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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?