Network governance and climate change adaptation: collaborative responses to the Queensland floods

Abstract This research examines ways to build adaptive capacity to climate change, through a case study of organisations that participated in the response to Queensland’s major flood disaster in Queensland in 2010/11. The research applied a network governance approach, including social network analysis and qualitative investigations, to the communities of Rockhampton, Emerald and Brisbane. The study was designed to compare social networks across a range of different geographical; functional; and institutional and regulatory contexts.Primary data were obtained from organisations involved in disaster management and water management, through a telephone survey conducted March – September 2012. The network analyses examined collaboration and communication patterns; changes in the network structure from routine management to flood operations; similarities and differences between the geographic regions, and whether collaboration was correlated with trust. A cultural values analysis was then performed to identify the key values of the network actors in each region. Two workshops were conducted in Rockhampton and Brisbane to disseminate the findings to stakeholders, as well as to obtain feedback through group activities.A total of 63 organisations participated in the study. As the network analyses and visualisations indicated that the Rockhampton and Emerald networks were tightly interconnected, a single ‘Central Queensland’ (CQ) network was used for all subsequent analyses. In both Brisbane and CQ, slightly higher levels of collaboration amongst organisations were recorded during flood periods compared with routine operations; and organisations tended to provide, as well as receive, information and/or resources from their collaborators. Overall, both networks appeared to feature high trust, with only a low level of difficult ties (problematic relationships) being reported.The cultural analyses identified patterns of common values amongst participating organisations. In Brisbane, respondents placed a high value on shared information systems and resources; shared communication and language; as well as on collaboration and flexibility. In the CQ network, there was a greater emphasis on local solutions, community wellbeing and longitudinal issues (such as post-disaster supply chains for recovery). The workshop activities suggested that the current structure of Local Disaster Management Groups was heavily influential on broader network participation; and that defining an ‘effective’ disaster response was a complex issue.This study has demonstrated that a network governance approach can provide new ways of understanding the core elements of adaptive capacity, in areas such as enablers and barriers to adaptation, and translating capacity into adaptation. The key implications for policy and practice include the need for stakeholders to drive adaptation to climate change through collaboration and communication; the need for stakeholders to share a common goal and language; the need for better engagement with community, diversity and Indigenous organisations; the need to establish collaboration outside of disaster events; and the need for network governance systems to play an important role in helping to facilitate climate change adaptation. The areas identified for future research included further methodological development and longitudinal studies of social networks, understanding effective modes of communication, and the influence of the changing nature of regional Australian communities on climate change adaptation.Please cite this report as:Kinnear, S, Patison, K, Mann, J, Malone, E, Ross, V 2013, Network governance and climate change adaptation: collaborative responses to the Queensland floods, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, pp. 113.This research examines ways to build adaptive capacity to climate change, through a case study of organisations that participated in the response to Queensland’s major flood disaster in Queensland in 2010/11. The research applied a network governance approach, including social network analysis and qualitative investigations, to the communities of Rockhampton, Emerald and Brisbane. The study was designed to compare social networks across a range of different geographical; functional; and institutional and regulatory contexts.Primary data were obtained from organisations involved in disaster management and water management, through a telephone survey conducted March – September 2012. The network analyses examined collaboration and communication patterns; changes in the network structure from routine management to flood operations; similarities and differences between the geographic regions, and whether collaboration was correlated with trust. A cultural values analysis was then performed to identify the key values of the network actors in each region. Two workshops were conducted in Rockhampton and Brisbane to disseminate the findings to stakeholders, as well as to obtain feedback through group activities.A total of 63 organisations participated in the study. As the network analyses and visualisations indicated that the Rockhampton and Emerald networks were tightly interconnected, a single ‘Central Queensland’ (CQ) network was used for all subsequent analyses. In both Brisbane and CQ, slightly higher levels of collaboration amongst organisations were recorded during flood periods compared with routine operations; and organisations tended to provide, as well as receive, information and/or resources from their collaborators. Overall, both networks appeared to feature high trust, with only a low level of difficult ties (problematic relationships) being reported.The cultural analyses identified patterns of common values amongst participating organisations. In Brisbane, respondents placed a high value on shared information systems and resources; shared communication and language; as well as on collaboration and flexibility. In the CQ network, there was a greater emphasis on local solutions, community wellbeing and longitudinal issues (such as post-disaster supply chains for recovery). The workshop activities suggested that the current structure of Local Disaster Management Groups was heavily influential on broader network participation; and that defining an ‘effective’ disaster response was a complex issue.This study has demonstrated that a network governance approach can provide new ways of understanding the core elements of adaptive capacity, in areas such as enablers and barriers to adaptation, and translating capacity into adaptation. The key implications for policy and practice include the need for stakeholders to drive adaptation to climate change through collaboration and communication; the need for stakeholders to share a common goal and language; the need for better engagement with community, diversity and Indigenous organisations; the need to establish collaboration outside of disaster events; and the need for network governance systems to play an important role in helping to facilitate climate change adaptation. The areas identified for future research included further methodological development and longitudinal studies of social networks, understanding effective modes of communication, and the influence of the changing nature of regional Australian communities on climate change adaptation

Linkages Between Clean Technology Development and Environmental Health Outcomes in Regional Australia

This paper explores the implications of the development of a cleantech hub on human environmental health outcomes, in the context of a regional centre in Central Queenslan

Communicating national narratives in early 20th Century New Zealand

In 1905, New Zealand was granted dominion status by her ‘mother’ country Great Britain. Almost immediately, the government instituted a national project to persuade the former colony’s citizens that they were no longer just British, or even ‘Tasmanians’ but the proud owners of a new national identity – the New Zealander. As such, they were now ‘one people.’ For the first half of the 20th century, this project spanned a wide range of creative communications including: • school texts books written to explain to children what their new nationality meant, and what was expected of them in return • public relations activities to mediate for the newly independent government, including the early establishment of a press gallery • sponsored journalism and magazine articles in nationally funded publications, such as the New Zealand Railways Magazine • war correspondence to explain the developing conflict in Europe to a remote public • advertising directed not only at an external tourism market, but at an internal identity market • mass observation and film projects, such as Glover’s The Coaster, emulating Grierson’s Empire Marketing Board Film Unit • state arts sponsorship of a national literature project, including funding for the PEN festival, development funding for young writers and stipends and pensions for retiring ones This paper overviews the constituent parts of this project and examines the key figures, analysing their activities using a range of post colonial theories to demonstrate how their work did not constitute a new identity for New Zealand, but the continuation of old colonial one, based on tropes such as: • alienation of the ‘native’ • exploitation and land acquisition • marginalisation of women as an inferior partner in the new ‘settler contract.’ By focusing on the motif of the ‘man alone,’ created by what the paper terms ‘warrior writers,’ such as John Mulgan and Denis Glover, while refusing similar support to Maori artists or women such as Robyn Hyde, the project ultimately floundered and contributed to both social unrest and the re-visioning of New Zealand in bi-cultural terms in the latter part of the 20th century. Building on the interdisciplinary work of academics such as Belich and Hilliard, the paper concludes that the project has implications for adaptive international communications in the 21st century and that in all such future projects, one people must mean all people

Public relations 'HER' STORIES: Heroine or heretic? Revising the influence of Robyn Hyde on national awareness and identity in mid 20th century New Zealand

In our current age of #MeToo, its hard to tell the story of Robin Hyde, aka Iris Wilkinson, without becoming emotional. Hyde’s story is a tale of incredible bravery and, I would argue, one of enormous contribution to the communications sphere of Britain’s last dominion during the long, decolonising moment of the 20th century. Writer, poet, journalist, commentator, educator, PR practitioner, front line war reporter, Iris’s communications scope and ability was astonishing. And yet her story ends in tragedy. This tenacious, imaginative and extraordinary woman would be found dead before her 34th birthday, a victim of gender based harassment and abuse by men from a country that prides itself of its egalitarianism and inclusivity. Iris’s country, my country, is New Zealand – a country of firsts. New Zealand was the first country in the world to allow women the vote in 1893, and as Hilliard notes, the first country to set up both an official government press bench and Public Relations Department under the leadership of Public Relations veteran Leo Fanning. As the country transitioned from colony to dominion to nation during the first half of the 20th century, the task of inculcating a sense of imagined community, of explaining New Zealand’s new economic socialism, and of educating the population about the nation’s responsibilities in an increasingly threatening international sphere, fell heavily on the shoulder’s of New Zealand’s writers and communicators. Many writers stepped up to the challenge – John Mulgan, Denis Glover, Charles Brasch, and Iris Wilkinson. But while Mulgan and Glover would later be feted as New Zealand’s “Warrior Writers”, Wilkinson would be marginalised as belonging to the “Menstrual School” of writing. While Glover’s appalling commercial poem, The Plane, commemorating the launch of Air New Zealand, would be lauded as belonging to the new “masculinist” identity of mid century New Zealand, Hyde’s Public Relations work for the New Zealand Railways Board would be entirely forgotten; instead she would be castigated as a “[hobbyist] and ungifted amateur.” While Mulgan’s dispatches from worn torn Europe would become fundamental to the ‘man alone’ motif taught to New Zealand children as the centrepeice of New Zealand self imagining, Hyde’s reports from the Japanese front would be dismissed as “.… a rather embarrassing record of dangerous living and overstretched ambition” – a surprising epitaph for a woman who walked the length of the trans-Siberian railway alone and became the first war reporter to reach occupied China. This paper seeks to explore why Hyde was so vilified. My research uses the work of James Belich, Raymond Williams and Michel Foucault’s to develop a cultural materialist and postcolonial framework with which to examine New Zealand communications output during this period, arguing that the country’s trajectory of cultural development and identity fell into three distinct phases of crew, core and counterdiscourse interlocking cultures. I argue that the marginalisation of Hyde’s communications output, some of which incorporates extraordinary resonances with modern society, was not down to her being the “lassie” or “giddy gel” that Glover dismisses her as, but due to a government funded narrative lauding masculine endeavour as New Zealand struggled into existence as a self governing, independent nation. Sadly, such an explanation can be small reward for Hyde who, harried by critics of her ‘feminine’ writing and living out her final months in exiled poverty in the UK, complained she had been bullied out of New Zealand by her male peers. Her work focused on the marginalised rather than then masculine, yet she cared just as passionately about New Zealand as Fanning, Mulgan, Brasch or Glover, writing just before her suicide in 1939 from Benzedrine poisoning that… We’ve still got to find our own song. It isn’t God Save the King. It isn’t the Internationale, it isn’t the Marseillaise, it isn’t even darling Tipperary. I don’t think it’s May God Defend New Zealand, although somebody will have to soon… It’s back somewhere in the hills, waiting; or one of these men has it in his throat

Robyn Hyde: Heroine or heretic? Revising the influence of Robyn Hyde on national awareness and identity in mid 20th century New Zealand.

In our current age of #MeToo, its hard to tell the story of journalist and writer Robin Hyde, aka Iris Wilkinson, without becoming emotional. Hyde’s story is a tale of incredible bravery and enormous contribution to New Zealand during the long, decolonising moment of the 20th century. And yet it ends in tragedy. As New Zealand transitioned from colony to nation in an increasingly threatening international sphere, the task of inculcating a sense of imagined community fell heavily on the shoulders of its writers, eg John Mulgan, Denis Glover and Iris Wilkinson. But while Glover was lauded for launching the new “masculinist” identity of midcentury New Zealand, Wilkinson was marginalised as belonging to the “Menstrual School” of writing. While Mulgan’s dispatches from worn torn Europe would become fundamental to national self-imagining, Hyde’s reports from the Japanese front would be dismissed as “.… a rather embarrassing record of dangerous living and overstretched ambition.” Beaten by Japanese soldiers and harried by critics of her ‘feminine’ writing, Hyde lived out her final months in exiled poverty in the UK, complaining she had been bullied out of New Zealand by her male peers before taking an overdose of Benzedrine in 1939. This paper seeks to reposition her work as central to the development of New Zealand’s media environment. It argues her marginalisation was due to a government funded narrative that lauded exclusively masculine endeavour as New Zealand struggled into existence as an independent nation

A re-balancing act: Cultural pioneering in New Zealand, 1905 to 1969

Reeling in the aftermath of the world’s first live-streamed mass murder of Muslims in Christchurch this March, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave utterance to the grief stricken shock of New Zealanders globally with the unifying mantra ‘We Are One.’ Ironically, the phrase echoes the speech given in 1840 by British Imperial Navy Officer and New Zealand’s first Governor, William Hobson, who announced to the assembled Maori chiefs ‘He Iwi tahi tatou’ as they signed the infamous Treaty of Waitangi. From thenceforth, ‘we are one people.’ But how do you build a just society based on the confiscation of land and the marginalisation and murder of indigenous Maori? If, as in New Zealand, you create a ‘social contract’ based on equality where some are more equal than others, then what are the long-term consequences? Modern New Zealand prides itself on its justice and inclusivity, and yet as my paper will explore, the process of nation building, sponsored throughout the 20th century by the New Zealand state, has privileged the narrative of the white Pakeha male, the war hero, the valiant farmer, the ‘tough’ rugby player, over every other narrative. The central motif of the white ‘man alone’ has become the cornerstone of New Zealand self-imagining, excluding the stories of women, Maori and Asian New Zealanders. My research uses the work of James Belich, Raymond Williams and Michel Foucault’s to develop a cultural materialist and postcolonial framework with which to examine the development of New Zealand culture during this period of nation building, arguing that the country’s trajectory of cultural development and identity fell into three distinct phases of crew, core and counterdiscourse interlocking cultures. I argue that the marginalisation of Maori, Asian and female New Zealanders was due to a government-funded narrative lauding 20th century masculine endeavour as New Zealand struggled into existence as a self-governing, independent nation. Despite attempts by feminists and the Maori to rebalance conceptions of New Zealand identity, the impact of this nation-building project has had far-reaching consequences. As recent events show, the ‘social contract’ of peace, equality and prosperity in New Zealand has failed. The country has struggled to become bi-cultural, and as the complaints of generations of Maori are now echoed again in the anguished appeals of New Zealand Muslims, it’s clear the country is struggling to become multi-cultural too. The state sponsored white male narrative of crew culture has created an unjust society where not even young men can live up to the myth of the ‘man alone.’ New Zealand now has one of the highest young male suicide rates in the developed world and, as tragically evidenced in Christchurch, disaffected young, white males are able to harbour and espouse racism and the doctrine of white supremacy unchallenged. Back in 1840, Maori Chief Hone Heke challenged William Hobson. At the Waitangi signing ceremony he corrected the Governor, telling him ‘He Iwi Kotahi tatou,’ meaning all of us, including Hobson as the white, male representative of imperial power, are one, are equal. Nearly 180 years later, as the Christchurch massacres demonstrate, Hone Heke’s vision of a just society in New Zealand is still unrealized