Examining the conditions that activate linking social capital to transition environmental governance: empirical insights from Chile’s coast

As socio-ecological systems undergo regional environmental change, there is a need to create adaptive governance that can manage uncertainty through the coordination of actors. Social capital can help overcome some of these challenges to facilitate a transition to adaptive governance, but social capital has often been treated as a catch-all phrase without offering strong theoretical or empirical contributions to how social processes influence governance outcomes. This paper addresses this gap by offering empirical insights into the conditions that activate individuals’ linking social capital to form new institutions to adapt to environmental change in two small-scale fishing communities in southern Chile. We used a mixed methods approach to examine the relationship between linking social capital and whether or not our individuals in our study adapted their diving practices or joined new organizations as a form of adaptation. We then use ethnography to illuminate the community-level factors and mechanisms that fostered the ability for individuals to use their linking social capital to transition governance and why a collaborative transition was successful in one community, but not the other. This paper suggests that leadership, shared visions, and a culture of cooperation underpin successful governance transitions, while intra-community conflict inhibits transitions even when linking social capital is present.