fragile, complex contexts such as South Sudan require systems, tools and principles that allow them to sufficiently understand the evolving context, and respond in an effective, efficient and conflict-sensitive manner. Adaptive management theory is an important part of this toolbox, encompassing many of the important principles and approaches that can help donors and their implementing partners build the resources, capacities, norms and values to implement activities in South Sudan in ways that do not contribute to long-term fragility or conflict, but rather contribute to long-term strengths and peace.
In early 2023, the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) commissioned an options paper to help stakeholders within the Partnership for Peacebuilding, Resilience and Recovery (PfPRR) understand and act on options for building adaptive management approaches into the partnership’s approach. Aiming to engage a wider audience, the CSRF has adapted the original options paper to be relevant for the aid sector in South Sudan more broadly.
This paper is intended to support policy makers, programme designers, donors, and managers with theory and proposed objectives that can be used to integrate greater adaptation into humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding programmes in South Sudan.
What is Adaptive Management?
Adaptive management approaches begin with the premise that aid actors working in complex, unstable environments must develop strong analysis and the ability to use that analysis to develop flexible, responsive ways of working. It also asserts that, in many cases, it may not be possible to do sufficient analysis before a programme is begun, either because the context is rapidly changing or because the intervention itself is expected to have uncertain interactions with the context. In either case, adaptive theory proposes that an ongoing process of analysis, testing, learning and adapting enables aid organisations to effectively deepen and improve its analysis and operational approach over time.
Adaptive management is often defined in opposition to ‘traditional’ approaches to aid that are described as “linear ‘research – plan – implement – report’ models”1 that implicitly assume that one can sufficiently understand the context and one’s likely impact on the context before the programme begins. In contrast, adaptive management seeks to build iterative processes of learning and adaptation into programme design to enable the testing of ideas, exploration of areas of uncertainty, and learning over time. It is useful for aid programmes, particularly those working in conflict-affected areas, to be more effective and to avoid unintentionally driving or perpetuating conflict and vulnerability. Adaptive management is also useful when pursuing programmatic goals that are complex and nonlinear (such as HDP Nexus programming). Some enabling factors for adaptive management, drawn from the literature, are below: