Sustainable Natural Resource and Environmental Management: A Review of Adaptive Governance, Benefit Distribution, and Implementation Challenges

Abstract

Management of natural resources (NR) and the environment often creates a gap between sustainability commitments and the benefits that stakeholders actually receive. This article aims to explain how ecological, economic, social, health, cultural, and educational benefits are formed, as well as to identify barriers and strategies for fair implementation. The study uses a qualitative literature review that is integrative and interpretative, analyzing reputable journal articles since 2020, with purposive-iterative searching, conceptual coding, cross-source comparison, and thematic-narrative synthesis. The findings show that sustainability benefits are formed through protecting natural capital, maintaining ecosystem services, reducing risks, strengthening local rights and capacities, and recognizing the plurality of values and knowledge. However, these benefits don't automatically spread evenly. Social-ecological complexity, institutional fragmentation, tenure conflicts, power imbalances, limited funding and data, weak enforcement, short-term market pressures, and symbolic participation often turn policies into mere administrative compliance without real improvements. This article proposes adaptive, polycentric, ecosystem-based, and equitable governance that integrates clear rights, benefit-sharing, cross-sector coordination, long-term funding, open data, participatory monitoring, and policy correction mechanisms. The main contribution of the article is a five-layer analytical framework connecting ecological boundaries, values and benefits, actors and power relations, institutions and instruments, as well as multidimensional outputs. This framework emphasizes that success isn't just measured by compliance or the scale of programs, but by the integrity of the ecosystem, the fairness of benefits, the legitimacy of processes, and long-term resilience