Improving science uptake in coastal zone management : principles for science engagement and their application in south-eastern Tasmania

Sustainable management of the coastal zone represents a considerable challenge to Australian society. This challenge is rooted in the complexity of the biophysical and sociocultural characteristics of coastal areas, including uncertainty about system characteristics and processes, and the diversity of stakeholders, their interests, values and perspectives, and the jurisdictions involved in coastal governance and management. Given this complexity of coastal zone management, scientific and other forms of knowledge can affect decision-making and human action in diverse ways, which will often depend on the ability of scientists to engage effectively with relevant stakeholders.<br /

Agricultural diversity, farmers' definitions and uses: the case of Tasmanian farms

Agricultural diversity can contribute to improving agriculture and food systems sustainability, but it is commonly associated with smallholdings and subsistence farming. The drivers and trade-offs around diversification strategies in high-income countries remain poorly understood. Tasmania, due to its diverse climate and geography, is among the most agro-diverse regions in Australia, which makes it an interesting case to study. This paper addresses three main research questions: (1) How do farmers define agricultural diversity and diversification? 2) How is diversification ‘used’ as a farming strategy? and 3) What incentives and barriers are currently structuring the adoption of these strategies? We conducted Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews with 95 farmers across Tasmania and analyse them qualitatively using thematic analysis. Our findings show that attitudes and motivations towards agricultural diversity vary among farmers depending on personal experiences, values and farming backgrounds and context. These motivations may influence the role that agricultural diversity plays within farms. We could identify a net distinction between farmers using diversification strategies: (1) as integral components of their business to respond to different needs and purposes, (2) purely as additional business opportunities or (3) for motivations that go beyond the financial value. Nevertheless, other farmers prefer specialisation as they find it more profitable or consider that investing in additional activities is too demanding or financially risky. As only 14 farms in our sample specialised in a single product, our results suggest that agricultural diversification strategies can also represent viable options also in a high-income country. However, the variety of responses and perspectives among the participants of this study indicates that future research and policy interventions promoting agricultural diversity should aim to identify and address the specific challenges encountered by the different approaches to diversification employed by farmers

Farm diversification strategies, dietary diversity and farm size: results from a cross-country sample in South and Southeast Asia

South and Southeast Asia host almost half of the world's undernourished people. Food and agricultural systems in these regions are highly dependent on the production and consumption of staple cereals such as rice, maize and wheat. More diverse farming systems can potentially improve rural people's nutrition, while reducing the environmental impact of agriculture. Yet, it remains uncertain whether farm diversification is always the most suitable and viable strategy for all types of smallholder farms. We use generalised linear regression models to analyse the farm diversification strategies of 4772 rural households in Cambodia, India, Lao PDR and Vietnam. Our analysis is twofold and focuses first on drivers of farm diversification, and second, on the impacts of farm diversification and other livelihood strategies on dietary diversity. We find that (1) farm diversification is significantly influenced by environmental and climate variables, including rainfall patterns, as well as household and farm characteristics such as farm size and education level; and (2) farm diversification, market orientation and off-farm income generation are all strategies that can improve household and individual dietary diversity. However, their relative effects resulted influenced by farm size. Specifically, the positive effect of farm diversification on dietary diversity was larger for smaller farms, while it decreased for farms of larger size that may improve their diet more by increasing their engagement in off-farm activities and markets. These findings highlight that characteristics such as farm size can represent substantial determinants in production and consumption decisions, suggesting the importance of understanding and considering the type of farm and the situational context of analysis when targeting interventions for improving smallholder farm livelihoods

Knowledge co-production for decision-making in human-natural systems under uncertainty

Decision-making under uncertainty is important for managing human-natural systems in a changing world. A major source of uncertainty is linked to the multi-actor settings of decisions with poorly understood values, complex relationships, and conflicting management approaches. Despite general agreement across disciplines on co-producing knowledge for viable and inclusive outcomes in a multi-actor context, there is still limited conceptual clarity and no systematic understanding on what co-production means in decision-making under uncertainty and how it can be approached. Here, we use content analysis and clustering to systematically analyse 50 decision-making cases with multiple time and spatial scales across 26 countries and in 9 different sectors in the last decade to serve two aims. The first is to synthesise the key recurring strategies that underpin high quality decision co-production across many cases of diverse features. The second is to identify important deficits and opportunities to leverage existing strategies towards flourishing co-production in support of decision-making. We find that four general strategies emerge centred around: promoting innovation for robust and equitable decisions; broadening the span of co-production across interacting systems; fostering social learning and inclusive participation; and improving pathways to impact. Additionally, five key areas that should be addressed to improve decision co-production are identified in relation to: participation diversity; collaborative action; power relationships; governance inclusivity; and transformative change. Characterising the emergent strategies and their key areas for improvement can help guide future works towards more pluralistic and integrated science and practice

Shortcuts for accelerating food system transitions

In light of ongoing global challenges of health, climate change, and food security, there is urgent need to transform our food systems. Here, we call for stakeholders to leverage collective wisdom garnered from more than two decades of sustainability transitions research into developing and implementing systemic approaches to shortcut theory to action and accelerate the transformation of global food systems

Translating Science to Benefit Diverse Publics: Engagement Pathways for Linking Climate Risk, Uncertainty, and Agricultural Identities

We argue that for scientists and science communicators to build usable knowledge for various publics, they require social and political capital, skills in boundary work, and ethical acuity. Drawing on the context of communicating seasonal climate predictions to farmers in Australia, we detail four key issues that scientists and science communicators would do well to reflect upon in order to become effective and ethical intermediaries. These issues relate to (1) the boundary work used to link science and values and thereby construct public identities, (2) emplacement, that is, the importance of situating knowledge in relation to the places with which people identify, (3) personal and organizational processes of reflexivity, and (4) the challenges of developing and maintaining the social and political capital necessary to simultaneously represent people's identities and lifeworlds and the climate systems that affect them. Through a discourse analysis of in-depth interviews with Australian agro-climatologists, we suggest that three distinct modes of extension are apparent, namely, discursive, conceptual, and contextual. Our participants used these three modes interdependently to create knowledge that has salience, credibility, and legitimacy. They thereby generated new narratives of place, practice, and identity for Australian agriculture

Translating Science to Benefit Diverse Publics:Engagement Pathways for Linking Climate Risk, Uncertainty, and Agricultural Identities

We argue that for scientists and science communicators to build usable knowledge for various publics, they require social and political capital, skills in boundary work, and ethical acuity. Drawing on the context of communicating seasonal climate predictions to farmers in Australia, we detail four key issues that scientists and science communicators would do well to reflect upon in order to become effective and ethical intermediaries. These issues relate to (1) the boundary work used to link science and values and thereby construct public identities, (2) emplacement, that is, the importance of situating knowledge in relation to the places with which people identify, (3) personal and organizational processes of reflexivity, and (4) the challenges of developing and maintaining the social and political capital necessary to simultaneously represent people's identities and lifeworlds and the climate systems that affect them. Through a discourse analysis of in-depth interviews with Australian agro-climatologists, we suggest that three distinct modes of extension are apparent, namely, discursive, conceptual, and contextual. Our participants used these three modes interdependently to create knowledge that has salience, credibility, and legitimacy. They thereby generated new narratives of place, practice, and identity for Australian agriculture

Placing Science for Natural Resource Management and Climate Variability: Lessons from Narratives of Risk, Place and Identity

Making salient, credible and legitimate knowledge for natural resource management (NRM) and adaptation to climate change is achievable when scientific knowledge is grounded in place. Making scientific knowledge locally relevant can be assisted by an understanding of the way ` placed knowledge' comes into being. Taking two prominent conceptions of place (Massey and Ingold), we ground these empirically using narratives from graziers in the eastern Australian rangelands. We examine placed conceptions of risk and uncertainty and the ways they are linked to narratives of identity, local environmental change, and understandings of place. Paying heed to narratives enables a reframing of risk and uncertainty into locally-meaningful forms. This fosters dialogue between various epistemic communities in ways that acknowledge and respect different ways of knowing and differences in the content of knowledge. It provides an analytical basis for scientists and institutions to reflect on the applicability of their information and technology in particular contexts. With this approach, scientists, policymakers and other rural community stakeholders can develop their awareness of how placed narratives link social practices and locally-legitimate understandings of good farm management and biophysical systems. This will help to ` place' science for NRM, agricultural extension and rural development

Drivers and constraints of on-farm diversity: a review

International audienceAbstractEnhancing and maintaining on-farm diversity is a potential strategy to improve farming systems’ sustainability and resilience. However, diversification is driven or constrained by different factors and dynamics that vary across environmental, socio-economic and political contexts. Identifying drivers and constraints of diversification can help to support the adoption of on-farm diversification strategies, where doing so is beneficial. For the first time, we systematically review and summarise recent peer-reviewed studies assessing drivers and constraints of on-farm diversity from 42 different countries. From 2312 studies, we selected a total of 97, reporting 239 drivers and constraints, which we categorised using the Sustainable Rural Livelihood Framework. We extracted the number of times they were assessed as having a positive, negative or neutral relationship with on-farm diversity. Some factors mainly have a positive relationship, such as the need to adapt to risks or belonging to indigenous ethnicities, but for most of the others the results are mixed. Our major conclusions are as follows: (1) The adoption of diversification strategies is affected by both production and demand dynamics, with differences depending on farms and contexts; (2) small subsistence-oriented farms tend to adopt on-farm diversification strategies to cope with environmental characteristics and risks and satisfy their subsistence needs; (3) farmers may shift towards specialisation strategies if the comparative advantage of diversification and its natural insurance effect gets displaced by market opportunities, financial capital, technologies and the availability of alternative and more profitable sources of income; (4) the availability of technologies enabling farm diversification and the access to alternative market options are crucial to stimulate the implementation and maintenance of on-farm diversity; (5) future policies and research promoting the adoption of on-farm diversification strategies need to design mechanisms and incentives that consider the opportunity-cost of alternative livelihood opportunities, and that are suitable for the local context and for farmers’ objectives

Ensuring Resilience of Natural Resources under Exposure to Extreme Climate Events

Natural resources directly support rural livelihoods and underpin much of the wealth of rural and regional Australia. Climate change manifesting as increasing frequency and or severity of extreme weather events poses a threat to sustainable management of natural resources because the recurrence of events may exceed the resilience of natural systems or the coping capacity of social systems. We report the findings of a series of participatory workshops with communities in eight discrete landscapes in South East New South Wales, Australia. The workshops focused on how natural resource management (NRM) is considered in the Prevent-Prepare-Respond-Recover emergency management cycle. We found that NRM is generally considered only in relation to the protection of life and property and not for the intrinsic value of ecosystem services that support communities. We make three recommendations to improve NRM under extreme climate events. Firstly, the support to communities offered by emergency management agencies could be bolstered by guidance material co-produced with government NR agencies. Secondly, financial assistance from government should specifically target the restoration and maintenance of green infrastructure to avoid loss of social-ecological resilience. Thirdly, action by natural resource dependent communities should be encouraged and supported to better protect ecosystem services in preparation for future extreme events