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Demands on freshwater for human use are increasing globally, but water resource development (WRD) has substantial downstream impacts on fisheries and ecosystems. Our study evaluates trade-offs between WRDs and downstream ecosystem functioning considering alternative dam and water extraction options, diverse eco-hydrological responses and catchment-to-coast connectivity. We used a data-driven ensemble modelling approach to quantify the impacts of alternative WRDs. WRD impacts varied from weakly positive to severely negative depending on species, scenario and cross-catchment synergies. Impacts on fishery catches and the broader ecosystem (including mangroves) increased with catchment developments and volume of water removed, or if flow reduced below a threshold level. We found complex, linked-catchment dependence of banana prawns on flow and floods. Economic risks for this important fishery more than doubled under some scenarios. Sawfish emerged as the most sensitive across a range of WRD scenarios. Our findings highlight the need to consider marine ecosystems and fisheries to inform sustainable management of the world’s remaining free-flowing rivers.

Our Gulf of Carpentaria MICE (Model of Intermediate Complexity for Ecosystem Assessments) links river flows with estuarine and marine systems and is the first integrated framework for quantifying the impacts of water resource development (WRD) across a range of ecological assets, catchment systems, scales and parameter settings. While there is scope to build on and refine this framework, we are nonetheless able to provide some considerations and recommendations with respect to water resource development implementation: Key findings - Changes from baseline flows due to WRDs had variable impacts on all species and catchment regions, with impacts ranging from minor through to extreme impacts under some scenarios. - Our risk assessment classified the highest water allocation and multi-catchment WRD (WRD1) as the highest risk development, with moderate to intolerable risks predicted for all species and groups except for seagrass, and both in terms of population-level risk and fishery risk, followed by WRD2 and WRD4 (lower water allocation or single catchment WRD), both of which also predicted high risks to some populations and fisheries. WRD3 was assessed less risky because it assumes no development on the Flinders and Gilbert River catchments. - Largetooth sawfish were predicted to show the greatest sensitivity to WRDs (due to their low productivity life-history characteristics) with risks ranked as intolerable across a broad range of alternative water extraction or impoundment scenarios. - For common banana prawns, the Flinders River catchment emerged as the most sensitive to WRDs, consistent with previous findings from estuarine productivity studies (Burford and Faggotter 2021). - We quantified the probability of alternative WRDs increasing the baseline economic risks to the common banana prawn sub-fishery of the Northern Prawn Fishery by computing the relative probability of occurrence of major risks (defined as risk of a bad or “unacceptable” year), severe risk (two

Fisheries and coastal assets are both common pool resources. The management of natural resources has a special focus in sustainability science because of the need to avoid the ‘tragedy of the commons’. Not only do common resources need special attention to ensure future sustainability, there is also a need to ensure management decisions are not made on short timelines, so as to prevent the ‘tragedy of the horizon’. This tragedy occurs when the time to replenish those resources is much longer than the timeframe over which impacts of resource decisions are managed, and often imposes costs on future generations. This thesis focuses on how the management of fisheries and coastal resources can be implemented through a triple bottom line lens to avoid both tragedies. Foremost, the thesis examines how appropriate social objectives can be developed, particularly through stakeholder engagement, and how management options can be assessed to identify options that maximise triple bottom line outcomes. These aspects are demonstrated through a series of case studies. The purpose of the research presented in this thesis is to explore stakeholder participation in fisheries and coastal management decision-making with the triple bottom line approach. The triple bottom line as defined John Elkington (1997) encompasses seven paradigm shifts for sustainability: (i) using markets to improve environmental management and create triple-win situations; (ii) incorporating lifecycle technologies and approaches; (iii) engaging and co-designing with stakeholders so that they become process partners; (iv) transparency throughout assessment and management processes; (v) adopting long time horizons; (vi) uncovering and appreciating social ‘soft’ values and other externalities which will see the need for evolving ways and means to quantify qualitative outcomes; and (vii) establishing governance embedded with corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Over the past 50 years, the diversity of fisheries types being actively managed has changed from mainly data-rich, industrial sectors to more socially, economically, and environmentally complex multispecies and multisector fisheries. Accompanying this change has been a broadening of management objectives to include social and economic considerations with traditional resource sustainability objectives, the so-called triple bottom line, and the need to include these considerations into harvest strategies. The case of a line fishery in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is used as a demonstration of the first steps in implementing triple bottom line harvest strategies. This fishery has several disparate sectors including commercial, tourism, and recreation; targets multiple but important reef species; and is undertaken in a World Heritage Site. This work highlights the need for a much-expanded set of objectives elicited from stakeholders that are either included in the trade-off analyses of the different harvest strategies or directly in an optimization. Both options demonstrated that a paradigm shift is required to emphasize representative participatory management systems that assemble teams from quite different backgrounds and viewpoints; use much broader set of objectives; and modify tools and (especially) the data collected within revised monitoring programmes to underpin these tools.

Natural resource management has long recognised that the multi-objective nature of management is important, but has struggled to operationalise this into quantitative, measurable objectives for functional use in management. Operationalising broader ecological and social objectives has been particularly problematic. In fisheries management, the focus has mainly been on target species sustainability and, in the past few decades, on profitability. However, multi-objective management is now essential as fisheries have become recognised as complex social-ecological-systems. Policy and legislation demand a move towards quantitative approaches for reconciling multiple objectives and operationalising these within harvest strategies. We present a quantitative, non-commensurable-unit approach, via a multi-indicator value function with explicit objective preference weights. We use a simulation to set Total Allowable Catches (TACs) for three main species groups in a reef line fishery in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Our method enables stakeholders to consider a richer range of tradeoffs than is possible with bio-economic models. Moreover, it allows the formal evaluation of performance across alternative stakeholder group preferences, providing an impartial way to obtain an overall optimum TAC. The simulation requires extensive fishery data and requires the performance indicators associated with each objective to be quantitatively and defensibly defined. Thus, our approach provides a pathway forward that forces managers and stakeholders to confront the associated data requirements.

© 2020 There is increasing interest in protecting, restoring and creating ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems (BCE; mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrasses) to sequester atmospheric CO2-C and thereby contribute to climate change mitigation. While a growing number of countries aspire to report greenhouse gas emission and carbon sequestration changes from these ecosystems under voluntary international reporting requirements, few countries have domestic policy frameworks that specifically support the quantification and financing of carbon emission abatement through BCE management. Australia, as home to approximately 5–11% of global blue carbon stocks, has a substantial interest in the development of blue carbon policy. Here we assess the potential inclusion of blue carbon within Australia's Emissions Reduction Fund, emphasizing issues and approaches that have global relevance. We used a participatory workshop of scientific experts and carbon industry stakeholders to identify blue carbon management actions that would meet the requirements of the Fund. In total, twelve actions were assessed for their greenhouse gas emission abatement potential and the ability to measure abatement reliably, using a combination of available data and qualitative and quantitative methods, including expert knowledge. We identify and discuss the five most relevant and promising activities, encompassing the protection, restoration and creation of mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrasses. On a per area basis, mean abatement intensity of organic carbon (Corg) was highest for the (re)introduction of tidal flow resulting in establishment of mangrove (13–15 Mg Corg ha−1 yr−1) and tidal marsh (6–8 Mg Corg ha−1 yr−1), followed by land use planning for sea-level rise for the creation of new mangrove habitat (8 Mg Corg ha−1 yr−1). The avoided disturbance of existing mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrasses has the twofold benefit of avoiding remineralisation of existing stocks, plus the future annual abatement assoc

Data on C stocks and sequestration rates in Australian tidal marshes, mangrove forests and seagrass meadows were compiled from published data. In addition, unpublished studies from the CSIRO Marine and Coastal Carbon Biogeochemistry Cluster project and other studies by the co-authors were included. Data from 1,553 study sites (593 from tidal marshes, 323 from mangrove forests and 637 from seagrass meadows) on soil C stocks (1,103 cores in total), soil C sequestration rates (352 cores in total) and standing C stocks in aboveground biomass (98 measurements in total) were used in this study. Detailed methods are provided in the manuscript linked to this dataset. Location details Max latitude: 10°7′30″ S Min latitude: 43°33′1.0044″ S Max longitude: 153°37′4.7532″ E Min longitude: 113°0′30.6792″ E Coordinate reference system: WGS84

This paper details Australian research that developed tools to assist fisheries managers and government agencies in engaging with the social dimension of industry and community welfare in fisheries management. These tools are in the form of objectives and

In the 1960s the impacts of human activities on natural resource systems and environmental health became matters of increasing national and international policy concern.

Conventional systems of government have not been very successful in resolving coastal management problems. This lack of progress is partially attributable to inadequate representation in governance processes of the variety of knowledges present on the coast. In particular there has been a struggle to engage effectively with climate science and its implications. There has also been a broader failure to capture the complexity of voices, interests, values, and discourses of coastal users. We argue here that coastal governance challenges are not likely to be resolved by singular solutions; rather, interaction and collaboration will generate improvements. We suggest that a co-requisite for progress in coastal management is the development of institutions and processes that enable different knowledges to have a bearing on governance processes. This paper examines a selection of the many opportunities available to broaden and enhance the use of knowledge in decision-making for the coast. A description is provided of emerging elements of coastal governance from an Australian perspective, together with new types of institutions, processes, tools and techniques that may help to achieve an improved coastal knowledge-governance interaction.

Serrano, O., Lovelock, C. E., Atwood, T. B., Macreadie, P. I., Canto, R., Phinn, S., ... & Duarte, C. M. (2019). Australian vegetated coastal ecosystems as global hotspots for climate change mitigation. Nature Communications, 10(1), 4313. Available here.

Kelleway, J. J., Serrano, O., Baldock, J. A., Burgess, R., Cannard, T., Lavery, P. S., ... & Saintilan, N. (2020). A national approach to greenhouse gas abatement through blue carbon management. Global Environmental Change, 63, Article 102083. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102083