Co-evolutionary pathways: How governance and conflict shape human adaptation in contested social-ecological systems

Managing human adaptation in contested social-ecological systems (SES) is a defining challenge of the Anthropocene. Current approaches often fail because they treat governance as a static intervention designed to manage resources, overlooking its dynamic interplay with social conflict. How governance and conflict co-evolve to produce divergent community fates remains a critical unknown. Here, using extensive survey data from small-scale fishing communities in the West Philippine Sea—a global hotspot of biodiversity and conflict—we reveal how seemingly homogenous communities facing identical pressures fracture into distinct, path-dependent trajectories. We show that this divergence is driven by a co-evolutionary feedback loop between institutional frameworks and community responses. In regions with weak institutional presence, a negative feedback loop emerges, where unresolved conflict drives individualistic ‘exit-and-ration’ strategies that further erode the potential for collective action. In contrast, where active management provides forums for negotiation, a positive feedback loop fosters a collective ‘comply-and-buffer’ strategy, reinforcing institutional legitimacy and building adaptive capacity. We further reveal that this dynamic is fueled by a crisis of economic entitlement, not resource scarcity. These findings present a generalizable model of SES change, demonstrating that adaptation is an emergent property of the co-evolution between social conflict and governance. Effective intervention must therefore shift from designing static rules to cultivating institutional processes capable of channeling conflict into constructive, adaptive pathways.