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Climate change adaptation needs to be a highly social process as it requires a systemic change in human behaviors at various scales. Planning for climate change adaptation, however, has only recently begun to explore and adopt approaches focused on building the resilience of social assets as a strategy for effecting change and adaptation. To date, partial or peripheral approaches to planning for social adaptation have been the norm. This chapter considers a social adaptation approach established in Tropical North Queensland (TNQ), a diverse Australian metaregion vulnerable to climate change impacts typical of a range of tropical countries. We (1) outline the methods used in a socially oriented approach planning applied in TNQ, (2) explore a range of social adaption measures emerging from this approach, and (3) evaluate how these measures could be applied in different tropical regions around the world. Because of the diverse nature of the TNQ region, this work provides insights into typical social adaptation measures that may emerge from such planning across the tropics.

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has grown in stature as a key component of many national natural resource and rural development governance systems. Despite their growth, the integrity of CBNRM governance systems has rarely been analysed in a national context. To enhance dialogue about how best to design and deploy such systems nationally, this paper analyses the Australian system in detail. The Australian system was selected because the nation has a globally recognised and strong history of CBNRM approaches. We first contextualise the international emergence of national CBRM governance systems before analysing the Australian system. We find that a theoretically informed approach recognising regions as the anchors in brokering multi-scale CBNRM was applied between 2000 and 2007. Subsequent policy, while strengthening indigenous roles, has tended to weaken regional brokering, Commonwealth-state cooperation and research collaboration. Our findings and consequent emerging lessons can inform Australian policy makers and other nations looking to establish (or to reform existing) CBNRM governance systems. Equally, the research approach taken represents the application of an emerging new theoretical framework for analysing complex governance systems.

Water quality outcomes affecting Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) are governed by multi-level and multi-party decision-making that influences forested and agricultural landscapes. With international concern about the GBR’s declining ecological health, this paper identifies and focuses on implementation failure (primarily at catchment scale) as a systemic risk within the overall GBR governance system. There has been limited integrated analysis of the full suite of governance subdomains that often envelop defined policies, programs and delivery activities that influence water quality in the GBR. We consider how the implementation of separate purpose-specific policies and programs at catchment scale operate against well-known, robust design concepts for integrated catchment governance. We find design concerns within ten important governance subdomains that operate within GBR catchments. At a whole-of-GBR scale, we find a weak policy focus on strengthening these delivery-oriented subdomains and on effort integration across these subdomains within catchments. These governance problems when combined may contribute to failure in the implementation of major national, state and local government policies focused on improving water quality in the GBR, a lesson relevant to landscapes globally.

Regional and remote communities in Tropical North Queensland (TNQ) are among Australia's most vulnerable in the face of climate change. They face sea-level rise, more intense dry spells, increasing temperatures, more extensive coral bleaching and the risk of more intense cyclones and floods. Consequently, sociologically and economically diverse subregions such as the Northern Gulf of Carpentaria, the Torres Strait, Cape York Peninsula and the Wet Tropics face an uncertain future. Together, these four subregions represent a social diversity typical across the tropics. With its cultural and social complexity, Queensland's tropics present an ideal case study for operationalising an indicators-based approach for building regional and subregional-scale resilience. The assessment of social resilience in the four TNQ subregions has reinforced the theoretical conclusion that a purist approach to measuring and monitoring social resilience, driven by defining and populating perfect sets of indicators, is neither practical nor feasible.

The state and trend of the Great Barrier Reef’s (GBR’s) ecological health remains problematic, influencing United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) statements regarding GBR governance. While UNESCO’s concerns triggered separate strategic assessments by the Australian and Queensland governments, there has been no independent and integrated review of the key risks within the overall system of governance influencing GBR outcomes. As a case study of international significance, this paper applies Governance Systems Analysis (GSA), a novel analytical framework that identifies the governance themes, domains and subdomains most likely to influence environmental and socio-economic outcomes in complex natural systems. This GBR-focussed application of GSA identifies governance subdomains that present high, medium, or low risk of failure to produce positive outcomes for the Reef. This enabled us to determine that three “whole of system” governance problems could undermine GBR outcomes. First, we stress the integrative importance of the Long Term Sustainability Plan (LTSP) Subdomain. Sponsored by the Australian and Queensland governments, this subdomain concerns the primary institutional arrangements for coordinated GBR planning and delivery, but due to its recent emergence, it faces several internal governance challenges. Second, we find a major risk of implementation failure in the achievement of GBR water quality actions due to a lack of system-wide focus on building strong and stable delivery systems at catchment scale. Finally, we conclude that the LTSP subdomain currently has too limited a mandate/capacity to influence several high-risk subdomains that have not been, but must be more strongly aligned with Reef management (e.g. the Greenhouse Gas Emission Management Subdomain). Our analysis enables exploration of governance system reforms needed to address environmental trends in the GBR and reflects on the potent

Governance continues to be a challenge in the management and conservation of natural resources. It is difficult to strategically address governance challenges without understanding the dynamics, capacities, and knowledge application of institutions within such governance systems. This article examines the use of Governance Systems Analysis (GSA) to compare, evaluate, and benchmark governance arrangements for regional natural resource management (NRM) planning. It is applied in two Australian regional NRM case studies in Cape York and the Wet Tropics. Our analysis of governance arrangements for NRM planning in the two regions finds that while they are structurally and functionally similar, they have different capacities for decision making about planning. The article concludes with a discussion of the usefulness and implications of using the GSA as an evaluative framework to analyze governance in regional NRM planning systems.

The state and trend of the Great Barrier Reef’s (GBR) ecological health remains problematic, resulting in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) raising concerns regarding GBR governance (UNESCO, 2015). While UNESCO’s concerns triggered separate strategic assessments by the Australian and Queensland governments, independent and integrated review of the key risks within the overall system of governance influencing GBR outcomes is needed. As a case study of international significance, this project applied Governance Systems Analysis (GSA); a novel analytical framework that identifies, benchmarks and enables monitoring of the integrity of those governance themes, domains and subdomains most likely to influence environmental and socio-economic outcomes in the GBR. Apart from enabling us to benchmark the current governance system as it affects the GBR, GSA’s application has facilitated two international papers of significance concerning this topic: 1. Paper 1: Risk analysis of the governance system affecting outcomes in the GBR (see Dale et al. (n.d. a) to be submitted to Global Environmental Change); and 2. Paper 2: Design principles for catchment scale governance to deliver water quality outcomes in Australia’s GBR (see Dale et al., n.d. b) invited and to submitted as part of a special issue of Environmental Management).