Prioritising investment to enhance biodiversity in an agricultural landscape

The removal, alteration and fragmentation of habitat are key threats to the biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems. Investment to protect biodiversity assets (e.g. restoration of native vegetation) in dominantly agricultural landscapes usually results in a loss of agricultural production. This can be a significant cost that is often overlooked or poorly addressed in analyses to prioritise such investments. Accounting for this trade-off is important for more successful, realistically feasible and cost-effective biodiversity conservation. We developed a spatially explicit bio-economic optimisation model that simulates the effect of conservation effort on the diversity of woodland-dependent birds in the Avoca catchment (330 thousand ha) in North-Central Victoria. The model minimises opportunity cost of agricultural production and cost of biodiversity conservation effort on a catchment level subject to achieving different levels of biodiversity outcome. We identify the locations and spatial arrangement of conservation efforts that offers the best value for money.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Optimising the spatial pattern of landscape revegetation

The spatial pattern of landscape reconstruction makes a substantial difference to environmental outcomes. We develop a spatially explicit bio-economic model that optimises the reconstruction of a heavily cleared landscape through revegetation. The model determines the spatial priorities for revegetation that minimises economic costs subject to achieving particular improvements in habitat for 29 woodland-dependent bird species. The study focuses on the Avoca catchment (330 thousand ha) in North-Central Victoria. Our model incorporates spatial pattern and heterogeneity of existing and reconstructed vegetation types. The revegetation priorities are identified as being: sites in the vicinity of existing remnants, riparian areas, and parts of the landscape with diverse land uses and vegetation types. Optimal reconstruction design is affected by opportunity costs due to the loss of agricultural production and the costs of revegetation. 1 Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, 6009 2 Department of Primary Industries, Rutherglen, RMB 1145 Chiltern Valley Rd, Rutherglen, Victoria, 3685 3 North Central Catchment Management Authority, PO Box 18, Huntly, Victoria, 3551landscape reconstruction, biodiversity, optimisation, habitat, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Q57,

Practical and Theoretical Underpinnings of INFFER (Investment Framework For Environmental Resources)

INFFER (Investment Framework for Environmental Resources) was developed to help investors of public funds to improve the delivery of outcomes from environmental programs. It assists environmental managers to design projects, to select delivery mechanisms, and to rank competing projects on the basis of benefits and costs. The design of INFFER and the activities of the INFFER projects are based on extensive experience of working with environmental managers and policy makers. This experience has highlighted a number of important practical lessons, that have strongly influenced the design and implementation of INFFER. These lessons include the need for simplicity, training and support of users, trusting relationships with users, transparency, flexibility, compatibility with the needs and contexts of users, and supportive institutional arrangements. In additions, the developers have paid close attention to the need for processes that are theoretically rigorous, resulting in a tool that deals appropriately and consistently with projects for different assets types, of different scales and durations, consistent with Benefit: Cost Analysis. The paper outlines theoretical considerations underpinning the way that INFFER deals with asset valuation, time lags, uncertainty, and the design of the metric used to rank projects.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Lessons from implementing INFFER with regional catchment management organisations

Investment in natural resource management (NRM) by regional organisations in Australia has been widely criticised for failing to achieve substantial environmental outcomes. The Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER) is a tool for developing and prioritising projects to address environmental issues such as water quality and biodiversity decline, environmental pest impacts and land degradation. It aims to achieve the most valuable environmental outcomes with the available resources. During 2008 and 2009 INFFER has been implemented with a number of catchment management organisations (CMOs) throughout Australia. In this paper, we report on lessons from and implications of this experience. Data on implementation were collected in formal and informal ways from staff of organisations that were using INFFER and state agencies, including: an on-line survey, benchmarking questions at training workshops, a formal on-going monitoring and evaluation process tracking the use of INFFER by CMOs, and comments made in correspondence and informal feedback to the INFFER team. In this paper we describe issues that arise when implementing INFFER with regions and organisations, and how the INFFER team has attempted to address these. Key issues include a desire to consider the community as an asset and emphasise capacity building, a rejection of the need for targeted investment, and various difficulties associated with specific aspects of the Framework. Existing institutional arrangements, and the legacy of past institutional arrangements, remain serious barriers to the adoption of methods to improve environmental outcomes from NRM investment. A lack of rigour in investment planning has become accepted as the norm, and resistance to processes to improve rigour is common. However, many CMOs want to achieve better environmental outcomes with their limited funds, and we report on our efforts to work with them to achieve this by using INFFER.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Changing the direction of environmental investment in Australia: Learnings from implementing INFFER

Investment in natural resource management (NRM) by regional organisations in Australia has been widely criticised for failing to achieve substantial environmental outcomes. The Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER) is a tool for developing and prioritising projects to address environmental issues such as water quality, biodiversity decline, environmental pest impacts and land degradation. INFFER is an asset-based, targeted, and outcome-focussed approach to environmental investment, and as such is a very different and more rigorous approach to prioritising possible environmental projects than used previously by most catchment management organisations (CMOs) in Australia. From 2008 to 2010 INFFER has been trialled with CMOs. Evaluation and benchmarking data obtained at 2-day INFFER training sessions with seven CMOs in three eastern Australia states are reported. Before commencing to use INFFER, CMO staff are generally confident about the current decision-making processes for environmental investment used within their organisation. In some cases, this initial perception challenges their acceptance of a new approach to investment decisionmaking. Key issues when implementing INFFER include concerns about changing the direction of CMO investment, concerns about compatibility with funder requirements, and various issues associated with specific aspects of the Framework. Perceived complexity of INFFER, existing institutional arrangements, and the legacy of past institutional arrangements remain serious barriers to the adoption of methods to improve environmental outcomes from NRM investment. Despite these difficulties INFFER is being used by a number of CMOs. However, it is likely that widespread adoption of INFFER, or indeed any other transparent and robust process, will only occur with greater requirement from governments for environmental decision making by regional NRM bodies that is more focused on outcomes and cost-effectiveness.NRM investment planning, NRM investment prioritisation, regional catchment management organisations, NRM policy, environmental planning, environmental prioritisation, environmental policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q50, Q58,

Assessing the potential of INFFER to improve management of agro-environmental assets in Tuscany

In the European Union, as in many parts of the world, there is increasing pressure to demonstrate that environmental projects achieve expected outcomes and are cost-effective. This paper reports on a trial application of an environmental investment framework, the Investment Framework for Environmental Resource (INFFER). The framework, based on benefit:cost analysis principles, was applied to agro-environmental assets in the Mugello and Valdisieve areas of northern Tuscany, Italy. Farmers, environmental and institutional representatives and technical experts took part in the process of identifying agro-environmental assets in the region. A total of 26 assets were identified, and of these, only 2 (the last remaining population of Cistus laurfolius within the natural protected area of local interest ( Area Naturale Protetta di Interesse Locale , ANPIL) of Santa Brigida, and the Sant' Antonio forest were selected as having reasonable prospects of progressing to cost-effective projects (benefit:cost ratio>1). Detailed projects were developed for both assets and found to be cost-effective based on available information. While the mindset of being clear about identifying and valuing natural assets was a new concept to participants, overall the process worked well. The factors considered in calculating a benefit:cost ratio, including technical feasibility, adoption and compliance factors, socio-political risks, costs and the likelihood of obtaining long-term funding to maintain project benefits, were all relevant in Tuscany and required the knowledge of local experts. Overall, INFFER appears relevant and useful in an EU context, and, in particular, is highly compatible with the EU Natura 2000 nature and biodiversity policy

Both Constitutive and Infection‐Responsive Secondary Metabolites Linked to Resistance against Austropuccinia psidii (Myrtle Rust) in Melaleuca quinquenervia

Austropuccinia psidii is a fungal plant pathogen that infects species within the Myrtaceae, causing the disease myrtle rust. Myrtle rust is causing declines in populations within natural and managed ecosystems and is expected to result in species extinctions. Despite this, variation in response to A. psidii exist within some species, from complete susceptibility to resistance that prevents or limits infection by the pathogen. Untargeted metabolomics using Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography with Ion Mobility followed by analysis using MetaboAnalyst 3.0, was used to ex-plore the chemical defence profiles of resistant, hypersensitive and susceptible phenotypes within Melaleuca quinquenervia during the early stages of A. psidii infection. We were able to identify three separate pools of secondary metabolites: (i) metabolites classified structurally as flavonoids that were naturally higher in the leaves of resistant individuals prior to infection, (ii) organoheterocyclic and carbohydrate‐related metabolites that varied with the level of host resistance post‐infection, and (iii) metabolites from the terpenoid pathways that were responsive to disease progression re-gardless of resistance phenotype suggesting that these play a minimal role in disease resistance during the early stages of colonization of this species. Based on the classes of these secondary me-tabolites, our results provide an improved understanding of key pathways that could be linked more generally to rust resistance with particular application within Melaleuca. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Supporting social prescribing in primary care by linking people to local assets: A realist review

© 2020 The Author(s). Background: Social prescribing is a way of addressing the 'non-medical' needs (e.g. loneliness, debt, housing problems) that can affect people's health and well-being. Connector schemes (e.g. delivered by care navigators or link workers) have become a key component to social prescribing's delivery. Those in this role support patients by either (a) signposting them to relevant local assets (e.g. groups, organisations, charities, activities, events) or (b) taking time to assist them in identifying and prioritising their 'non-medical' needs and connecting them to relevant local assets. To understand how such connector schemes work, for whom, why and in what circumstances, we conducted a realist review. Method: A search of electronic databases was supplemented with Google alerts and reference checking to locate grey literature. In addition, we sent a Freedom of Information request to all Clinical Commissioning Groups in England to identify any further evaluations of social prescribing connector schemes. Included studies were from the UK and focused on connector schemes for adult patients (18+ years) related to primary care. Results: Our searches resulted in 118 included documents, from which data were extracted to produce context-mechanism-outcome configurations (CMOCs). These CMOCs underpinned our emerging programme theory that centred on the essential role of 'buy-in' and connections. This was refined further by turning to existing theories on (a) social capital and (b) patient activation. Conclusion: Our realist review highlights how connector roles, especially link workers, represent a vehicle for accruing social capital (e.g. trust, sense of belonging, practical support). We propose that this then gives patients the confidence, motivation, connections, knowledge and skills to manage their own well-being, thereby reducing their reliance on GPs. We also emphasise within the programme theory situations that could result in unintended consequences (e.g. increased demand on GPs)