Download Session Title: Governance design for transformation and adaptation

Session Title:
Governance design for transformation and adaptation in social-ecological systems
Chair/Facilitator: Ted Lefroy
Format of the session: workshop
Brief presentations:
1. Introduction: Ted Lefroy et al.: Landscapes and policy: integrating science into
governance design
2. Tools and techniques: Michael Mitchell et al.: Designing governance interventions in
transforming systems: case studies of biodiversity planning for the Australian Alps
and Tasmanian Midlands
3. Results: Sarah Clement et al.: Institutional change for landscape-scale biodiversity
conservation in the Australian Alps and Tasmanian Midlands
Facilitated discussion:
- Do systems undergoing biophysical transformation require transformed governance?
Session Abstract:
This workshop provides participants with an opportunity to analyse and design governance
arrangements for landscape-scale adaptation and transformation. The workshop will feature a
research project developed in response to the Australian government’s desire to lift the scale
it considers and manages biodiversity from species and communities to landscapes and
regions. The workshop will focus on the processes we used to diagnose existing governance
arrangements and to propose and test reforms. We will briefly present the multi-stage process
used to develop a description of the social-ecological system, present results, and then invite
participants to discuss and evaluate the potential usefulness of this approach. The project
involved two contrasting case studies. The Australian Alps case study is a protected area
undergoing transformation due to climate change and other drivers including invasive
species, declining public investment and pressure for multiple uses. The Tasmanian Midlands
is an extensively modified, predominantly agriculture landscape that is undergoing
transformation due to climate change, land use intensification and declining public
investment in nature conservation. These contrasting contexts provide a useful basis for
participants to discuss transformation as distinct from adaptation, and whether transformed
governance arrangements are needed to ensure interventions to improve biodiversity
outcomes. The workshop format will comprise three brief presentations followed by a
facilitated discussion.
Keywords: Governance; Transformability; Adaptability; Social-ecological systems; Scenario
analysis; Biodiversity; Resilience assessment
Speaker 1: Introduction to session (10 minutes, Ted Lefroy)
Landscapes and policy: integrating science into governance design
Ted Lefroy, Susan A. Moore, Michael Lockwood, Sarah Clement, Michael Mitchell, Peter
Davies and Barbara Norman
In 2011 the Australian government funded a large multidisciplinary research centre to
investigate how to move biodiversity management from the scale of species and communities
to landscapes and regions. The brief specified an interdisciplinary and participatory approach
that delivered findings useful for policy makers and managers and tested the utility of a
resilience perspective. We identified improved governance as an essential element of this
collaboration. Here we report on the science we used to better understand and potentially
improve governance. Two large study regions provided the focus – the Australian Alps,
centring on a collection of Australia’s only high altitude national parks, and the Tasmanian
Midlands, an extensively modified agricultural landscape. Governance structures and
requirements are highly dependent on the context. To this end, we first undertook a socialecological systems (SES) analysis for each case study region. This was initially developed by
scientists in the research team and validated in workshops with stakeholders. The SES
analysis was informed by climate science, ecology, economics, geography, sociology and
political science. Within this context, the analytical focus narrowed in the second phase to the
social sciences to develop a detailed understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of
existing governance using interviews and good practice case studies from the literature.
These sources informed a set of governance reform packages, later tested and validated
through focus groups and further stakeholder workshops. In the third phase, all scientists
contributed again to developing scenarios to explore a range of futures for the two regions. In
the final stage, responsibility shifted back to the social sciences to identify reforms most
likely to lead to better biodiversity outcomes. We conclude that a broad sweep of disciplines
is essential for designing governance arrangements for managing biodiversity at landscape
scale. The changing roles played by the various disciplines, as described here, provides a
useful example of how a broad range of perspectives can contribute to governance design in
complex systems.
Speaker 2: Tools and techniques (Michael Mitchell, 10 minutes)
Designing governance interventions in transforming systems: case studies of
biodiversity planning for the Australian Alps and Tasmanian Midlands
Michael Mitchell, Michael Lockwood, Susan A. Moore, Sarah Clement
Current strategies to stem global biodiversity losses are struggling to be effective, and this is
particularly acute for threatened ecosystems with limited options under climate change. Our
social-ecological assessments of the alpine landscapes of the Australian Alps and the
predominantly agricultural landscape of the Tasmanian Midlands suggest that the future
challenge for these focal systems are inevitable transformation for biodiversity. In this
presentation, we will provide an overview of the resilience assessment techniques we used
together with stakeholders in both case study contexts to determine key drivers of change,
construct future scenarios, and diagnose institutional and governance arrangements to
identify points of intervention. For the Australian Alps, we found that changes in invasive
processes, fire regimes and the tourism industry brought on by climate change were key
drivers affecting biodiversity outcomes, along with changes in community values and
attitudes. For the Tasmanian Midlands, the key drivers were farmer profitability and social
and human capital. Our novel contribution has been to explicitly address governance
influences as an integral part of all the techniques we used. Improving biodiversity outcomes
requires proactive human intervention, but such efforts can be undermined if inherent and
persistent governance failures are not addressed. For the Australian Alps, the process of
negotiating system transformation requires deliberate and inclusive governance approaches
through which all stakeholders can collectively address the inevitable loss, attempt to
minimise the resulting value deficits, and identify and seek to take advantage of new
possibilities. Having governance arrangements that enable flexible, adaptive management and
comprehensive engagement of stakeholders are critical to shaping desired futures. The
approach and tools we used can be readily applied to other landscape-scale biodiversity
planning contexts.
Speaker 3: Results (Sarah Clement, 15 minutes)
Institutional change for landscape-scale biodiversity conservation in the Australian Alps
and Tasmanian Midlands
Sarah Clement, Susan A. Moore, Michael Lockwood, Michael Mitchell
Despite global institutional commitments to significantly slow biodiversity loss, the state of
biodiversity has continued to decline whilst pressures on ecosystems increase. Institutions can
both contribute to further decline or foster collective action to conserve biodiversity and build
ecosystem resilience. The poor performance of institutions thus far underpins calls for
adaptation and even transformation of biodiversity governance. However, the response to
these calls has been limited, with few if any case-specific reform proposals that identify
pathways to enhance adaptive and/or transformative governance capability. This paper
outlines three different institutional reform packages explored in two contrasting Australian
regions, the Australian Alps and the Tasmanian Midlands. The two regions – one centred on
publicly owned national parks and the other on privately owned agricultural land – provided
an opportunity to explore governance responses to adaptation and transformation in two very
different contexts. We developed the reform packages through first applying a diagnostic
framework to assessing current institutional conditions and determining whether these
constrain or enable biodiversity conservation at a landscape-scale. The framework drew on
14 institutional dimensions to identify gaps, weaknesses, and failures in biodiversity
conservation governance. Following this analysis, we developed three packages of
institutional reforms, in consultation with stakeholders, for each case study. One package
assumes a worsening in current governance arrangements where biodiversity is increasingly
neglected, another accepts the current neo-liberal emphasis in Australian biodiversity
governance, while the third reconceptualises a much more communitarian shaping of
governance for biodiversity. All packages address the changes suggested by the earlier
diagnosis. And, all address decision-making, rights and responsibilities, roles across levels of
governance, legislation, and the overarching purposes of biodiversity governance in each
context. We conclude with reflections on the ability of these packages to build institutional
adaptive capacity and navigate transformation. We also discuss the utility of the diagnostic
framework as an empirical tool that bridges the gap between theoretical descriptions of
idealised forms of adaptive institutions and the practical impediments faced by actors in
biodiversity governance.
Facilitated discussion on the question: Do systems undergoing biophysical
transformation require transformed governance?