2017 Scientific Consensus Statement: land use impacts on the Great Barrier Reef water quality and ecosystem condition. Chapter 4: management options and their effectiveness

This chapter seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What are the values of the Great Barrier Reef? 2. How effective are better agricultural practices in improving water quality? 3. How can we improve the uptake of better agricultural practices? 4. What water quality improvement can non-agricultural land uses contribute? 5. How can Great Barrier Reef water quality improvement programs be improved? Each section summarises the currently available peer reviewed literature and comments on implications for management and research gaps. This chapter has a wider scope than previous Scientific Consensus Statements, including, for the first time, the social and governance dimensions of management and the management of non-agricultural land uses. These new sections are constrained by a lack of Great Barrier Reef–specific data and information. The relevance of information from other locations must be carefully considered. In comparison, the agricultural practice change and economics sections provide an update on material compiled as part of the 2013 Scientific Consensus Statement. This report has been confined to peer reviewed literature, which is generally published in books and journals or major reports. There is additional evidence in grey literature, such as project and program reports, that has not been included here. Each section of this chapter has been compiled by a writing team and then revised following a series of review processes

Adaptation pathways and opportunities for Indigenous peoples

[Extract] The culture, history and geography of Indigenous peoples in the Wet Tropics NRM cluster region underpin both high resilience and high vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. This chapter addresses the issues and options for generating adaptation pathways and opportunities that take account of this context, with some Case Examples (Boxes 6.1–6.4) from the Wet Tropics cluster region. We discuss how to support Indigenous knowledge and culture in adaptation, and the conditions, methods and tools that enable these to be integrated into policy, land-use and land management decisions. We synthesise findings about how to simultaneously build desirable resilience and reduce vulnerability by addressing barriers to adaptation, and monitor outcomes. We conclude with some international and Australian Case Examples

Research priorities for Indigenous protected Areas (IPAs) across northern Australia

[Extract] Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) make up more than 45 per cent of Australia's National Reserve System, protecting biodiversity, ecosystem services, cultural and community values. They receive a high level of support from the Australian Government. Since 1998 72 IPAs have been established, covering more than 64 million hectares of both land and sea country across Australia. \ud \ud This project aims to provide an assessment of the research priorities for IPAs in northern Australia. In collaboration with IPA managers, government, non-government and research stakeholders across the north of Australia, the project team will undertake literature reviews, hold workshops and conduct interviews. This information will be used to develop recommendations about the most important IPA research for support through the NESP Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub

Chapter 3: Living and built environment of the Mitchell catchment

Chapter 3 discusses a wide range of considerations relating to the living component of the Mitchell catchment and the environments that support these components, the people who live in the catchment or have strong ties to it, the perspectives of investors, the existing transport, power and water infrastructure and the legal, policy and regulatory environment relating to the development of land and water. This chapter also examines the values, rights, interests, and development objectives of Indigenous people

Key messages extracted from the Synthesis of Climate Change Issues and Impacts in the Wet Tropics NRM Cluster Region

This "Key messages" document accompanies the Hilbert et al. (2014) report Synthesis of climate change issues and impacts in the Wet Tropics Cluster NRM region (hereafter 'Science Synthesis report'). The Science Synthesis report was drafted in response to specific information needs articulated by the Regional Natural Resource Management (NRM) groups in the Wet Tropics Cluster region1. The Science synthesis report is framed by the topics and issues defined by the NRM groups, reflecting their planning processes and priorities as well as the characteristics of their regional communities. The report is based on the synthesis of current knowledge and expert opinion relevant to the topics and issues identified by NRM groups. This document presents the Topics and Key messages extracted from each chapter of the Science Synthesis report

Climate change issues and impacts in the Wet Tropics NRM cluster region

{Extract] Rationale and scope: Stream 2 of the Regional NRM Planning for Climate Change Fund supports the project "Knowledge to manage land and sea: A framework for the future" run by a consortium of scientists from James Cook University (JCU) and CSIRO. This report is the first major product of the consortium project. It is not an in-depth review of the literature that already exists for some NRM sectors. Rather, it is syntheses of current knowledge through expert opinion about the threats and potential impacts of climate change in the Wet Tropics Cluster (WTC) region across all sectors. This report focuses on four geographically distinct NRM regions grouped in the WTC: Mackay-Whitsunday, Wet Tropics, Cape York, and the Torres Strait regions, which are managed by Reef Catchments NRM, Terrain NRM, Cape York NRM, and the Torres Strait Regional Authority respectively. The report is framed by the specific topics and issues defined by the NRM groups in the WTC region, reflecting their planning processes and priorities of these groups as well as the characteristics of their regional communities. The focus of this report is on possible impacts and threats, not adaptation options that will be discussed in a future report. Chapter 9 discusses the science of adaptation in a general sense and mitigation opportunities relating to carbon storage are discussed in a section of Chapter 6. The report presents key messages around each topic and issue in bold type in each chapter. Key messages for NRM groups are also summarised at the beginning of each chapter. These key messages represent our syntheses of expected threats and impacts based on expert opinion but also substantiated by published sources. Each key message is followed by a brief explanation of the underlying scientific support with a small number of key citations to the relevant literature. In most cases there is a fair amount of uncertainty associated with the key messages and they should be understood as best estimates based on expert opinion. Much of the uncertainty about potential impacts is due to the climate model uncertainty about changes in rainfall amount and timing that are critical variables that will influence many sectors in the WTC region. Another source of uncertainty for some topics and issues is limited or lack of direct research on climate change impacts across several of the key NRM sectors in the WTC region. The main conclusions and summaries for each synthesis chapter (by NRM sector) are presented below with a final chapter on adaptation science