Assessment of the Potential Changes in Wellbeing of Key Interest Groups in the Fitzroy River Catchment Under alternative Development Scenarios: scenario team's workshop 3, Broome, Western Australia, 15–16 October
This report presents the preliminary results of a workshop held on 15 and 16 October 2019 in Broome, aiming to develop a way to identify and assess the likely positive and negative effects of different future development scenarios on the wellbeing of key interest groups in the Fitzroy River catchment. Participants discussed how several categories of wellbeing are currently satisfied in the Fitzroy catchment and then assessed a set of future scenarios against those categories. Participants’ ratings followed a similar pattern, with scenarios 1A, 1B and 2 (strong policies) being rated positively by the majority of participants, and scenarios 3 and 4 (weak policies) being rated mostly negatively. The common pattern reflects a recurrent theme in participants’ comments regarding the need for good governance, strong policies, and regulation of economic activities so that residents can benefit from such new development initiatives. Conversely, in weak policy scenarios, there could be negative social and environmental impacts that would affect residents and the eventual economic benefits could be reaped by fewer locals, or by non-residents (e.g. corporations and temporary workers)
