There is a need to investigate various approaches to cross-scale linkages. The objective of this paper is to identify promising institutional forms for linking across levels of institutions; and to investigate selected concepts and approaches that may be useful towards building a theory of cross-scale institutional linkages.

It appears that cross-scale institutions such as co-management are becoming widely used because of the increasing emphasis on participatory environmental management in general. Some of these participatory processes are horizontal processes, as in partnerships, collaboration, and community empowerment, perhaps related to the emergence of a post-modern social order (“states can no longer treat their citizens as subjects"- Giddens).

Crucially important also is the emergence of a different concept of how ecosystems work: a natural world which is nonlinear, unpredictable, multi-equilibrium and multi-scale. If ecosystems are multi-scale, then institutions also need to be multi-scale, so that there is a match between ecosystems and institutions designed to manage them. Thus, there is a need to examine vertical processes (e.g. cross-scale institutions) as well as horizontal processes.

About Dr. Berkes
Dr. Berkes is Professor of Natural Resources at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. He holds a PhD degree in Marine Sciences from McGill University, Montreal.

He has served as the President of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP) and is a Fellow of the Beijer Institute. He works at the intersection of ecology and social sciences.

He is the author of numerous publications in the areas of commons theory, community-based resource management, co-management and traditional ecological knowledge. His books include Common Property Resources (Belhaven, London, 1989), Linking Social and Ecological Systems (co-edited with Carl Folke, Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Sacred Ecology (Taylor & Francis, 1999).