Helen Ross

The study of human values in understanding and managing social-ecological systems

The study of cognition can provide key insights into the social dimension of coupled social-ecological systems. Values are a fundamental aspect of cognition, which have largely been neglected within the social-ecological systems literature. Values represent the deeply held, emotional aspects of people’s cognition and can complement the use of other cognitive constructs, such as knowledge and mental models, which have so far been better represented in this area of study. We provide a review of the different conceptualizations of values that are relevant to the study of human-environment interactions: held, assigned, and relational values. We discuss the important contribution values research can make toward understanding how social-ecological systems function and to improving the management of these systems in a practical sense. In recognizing that values are often poorly defined within the social-ecological systems literature, as in other fields, we aim to guide researchers and practitioners in ensuring clarity when using the term in their research. This can support constructive dialogue and collaboration among researchers who engage in values research to build knowledge of the role and function of values, and hence cognition more broadly, within a social-ecological systems context.

Natural disasters and community resilience

Recently, there has been cause for the editors to remark on and express sympathies about the impact of natural disasters, but this season has been the most extraordinary of our lifetimes. We have been part of floods in central Queensland, followed by South-East Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania, a cyclonic-impact wind storm in Western Australia’s wheatbelt, cyclone Yasi in Far North Queensland, then fires just outside Perth. As we go to press, a severe earthquake the second in six months has occurred near Christchurch, New Zealand; the region featured in one of the articles in this issue. Some of the editorial team from both Australia and New Zealand, with our colleagues, have been at the centres of these events. We have experienced alarming evacuations, witnessed property damage, participated in the clean-ups, provided moral support, and been part of the immense expression of ‘social capital’ and selforganisation that emerged spontaneously in the public responses in both countries. Throughout all of the Australian events, the emergency services, the armed forces, leaders at all levels of government, and the media have been impressive in their preparation, responses and communication. Both countries are surely experiencing the benefits of decades of good emergency management planning, enhanced by evaluation of response to recent natural disasters here and elsewhere. We empathise with the dilemmas faced by emergency response teams in determining priorities. Unfortunately, some individuals did not take early flood and cyclone warnings seriously, so property loss was possibly higher than necessary. Others may not have had the capacity to respond fully. During these events, clean-up and recovery, there has been much talk of resilience. Academics and practitioners are in the early stages of identifying what this involves in a disaster management context and more generally. Resilient communities and resilient biophysical systems are clearly intertwined, as Indigenous Australians recognise in their maxim ‘healthy country, healthy people’. Most of the research on social-ecological systems, however, has focused on natural and farming landscapes, with very little attention to the built environment of settlements and infrastructure. Physical resilience to disasters must be closely related to the placement and design of buildings and infrastructure to tolerate and be repaired quickly after damaging events. Thus, in rebuilding, we have the opportunity to learn how to improve both urban and rural landscape planning to reduce the vulnerability of housing and key infrastructure to probable, and possibly increasingly frequent, events. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2011, 1 5

Crises and institutional change: emergence of cross-border water governance in Lake Eyre Basin, Australia

ABSTRACT Managing large river basins for sustainability is a contentious social–ecological arena challenging traditional scientific and rational planning approaches to water and related natural resources governance. “Crises” are inevitable but double-edged: creating threats and uncertainties, but also new opportunities to shape trajectories of change and avoid adverse consequences. A case study of the large remote cross-border Lake Eyre Basin (LEB), in arid central Australia, shows how over two decades a series of social–ecological and political–administrative “crises” emerged, posing significant environmental and social dilemmas for water governance, while also opening up opportunities for institutional change. This article examines the role of crises in the emergence and evolution of water governance in the LEB, how they were perceived, the challenges and opportunities posed, social and institutional responses, and governance capacity outcomes. Finally, it reflects on emergent crises as opportunities for more systemic and adaptive change in large river basins.

Carbon policy: a leadership disjunct

Australia remains a long way from achieving political consensus as to the need for, and appropriate action, to mitigate climate change. The last quarter has seen strident public debate about the proposed carbon tax, although there appears to be a shift towards haggling about price and impact on community. With accusations of moneyraising by government, the debate continues to neglect the designed role of a carbon tax as a market-based instrument to encourage industry and household movement away from carbon dependence. The function of a tax in offering incentive for new energy sources, and industries in their supply chains, suffers from a lack of an integrated policy approach. After a quiet start, the newly formed Climate Commission is gaining more prominence, disseminating information about scientific consensus on the risks associated with climate change and need for action. What remains poorly developed is the appropriate action in response to ‘committed warming’ (see Friedlingstein & Solomon 2005). This is reflected in Professor Ross Garnaut’s (2011) final in his series of reports to all levels of government on impacts of climate change on the Australian economy. It includes a 10-year plan for carbon pricing, and associated governance arrangements. Garnaut’s main review (2008) argued that it was in Australia’s economic and other interests to contribute to a global climate change mitigation effort. His 2011 update (again) finds that market approaches are the best way of transitioning successfully to a low-carbon economy, and that this is possible while maintaining prosperity. Garnaut (2011) argues that for successful climate change mitigation and adaptation, Australia requires an economy that is productive and flexible, with markets that function well, allowing a capability to absorb shocks. It also needs better information on the projected impacts of climate change on regions and different types of activity, so that well-informed participants can anticipate threats and outcomes, and take early adaptive action. However, adaptation policy leadership, which is necessarily integrated, multi-jurisdictional, multi-institutional, industry, community and household directed, remains a disjuncted and sporadic work in progress. Perhaps impetus for a more integrative and holistic climate change policy framework may come from the findings of a survey of over 3000 respondents by Reser et al. (2011). The data, collected in mid 2010, contradict widespread belief. Fewer than six per cent of the public are climate-change sceptics or strong disbelievers in climate change or human causation. Nearly 75 per cent believed climate change was occurring, and of these, 90 per cent believed that it was human-induced, and over half believed they were already experiencing the effects. Eighty-eight per cent were concerned; three-quarters of these strongly so. Results from a comparable survey in Australasian Journal of Environmental Management Vol. 18, No. 2, June 2011, 69 72

Converging disciplinary understandings of social aspects of resilience

Resilience thinking has developed separately in the bodies of literature on social-ecological systems, and that published principally within developmental psychology and mental health on the resilience of individuals. This paper explores what these bodies of literature might learn from the other towards a more integrated and enriched understanding of both social-ecological systems and social resilience. The psychology-based literature recognises a strong set of factors that enhance the strengths of individuals and communities, but lacks a sophisticated integration of the physical environmental context. The social-ecological systems literature offers an excellent foundation in complex adaptive systems, but tends to superimpose ecological concepts of system function onto the human domain, and needs to include an array of core social science concepts that are important to a full understanding of social-ecological systems. An example on north eastern Australia suggests how a converged understanding of social resilience could assist managers to acknowledge, enhance and foster social resilience in linked social-ecological systems.

Climate change perceptions and adaptations of smallholder farmers in Eastern Kenya

Several studies have indicated the importance of understanding farmers’ perceptions of risks associated with climate change, the adaptation strategies they employ and factors that affect adaptive capacity. This study aimed to understand smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change, adaptation strategies and adaptive capacity in the semiarid Matungulu Sub-County, Eastern Kenya. A participatory approach, using three climate roundtables, was conducted to enhance community participation and understanding of climate change issues. The study showed that farmers’ perceptions concerning climate change are influenced by past experiences of weather extremes that have affected production levels and farm incomes. The farmers have made strategic responses to manage risks posed by climate change. However, they face several challenges in adaptation such as inadequate technical knowledge, low financial resources and inadequate land size. Further, the study showed that climate roundtables is a successful participatory approach that can give effective insights for smallholder farmers to understand agricultural vulnerability, climate change and their adaptation strategies.

Responding to Paris COP 21

Twenty years after the first United Nations Climate Change Conference and after four years negotiation, on 12 December 2015, the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed on a fundamentally new approach. Gone is the differentiation between developed and developing countries, replaced by a framework that commits all countries to apply their best efforts to address causes of climate change and to respond to its impacts. For the first time, all parties are required to report on their emissions and mitigation actions for international review (see C2ES 2015 for COP21 outcomes). The target is to keep temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak ‘as soon as possible’ and to achieve overall carbon neutrality ‘in the second half of the century’. These remain formidable technical and political challenges. The provisions of the agreement send a clear message: the international community intends to end its reliance on fossil fuels within several generations. This signals the need for a significant redefining of Australasian policy on climate change, or at least the accompanying rhetoric, which must remove any hint of denial that has pervaded political leader’s comments in recent years, and acted as an excuse for a lack of leadership and coordinated action (Ross & Carter 2011, 2012). Climate change can no longer be considered just a possibility, significant global warming and its systemic consequences are occurring, greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic origins are a significant factor. Global impacts will occur, with developing economies most at risk economically, environmentally and socially. The Australian government’s response has been to pledge ratification of the second commitment to the Kyoto protocol, double clean technology R&D by 2020, and additional climate finance for vulnerable countries, but from within the already reduced aid budget. In contrast, New Zealand is calling for fossil fuel subsidies to be phased out, and have set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels, by 2030. This is a significant increase on the current target of 5 per cent below 1990 emission levels by 2020. Given that half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the agriculture sector, the challenge is to develop cost-effective technologies to reduce agricultural emissions. The immediate challenge for both governments is not to filibuster targets on the international stage, but to convert intentions to successful domestic policy that provides global leadership. Close behind is the need to assist our Asia-Pacific neighbours in responding to climate change impacts, including preparing to welcome climate refugees. However, the most successful climate change adaptation strategy in this case is likely to be continuing with assistance to improve community health, education standards and the status of women towards improved economies and fostering localised self-help.

Editorial: tyrannies of effective monitoring and evaluation

Learning by doing is an integral part of the human condition. Perhaps starting in childhood as an innate response to environmental conditions, trial and error learning is increasingly supplemented by other modes of learning as the individual (or institution) matures. Supplementation can become replacement if societal or institutional conventional thinking predominates over reflection when responding to changing circumstances. There are efficiencies in reacting to change in this way, but not necessarily increased efficacy, especially where uncertainty is high and causality is poorly understood. High uncertainty and poorly understood causality have underpinned and driven the adoption of an adaptive management approach to natural resource management, climate change and environmental management generally, and any area where management of people is involved. Adaptive management depends on having time to reflect on the results of actions, supported by monitoring and evaluation of change in condition. However, in environmental management this central requirement appears to be mis-focused, given low priority and poorly executed. The result is that learning is ad hoc and capricious, relying on chance or the astuteness of individual managers, rather than being a process of accumulating knowledge from experience that is institutionally entrenched as part of doing business. Effective use of monitoring and evaluation to underpin adaptive management is impeded by the lingering oppression of normative responses, a legacy of the past. We identify seven of these that need to be addressed if truly learning institutions are to emerge and an adaptive approach to environmental management is to be achieved.

Wildlife, habitat and the city

It is easy to disregard or forget that there is one ecology (see Shepard 1969). People move from their preferred habitat to exploit, actively or passively, the resources in others, just as all fauna do. The human proclivity for classification and defined boundaries means that habitat is often represented and conceptualised as static and inviolate. This overlooks the point that habitat is shared by the Earth’s denizens spatially and temporally, and that boundaries are probabilistic representations of where species or species assemblages might usually be found. Nowhere is this more evident than in much thinking about cities: the artefact of human ingenuity to transform habitat to suit its purposes. In this process, wildlife is displaced, although some species are advantaged, and may share our created spaces permanently while many others are temporary visitors. Wildlife in urban areas can be perceived as a delight, a pest, or simply ignored to blend unseen into our created ecological system. With our creativity and the one ecology, we have the capacity to choose our co-tenants and visitors, and to shun the unwelcomed. Without thought about ecological processes, we also have the ability to discriminate unwittingly against species with which we might wish to share our created spaces. Ives et al. (2016) report 500 threatened and protected species living within Australian cities, with 51 species having more than 30 per cent of the area they occupy occurring in cities or towns. Perhaps efforts to develop linking corridors between protected areas and encouraging the growing of native plants is ‘bearing fruit’, nectar, seeds and habitat for sustainable wildlife populations. For New Zealand, Claire Freemen and colleagues point out that gardens form the major part of urban greenspace, yet the relationship between householders and garden wildlife, and the contribution of gardens to native biodiversity and conservation is poorly understood (see Barratt et al. 2015; Freeman et al. 2012; van Heezik et al. 2012, 2013). This team highlights the common occurrence in gardens of the iconic tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) and New Zealand fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa), with distinctive taxa such as skinks, stick insects and beetles amid native plant species. Specific efforts have been made to enhance wildlife habitat in urban settings, including gardens. Some local governments are proactive in encouraging the urban use of native plants, creating urban conservation parks and well-vegetated recreation parks, planning to link urban parklands, providing advice on the threat of cats to wildlife and how to live with wildlife (e.g. possums) that can become troublesome. However, this is countered by growing populations and rates of urbanisation, the clearing of land for new housing, with roads and other infrastructure to serve them. Urban renewal is inevitably associated with greater density of housing and residents, and new estates permit a larger house footprint with loss of the great Australasian backyard for cricket, gardens and possibly wildlife habitat. While concern is definitely warranted for the encroachment of the urban footprint into rural landscapes, local governments need soundly based advice on what they can do to enhance urban wildlife populations. This would include how to manage the interfaces between parks and private land to create larger refuges, including the role of corridors, and how urban plan-

The government–non-government dance: collective action in New Zealand

Resource scarcity, rapid change, complexity and interconnectedness are obvious current challenges and seem certain to be key policy drivers in the future. In a world of changing contexts, resource-management institutions need to be able to adapt to emergent situations and challenges, many of which may be invisible to system designers. In mixed economies such as Australia and New Zealand, the private sector generates the largest proportion of GDP, and government, at various levels, the second largest. The balance between those two sectors is influenced by government stances on responsibility for delivery of the myriad of goods and services provided in any society. The management of natural resources and environmental assets is but one area where governments play major roles alongside the private sector, collaborative organisations, and ‘not for profits’. Within this context, government agencies typically diagnose problems, develop policy, prescribe ‘solutions’ and often deliver on-ground services. Fisheries management, freshwater management, species and habitat conservation are some key areas where this occurs. The decision to operate in these areas is partially predicated on notions that weak property rights, inadequate information, risk and uncertainty, and market failure, all make life too difficult for the private sector to deliver socially acceptable outcomes. However, reliance on government to deliver superior outcomes is not the only way, and governments can move towards designing and supporting an environment where other sectors self-organise in response to emergent issues, new opportunities, and new challenges. Self-organised activity is far from new, but it has certainly received greater recognition following the joint award of the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics to Elinor Ostrom (2009). A substantial body of research indicates that collaborative action can have advantages over individual action; and regulated action under legislation, policies and plans. Vernon Smith (2002) distinguishes between ‘constructivist’ and ecological rationality. The former, including legislation from parliament, national environmental statements, regional and district plans, involves the application of logic and models, working consciously towards an explicit goal. In contrast, ecological rationality focuses on the emergent order that can arise from human behaviour, despite the lack of any overarching design. Collaborative action may commence from constructivist premises but it allows opportunity for pragmatic action and its outcomes can be less predictable. Vernon Smith argues that emergent order, based on trial and error and survival, has some attractive features, including fostering of institutions that are adaptable, have the ability to accommodate trade-offs, and rely upon reciprocity, trust, and Australasian Journal of Environmental Management Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2011, 135 138