Application of risk-based, adaptive pathways to climate adaptation planning for public conservation areas in NSW, Australia

© 2019 by the authors. Globally, areas of high-quality wildlife habitat of significant environmental value are at risk of permanent damage from climate change. These areas represent social-ecological systems that will require increasing management intervention to maintain their biological and socio-cultural values. Managers of protected areas have begun to recognize the inevitability of ecosystem change and the need to embrace dynamic approaches to intervention. However, significant uncertainty remains about the onset and severity of some impacts, which makes planning difficult. For Indigenous communities, there are intrinsic links between cultural heritage and the conservation of place and biodiversity that need to be better integrated in protected area planning and management. In New SouthWales, Australia, management of public conservation reserves and national parks is the responsibility of a State government agency, the National Parks andWildlife Service (NPWS). This paper describes the outcomes of a participatory planning process with NPWS staff to, firstly, identify the options available, the available 'tool kit', to manage biodiversity and cultural heritage in protected areas; secondly, explore how the selection of management actions from the 'tool kit' is associated with the level of climate risk to biodiversity or cultural heritage assets; and thirdly, to understand how the form of individual management actions might adapt to changes in climate risk. Combining these three elements into a series of risk-based, adaptive pathways for conservation of biodiversity and cultural heritage is a novel approach that is currently supporting place-based planning for public conservation areas. Incorporation of the trade-offs and synergies in seeking to effectively manage these discrete but related types of values and the implications for conservation practice are discussed

Dynamic Adaptive Management Process - Supporting Community Adaptation to Water Shortages in Kiribati

In the water-scarce Pacific Island nation of Kiribati wells that supply water are increasingly affected by saltwater intrusion due to high tides, sea level rise and increasingly frequent storms and tropical cyclones. A handbook had been produced to help local facilitators to train communities to identify climate change adaptation strategies by drawing from various sources of knowledge, including traditional knowledge

Towards a climate change adaptation strategy for national parks: Adaptive management pathways under dynamic risk

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Government seeks to manage public protected areas, such as national parks, to conserve high-quality wildlife habitats and provide essential ecosystems services at risk of permanent damage or extinction from climate change. The complexity of the organizational structure required to deliver this breadth of functions, coupled to uncertainty surrounding the onset and severity of climate impacts at local scale, impedes planning for climate change. This paper describes the development of an adaptation planning tool and its application in a pilot planning process for the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the agency of the New South Wales (NSW) Government (Australia) responsible for management of national parks and public conservation reserves. The process involved close engagement in knowledge co-production in participatory workshops, and employed two complementary techniques, adaptive pathways and risk assessment. It successfully elicited tacit knowledge of agency staff about the range of interventions available, the need for management practices to evolve, and of discontinuities in management pathways in a dynamic risk environment. Findings suggest that management effort across the NSW reserve system will increase as climate risk rises. Consequently, government will need to respond to increased demand for resources, for better targeting of those resources, and for management innovation in how resources are deployed to support adaptation that is both anticipatory and transformative

Pathways towards coexistence with large carnivores in production systems

Coexistence between livestock grazing and carnivores in rangelands is a major challenge in terms of sustainable agriculture, animal welfare, species conservation and ecosystem function. Many effective non-lethal tools exist to protect livestock from predation, yet their adoption remains limited. Using a social-ecological transformations framework, we present two qualitative models that depict transformative change in rangelands grazing. Developed through participatory processes with stakeholders from South Africa and the United States of America, the models articulate drivers of change and the essential pathways to transition from routine lethal management of carnivores towards mutually beneficial coexistence. The pathways define broad actions that incorporate multiple values in grazing systems including changes to livestock management practices, financial support, industry capacity building, research, improved governance and marketing initiatives. A key fnding is the new concept of ‘Predator Smart Farming’, a holistic and conscientious approach to agriculture, which increases the resilience of landscapes, animals (domesticated and wild) and rural livelihoods. Implementation of these multiple pathways would lead to a future system that ensures thriving agricultural communities, secure livelihoods, reduced violence toward animals, and landscapes that are productive and support species conservation and coexistence

Managing Natural Resources for Extreme Climate Events: Differences in Risk Perception Among Urban and Rural Communities in Sydney, Australia

© 2016, Springer International Publishing Switzerland. Lack of perception of the risks posed by climate change has been identified as a major constraint to social adaptation. Factors contributing to risk perception include experience of extreme weather events; socio-cultural factors (norms and values); knowledge of causes, impacts and responses, and socio-demographics. Qualitative data was collected from a series of participatory placed-based workshops conducted in the Greater Sydney and South East regions of New South Wales, Australia with participants drawn from a mix of 12 urban and rural communities. Workshop discussions were based on an Emergency Management Framework: Prepare, Prevent, Respond and Recover (PPRR) for the most important local climate hazards—bushfires, drought, storms, and flooding. Qualitative information from the workshops was examined for evidence of the role of risk perception in the management of natural resources for extreme climate events and the capacity of communities to adapt. Perception of risk differed among locations (urban vs. rural) and types of events, in particular bushfire and flood. Recent experience of an event, livelihood dependency on natural resources and the socio-demographic dynamics of communities were identified as factors contributing to adaptive responses to improve protection of natural resources (such as soils, water and biodiversity)

Using tradeable permits to improve efficiency, equity and animal protection in the commercial kangaroo harvest

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. The utilisation of wildlife creates conflicts between commercial operators, landholders, traditional owners of the land, conservationists and animal protection advocates. Such conflicts are evident in Australia's utilisation of the iconic kangaroo (Macropus) species for their meat and hides. Like many wild animal industries, kangaroos are an open access resource, although restrictions built into the management regime ensure that rents are, approximately, maximised. However, resource allocation decisions and the distribution of rents reflect the values and objectives of the economically powerful stakeholders and particularly commercial processors. Thus, rents are not distributed equitably and the management regime excludes animal protection advocates from adequate participation. Thus, an external cost occurs when kangaroos are harvested that must be internalised for economic efficiency to be achieved. We propose a tradeable permit system where landholders, shooters and processors compete with ordinary citizens for the right to harvest kangaroos. This increases the private cost of harvest and internalises the external cost. It also improves the equity of rent distribution with landholders able to earn a return from kangaroos on their land. As similar issues arise in the utilisation of other wild animals, the research provides an important contribution to the literature on the economics of animal welfare