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The frequency and severity of shocks to food systems is accelerating globally, exemplified by the current COVID-19 outbreak. In low- and middle-income countries, the impacts have exacerbated existing food system vulnerabilities and poverty. Governments and donors must respond quickly, but few tools are available that identify interventions to build food system resilience, or emerging opportunities for transformation. In this paper we reflect on the application of a systems-based rapid assessment which we applied across 11 Indo-Pacific countries in May-July 2020. Our approach was shaped by three design parameters: the integration of key informants' perspectives engaged remotely within the countries, applicability to diverse food systems and COVID-19 experiences across the region, and the consideration of food systems as complex systems. For the rapid assessment we adopted an analytical framework proposed by Allen and Prosperi (2016). To include a development lens, we added the analysis of vulnerable groups and their exposure, impacts, recovery potential and resilience, and pro-poor interventions. We concluded that the framework and approach facilitated integration and triangulation of disparate knowledge types and data to identify priority interventions and was sufficiently flexible to be applied across food systems, at both national, sub-national and commodity scales. The step-wise method was simple and enabled structured inquiry and reporting. Although the systems concepts appeared more easily transferrable to key informants in some countries than others, potentially transformational interventions were identified, and also some risks of maladaptation. We present a refined framework that emphasises analysis of political, economic and institutional drivers of exposure and vulnerability, the constraints that they pose for building recovery potential and resilience, and trade-offs amongst winners and losers inherent in proposed interventions.

This article describes the five major development phases of Landcare in Australia – from its ‘childhood phase’ beginnings in the mid-1980s to its current day ‘mid-life phase’. The ‘Landcare approach’ in its contemporary form is articulated in the Australian Framework for Landcare 2010–2020 as comprising the Landcare ethic, the Landcare movement founded on stewardship and volunteers, and the Landcare model. There is much evidence to substantiate the pivotal role Landcare has played in stimulating and enabling knowledge sharing, learning and on-ground action across Australia in the arena of natural resource management (NRM); and also to conclude that its potential for contributing to broader impacts, especially landscape-scale change, has been seriously hindered by various ill-conceived and/or executed policy settings and related institutional arrangements. Nevertheless, the Landcare approach (with its consistently sound ethic and movement, but with its model imperfections at different times) has pr...

We propose a suite of actions for strengthening water governance in contexts with complex, multi-tiered arrangements. In doing so, we focus on the collective water policies and approaches of the United Kingdom (UK), including those of devolved governments, which confront a host of serious water-related challenges—from massive flooding of urban areas and agricultural lands, to pressure on aquifers from rising water demand and drought. Further complexity in addressing these challenges has emerged in the wake of the June 2016 vote to leave the European Union (EU), so-called ‘Brexit’, and the ensuing ‘separation process’ with uncertainties for institutional and governance arrangements to follow. We make ten proposals for improving and reinvigorating water policy in complex, multi-layered situations, and comment specifically on their application in the UK setting. These are: put in place a system-wide water policy; fully embrace community-led nested river basin planning and management; fully fund river basin planning and management; re-focus the policy framing; use best-available data and information; create conversational spaces and become a more water-literate society; mobilise people; support and sustain core community networks; underpin river basin plans with regulatory provisions and effective monitoring and enforcement; and address systemic institutional amnesia. Individually and collectively, we contend that these actions will have a marked effect on transforming the planning and management of water resources. A system-wide water policy that maintains and builds on the substantive biophysical and socio-economic benefits delivered through implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive, together with the more recent Floods Directive, will galvanise stewardship of water in the UK. We urge more active engagement with and empowerment of the multiplicity of system ‘actors’, and highlight the role of non-government actors in a post-Brexit world as conduits for reaching out to and connecting directly with a wide range of water-related actors, especially across the EU. While attention to-date has focused on a plethora of specifically water-related projects, initiatives, plans and regulations, what is really needed is a systemic, long-term view of water resource management.

The Australian Government's ‘Caring for our Country’ program has undermined Australia's ‘regional model’ for natural resource management, and eroded gains made under the precursor Natural Heritage Trust and related programs, in eight significant ways. Contrary to expectations that Caring for our Country, established in 2008, would build on the foundations established by the Natural Heritage Trust, it has adopted a narrower agenda, increased central government control, and compromised buy-in by state and territory governments. In reaction to the difficulty of assessing the cost-effectiveness of natural resource management program investments, priority has been given to discrete projects capable of demonstrating short-term, measurable outputs. Implementation of Caring for our Country has failed to realise the aspirations of regional organisations for core funding, substantially increased transaction costs and diminished success rates under competitive funding arrangements, and prejudiced the goodwi...

This paper informs policy and programme development for capacity building within the context of decentralised governance arrangements by examining stakeholder perspectives about capacity issues. The capacity issues of Australia's network of 56 community-based Boards, governing each of its designated natural resource management regions, are explored as an arena of learning. The approach described facilitates stakeholders in considering capacity issues across human, social, institutional and economic dimensions and elicits a range of views about the nature of the issues. The paper provides a conceptual model for capacity building that proved a useful tool for supporting this process. The outcomes of workshop events with three key stakeholder groups in the Australian context are presented. The work indicates convergent and divergent perspectives about capacity issues between these groups, especially “insiders” (Board members) compared with “outsiders” (policy/research and Indigenous stakeholders). It suggest...

This paper examines the perspectives of major interest groups on capacity development within the context of the significant contemporary global phenomenon of community-based decentralised governance at catchment scale. It focuses on providing empirical evidence to guide the development and implementation of policies and programs, especially those of governments. The research draws especially from regional governance experiences in Australia, as a country with advanced arrangements, and capacity building experiences in the sectors of health and risk and emergency management as informative arenas of learning. Twenty-two specific capacity building measures were presented in a discussion paper across human, social, institutional and economic dimensions. Perspectives were sought from regional, policy/research and Indigenous interest groups about applying these measures to enhance the effectiveness of the community-based Boards governing Australia's nation-wide network of 56 natural resource management (NRM) organisations. The research identifies a suite of specific measures and, in doing so, demonstrates the benefits of examining other sectors to inform capacity building in the NRM domain. The work highlights the need to better understand and account for differing interest group perspectives about capacity building issues, the application of specific measures, and the outcomes anticipated before developing and implementing policies and programs. While explored in the Australian context, these findings have application to decentralised governance arrangements in other countries.

This article examines capacity building measures used by the risk and emergency management (REM) sector in Australia relevant to natural resource management (NRM), and in particular to the regional delivery of two national NRM programs - the Natural Heritage Trust Extension (NHT2) and the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (NAP). Australia has recently formalised a network of 56 regional NRM bodies and boards. Together, they form an important part of governance in rural and regional Australia, and are widely perceived as needing capacity development to fulfil their responsibilities. Examining measures adopted in REM has particular relevance as the sector already has a significant presence in rural Australia, and mirrors NRM in many respects - notably responsibility largely rests at state or territory level, each with multiple agencies, and program delivery is highly reliant on volunteer networks. This article discusses 12 major measures, primarily as they may be applied to regional NRM boards, and identifies many valuable ideas that warrant trial within the NRM domain.

This article describes a new model for science communication relevant to natural resource management as well as any other sector with the need to integrate and find pathways through an extensive body of information. The model comprises a hardcopy resource directory and a companion interactive CD-ROM. Together, the approach represents the first integrated and readily accessible repository of information on dryland salinity in Australia, and probably in the natural resource management sector more generally, and targets the many thousands of catchment managers. The advice of more than 150 people involved in salinity research and management informed the structure and content of the resource materials. This article discusses the strengths and limitations of the approach and its potential for broader application, the need for adaptive management and on-going learning, and some prospects for further investment.

This article considers the scope for riparian-based agroforestry in the broadacre agricultural landscape of Australia, which has been highly modified in the 200 years since European settlement. Approximately 33 per cent of native vegetation in the intensively used areas has been cleared or substantially modified, and the sheep-wheat belt suffers from land and water salinisation, soil acidification and erosion, and the decline of instream and terrestrial biodiversity. There is a lack of clarity about the role of riparian-based agroforestry in achieving broader catchment management objectives, and a paucity of research on the sustainable harvesting of wood and non-wood products from riparian lands. This article advocates the need to rethink policy and research directions for the rehabilitation of riparian lands within a catchment-scale context to better inform on- ground actions at the property level.

This paper examines the influence of global discourses on policies and programmes for Natural Resource Management (NRM) in Australia, and the emergence of 56 formalised regional NRM bodies and their community-based Boards of management with responsibilities for NRM planning and implementation. It traces the emergence of the 'landcare movement' and the trend toward 'Integrated Catchment Management (ICM)', including governments around Australia embracing greater community input. It examines 'sustainable development' and 'neoliberalism', which have been advocated in concert, but with signs of the latter dominating. The formalisation of 'regionalism' for NRM in Australia has marked a shift in power and resources from the state level to both the federal and regional levels. What remains to be seen is whether the responsibilities devolved to regional NRM bodies and their Boards are realistically within their capacities to deliver.