The Arabana people, water and developing cultural indicators for country

Water is of paramount importance to the Arabana people who live in the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre region. Assessing the ongoing condition of aquatic ecosystems is an important part of management. Development of indicator frameworks that can incorporate both scientific and cultural values can ensure Indigenous involvement in management, but also facilitate ways in which local and traditional knowledge can be acknowledged as being of value. This project aimed to identify and document the values and indicators for water systems held by the Arabana people with the view to developing ideas about how future assessments across the whole region may: (i) engage with and then, (ii) build a template for cultural indicators across the whole region. This project was implemented using Indigenist and participant methodologies. Arabana people were employed as co-researchers. Three field trips and meetings were held to identify Arabana values for, and indicators about, water in their country. Results indicate that Arabana people value water in multiple ways including for survival, culture and identity. Interestingly, Arabana people also valued water variability and its absence: historical, dry or degraded water sites were noted as significant. Arabana people used a number of indicators or ‘signs’ to assess the ongoing condition of a site. This included flora, fauna, soil, knowledge, history, use, and pressure indicators. In many ways, the cultural indicators used by Arabana people have complementarity with scientific indicators and thus have potential to be built on and then implemented in conjunction with other indicator suites. A cultural indicator schemata is presented as is a co-engagement model for use in wider assessments with other Indigenous groups. However, this research concludes that it is not possible to develop a generic template for integration of all indicators across the region and questions whether or not this is really necessary. Ultimately, what is required is funding and investment into each Indigenous group across the Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre region to support each group to develop their own specific schemata (based potentially on the one we suggest here), and then allocation of funds to train and employ Indigenous people to implement them. The knowledge set built over time in this manner, especially if grounded in the principles of co-existence rather than integration, will also facilitate the conditions for effective and adaptive management. It will be a true complement to scientific indicators and knowledge, while respecting and incorporating Indigenous people aspirations in the region.Nursey-Bray. Melissa, Arabana Aboriginal Corporation, Primary Industries and Regions (SA), SARD

The ART of engagement placemaking for nature and people in cities

Placemaking is well documented for its role in fostering place attachment in increasingly dense, diverse and mobile communities, thus leading to positive impacts on health, community participation, civic behaviour and perceptions of safety. However, many projects can fail to achieve long-term benefits. This chapter explores the existing strategies to evaluate place from a socio-ecological perspective and encourages the practitioners to move beyond easily measurable attributes and economic evaluations and incorporate strategies to assess the intangible benefits of place. Given that placemaking aims to trigger an emotional connection between the individual and the place, this chapter will argue that a place evaluation process should assess the relationships developed between the stakeholders and place. Starting from the [human and non-human] community values of place, it proposes the Four Dimensions of Place Framework (FDP) as a strategy to identify key relationships that place processes need to support between the individual (self), the community, the natural environment and the human-made environment in which it is located. If place processes manage to enhance relationships across these four dimensions, the place is successful. Lastly, this chapter uses a case study to illustrate the FDP: The Living Pavilion (1-17 May 2019), a temporary event space and placemaking project at the University of Melbourne. By developing the evaluation strategy for this case study, we show how the FDP can be applied to your projects and that it successfully provides a way to verify if the evaluation process is taking a holistic approach to place assessment.Melissa Nursey-Bra

Women, executive careers and local government

Women are underrepresented in senior management ranks in South Australian local government. At the time of this research there were three women Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in this system of government. Women are underrepresented in senior management ranks generally across Australian organisations similar to the situation in comparable Western countries. This research reports on a survey of second and third level managers, both men and women, in South Australian local government in 2015 as to their intentions to apply for promotion at the next available opportunity using the Reasoned Action Approach developed and refined by Aijzen and Fishbein over the last three decades (Fishbein and Aijzen 2010). The research was conducted through the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Housing, Urban and Regional Planning with funding support from the South Australian Local Government Association’s Research and Development Fund. Senior women in SA local government, as well as SA LGPro provided support through access to their mailing lists enabling this survey-based research to be carried out. The results show that men and women have similar beliefs structures when it comes to their intentions to apply for promotion in South Australian local government. This is a significant finding. Importantly, the only significant difference found in this survey was that women have more positive attitudes towards applying for promotion than men notwithstanding the current situation where less than 5% of CEOs in South Australian local government are women. From our literature review earlier qualitative research suggests that men and women hold different attitudes to their work life balance influencing their intentions to apply for promotion and seek a senior management career in their respective organisations and industries. This was not the case in response from managers surveyed in this research. The imbalance in the proportion of women and men in CEO positions in South Australian local government, we suggest, reflects earlier findings of the inherent bias towards men in the selection process for these positions. We have made structural and managerial recommendations, which we believe will address this imbalance overtime. Our recommendations are grouped around actions elected members, senior managers, the SA LGA, SA LGPro and the SA State Government can do to redress this imbalance in the South Australian Local Government workforce.Bradley Jorgensen, John Martin, and Melissa Nursey-Bray, Centre for Housing, Urban and Regional Planning University of Adelaid

Multi-habitat seascape restoration: optimising marine restoration for coastal repair and social benefit

Marine ecosystem restoration is fast becoming the primary tool for repairing the socio-ecological functions and economic benefits of coastal ecosystems. Healthy seascapes are characterized by many interacting species and intermingled habitats (e.g., seagrass, kelp, shellfish, sedimentary) that cocreate ecological functions of substantial socio-economic value. These cocreated functions not only build stability and resilience at seascape scales, but synergistically combine to enhance ecological productivity that is greater than the sum of the individual habitats. Yet, restoration practice is dominated by single-habitat approaches underpinned by single-species monocultures, potentially limiting the range of benefits that restoration can provide. We propose that for ecosystem restoration to meet its full potential in delivering socio-ecological benefits that are resilient to environmental change, restoration practices should plan beyond single-species and single-habitats to a multi-habitat seascape. Where multiple habitats are co-restored, their positive interactions mutually benefit each other to stabilize and even accelerate ecosystem recovery; such as co-restored shellfish and kelp forests on constructed reefs, which combine to stabilize sediment for seagrass recovery. As fisheries scientists and managers, food and social scientists, and ecologists and oceanographers, we describe multi-habitat marine restoration activities that are readily achievable and provide a vision for the diverse socio-ecological, economic, and culture benefits that may emerge from future seascape-level repair.Dominic McAfee, Patrick Reis-Santos, Alice R. Jones, Bronwyn M. Gillanders, Camille Mellin, Ivan Nagelkerken, Melissa J. Nursey-Bray, Ryan Baring, Graziela Miot da Silva, Jason E. Tanner, and Sean D. Connel