ABSTRACT Risks posed by new species entering local environments have instigated Indigenous people... more ABSTRACT Risks posed by new species entering local environments have instigated Indigenous peoples’ efforts to develop new knowledge and land management strategies in many regions. Working to share responsibility for the management of these risks requires new information, prompting government agencies, Indigenous organisations, industry groups, and others to advance new knowledge and different biosecurity practices. Tensions can exist between diverse interest groups advocating different versions of “biosecurity risk.” For example, which organisms should be governed as harmful, what kind of knowledge is useful to inform management practices, and what constitutes “risk”? We draw on research conducted with Indigenous organisations in northern Australia to better understand what risks they associate with “caring for [sick] country.” We argue that effective biosecurity practice in cross-cultural settings can navigate the bridge between different kinds of knowledge and capabilities to support diverse values, notions of responsibility to country, and related understandings of risk. Further, we argue that “biosecurity risk” as a boundary concept could provide the means for creating improved knowledge partnerships that value all interpretations of “biosecurity risk”. Partnerships that recognise multiple approaches for taking responsibility for the management of identified risks could support innovation for cross-cultural and collaborative approaches to biosecurity practice and management.
Stakeholder participation is increasingly being embedded into decision-making processes from the ... more Stakeholder participation is increasingly being embedded into decision-making processes from the local to the global scale. With limited resources to engage stakeholders, frameworks that allow decision-makers to make cost-effective choices are greatly needed. In this paper, we present a structured decision-making (SDM) framework that enables environmental decision-makers to prioritise different engagement options by assessing their relative cost-effectiveness. We demonstrate the application of this framework using a case study in biosecurity management. Drawing on a scenario of Panama Disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4) invasion in the Australian banana industry, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews and held a workshop with key stakeholders to elicit their key concerns and convert them into four objectives-making more informed decisions, maximising buy-in, empowering people, and minimising the stress of biosecurity incidents. We also identified ten engagement alternatives at local, State/Territory, and National scales. Our results showed that options to engage local stakeholders and enable capacity to undertake adaptive approaches to biosecurity management are more cost-effective than engagement efforts that seek to build capacities at higher decision-making levels. More interestingly, using the weights provided by different stakeholder groups does not significantly affect the cost-effectiveness ranking of the ten options considered. Even though the results are contingent on the context of this biosecurity study, the SDM framework developed for maximising cost-effectiveness is transferable to other areas of environmental management. The efficient frontier generated by this framework allows decision-makers to examine the trade-offs between the costs and benefits and select the best portfolio for their investment. This approach provides a practical and transparent estimate of the return on investment for stakeholder engagement in highly complex or uncertain situations, as is usually the case for environmental issues.
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2015
This paper explores the generation of presences and absences of objects in plant biosecurity prac... more This paper explores the generation of presences and absences of objects in plant biosecurity practices. We use praxiography to trace how multiple versions of disease were generated on a quarantined banana plantation during an emergency response to a suspected outbreak of feared Panama disease. Attending to the practices, techniques and materials that established different versions of disease presence and absence, we ask if the momentarily certain absence of disease on a particular farm necessarily indicated a favourable biosecurity outcome, thus informing enhanced policy strategies for plant health. There were, in fact, multiple objects. Not only diseases, but multiple presences of health, stress, disease and disorder were involved in confirming the absence of Panama.
Page 1. Cathy Robinson, Sue Jackson, Anna Straton, Rachel Eberhard, Tabatha Wallington, Peta Dzid... more Page 1. Cathy Robinson, Sue Jackson, Anna Straton, Rachel Eberhard, Tabatha Wallington, Peta Dzidic, Jeff Camkin and Erin Bohensky Final Report August 2009 Review of existing cultural and social initiatives, and key groups and organisations across northern ...
The condition of coastal and marine ecosystems on the Great Barrier Reef and their responses to w... more The condition of coastal and marine ecosystems on the Great Barrier Reef and their responses to water quality and disturbances. The Great Barrier Reef marine ecosystems and their associated catchments are part of a dynamic, interconnected system. This chapter provides an up-to-date review of the state of knowledge relating to the conditions and trends of key Great Barrier Reef coastal and marine ecosystems, including current knowledge on key drivers of change and activities leading to pressures and impacts on these ecosystems. Drivers include the impacts of land run-off, coastal development activities and other disturbances such as extreme weather events that influence Great Barrier Reef water quality and the health of marine and coastal ecosystems.
As consensus across the various published AI ethics principles is approached, a gap remains betwe... more As consensus across the various published AI ethics principles is approached, a gap remains between high-level principles and practical techniques that can be readily adopted to design and develop responsible AI systems. We examine the practices and experiences of researchers and engineers from Australia's national scientific research agency (CSIRO), who are involved in designing and developing AI systems for a range of purposes. Semi-structured interviews were used to examine how the practices of the participants relate to and align with a set of high-level AI ethics principles proposed by the Australian Government. The principles comprise: Privacy Protection & Security, Reliability & Safety, Transparency & Explainability, Fairness, Contestability, Accountability, Human-centred Values, and Human, Social & Environmental Wellbeing. The insights of the researchers and engineers as well as the challenges that arose for them in the practical application of the principles are examined. Finally, we propose a set of organisational responses (learning, process, practice, strategy, policy) to support the implementation of high-level AI ethics principles into practice.
Instruments for the conservation of biodiversity are frequently seen as counter productive for hu... more Instruments for the conservation of biodiversity are frequently seen as counter productive for human life and prosperity. This session will provide a basis for lively discussion and knowledge-sharing using evidence-based science, the incorporation of indigenous values, and insights from practice to achieve good biodiversity conservation outcomes within global Sustainable Development Goals. Our five speakers offer different perspectives and solutions around the socio-economic factors influencing practical community and government attitudes and actions, the value of indigenous involvement, and the opportunities arising from technological innovation and knowledge-sharing. All speakers have been directly involved with members of their community affected by conservation actions. We ask the following questions to focus our discussion: • does the human community 'own' biodiversity conservation enough to make it sustainable in the long-term? What can we learn from each other? • Is t...
The Secretariat to the Australian Landcare Council provided a table summarising government and no... more The Secretariat to the Australian Landcare Council provided a table summarising government and non-government investment programs in ILM. We used this table to guide our searching of web sites and other documents to compile an Excel spreadsheet which now includes 2,229 records of separate projects. We were not able to source complete data on a number of the identified sources of investment, including those from State governments, investments by private corporations and not-for-profit organisations. Nevertheless, the data set is the most comprehensive that has ever been assembled on ILM in Australia. While substantial literature exists on Indigenous land management, the relevant documents are widely scattered across internet sites, in diverse State and Territory jurisdictions, in regional and local government and non-government organisations, and across sectoral boundaries (e.g. water management reports, biodiversity management reports). We anticipate that the opportunities and barri...
ABSTRACT Risks posed by new species entering local environments have instigated Indigenous people... more ABSTRACT Risks posed by new species entering local environments have instigated Indigenous peoples’ efforts to develop new knowledge and land management strategies in many regions. Working to share responsibility for the management of these risks requires new information, prompting government agencies, Indigenous organisations, industry groups, and others to advance new knowledge and different biosecurity practices. Tensions can exist between diverse interest groups advocating different versions of “biosecurity risk.” For example, which organisms should be governed as harmful, what kind of knowledge is useful to inform management practices, and what constitutes “risk”? We draw on research conducted with Indigenous organisations in northern Australia to better understand what risks they associate with “caring for [sick] country.” We argue that effective biosecurity practice in cross-cultural settings can navigate the bridge between different kinds of knowledge and capabilities to support diverse values, notions of responsibility to country, and related understandings of risk. Further, we argue that “biosecurity risk” as a boundary concept could provide the means for creating improved knowledge partnerships that value all interpretations of “biosecurity risk”. Partnerships that recognise multiple approaches for taking responsibility for the management of identified risks could support innovation for cross-cultural and collaborative approaches to biosecurity practice and management.
Stakeholder participation is increasingly being embedded into decision-making processes from the ... more Stakeholder participation is increasingly being embedded into decision-making processes from the local to the global scale. With limited resources to engage stakeholders, frameworks that allow decision-makers to make cost-effective choices are greatly needed. In this paper, we present a structured decision-making (SDM) framework that enables environmental decision-makers to prioritise different engagement options by assessing their relative cost-effectiveness. We demonstrate the application of this framework using a case study in biosecurity management. Drawing on a scenario of Panama Disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4) invasion in the Australian banana industry, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews and held a workshop with key stakeholders to elicit their key concerns and convert them into four objectives-making more informed decisions, maximising buy-in, empowering people, and minimising the stress of biosecurity incidents. We also identified ten engagement alternatives at local, State/Territory, and National scales. Our results showed that options to engage local stakeholders and enable capacity to undertake adaptive approaches to biosecurity management are more cost-effective than engagement efforts that seek to build capacities at higher decision-making levels. More interestingly, using the weights provided by different stakeholder groups does not significantly affect the cost-effectiveness ranking of the ten options considered. Even though the results are contingent on the context of this biosecurity study, the SDM framework developed for maximising cost-effectiveness is transferable to other areas of environmental management. The efficient frontier generated by this framework allows decision-makers to examine the trade-offs between the costs and benefits and select the best portfolio for their investment. This approach provides a practical and transparent estimate of the return on investment for stakeholder engagement in highly complex or uncertain situations, as is usually the case for environmental issues.
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2015
This paper explores the generation of presences and absences of objects in plant biosecurity prac... more This paper explores the generation of presences and absences of objects in plant biosecurity practices. We use praxiography to trace how multiple versions of disease were generated on a quarantined banana plantation during an emergency response to a suspected outbreak of feared Panama disease. Attending to the practices, techniques and materials that established different versions of disease presence and absence, we ask if the momentarily certain absence of disease on a particular farm necessarily indicated a favourable biosecurity outcome, thus informing enhanced policy strategies for plant health. There were, in fact, multiple objects. Not only diseases, but multiple presences of health, stress, disease and disorder were involved in confirming the absence of Panama.
Page 1. Cathy Robinson, Sue Jackson, Anna Straton, Rachel Eberhard, Tabatha Wallington, Peta Dzid... more Page 1. Cathy Robinson, Sue Jackson, Anna Straton, Rachel Eberhard, Tabatha Wallington, Peta Dzidic, Jeff Camkin and Erin Bohensky Final Report August 2009 Review of existing cultural and social initiatives, and key groups and organisations across northern ...
The condition of coastal and marine ecosystems on the Great Barrier Reef and their responses to w... more The condition of coastal and marine ecosystems on the Great Barrier Reef and their responses to water quality and disturbances. The Great Barrier Reef marine ecosystems and their associated catchments are part of a dynamic, interconnected system. This chapter provides an up-to-date review of the state of knowledge relating to the conditions and trends of key Great Barrier Reef coastal and marine ecosystems, including current knowledge on key drivers of change and activities leading to pressures and impacts on these ecosystems. Drivers include the impacts of land run-off, coastal development activities and other disturbances such as extreme weather events that influence Great Barrier Reef water quality and the health of marine and coastal ecosystems.
As consensus across the various published AI ethics principles is approached, a gap remains betwe... more As consensus across the various published AI ethics principles is approached, a gap remains between high-level principles and practical techniques that can be readily adopted to design and develop responsible AI systems. We examine the practices and experiences of researchers and engineers from Australia's national scientific research agency (CSIRO), who are involved in designing and developing AI systems for a range of purposes. Semi-structured interviews were used to examine how the practices of the participants relate to and align with a set of high-level AI ethics principles proposed by the Australian Government. The principles comprise: Privacy Protection & Security, Reliability & Safety, Transparency & Explainability, Fairness, Contestability, Accountability, Human-centred Values, and Human, Social & Environmental Wellbeing. The insights of the researchers and engineers as well as the challenges that arose for them in the practical application of the principles are examined. Finally, we propose a set of organisational responses (learning, process, practice, strategy, policy) to support the implementation of high-level AI ethics principles into practice.
Instruments for the conservation of biodiversity are frequently seen as counter productive for hu... more Instruments for the conservation of biodiversity are frequently seen as counter productive for human life and prosperity. This session will provide a basis for lively discussion and knowledge-sharing using evidence-based science, the incorporation of indigenous values, and insights from practice to achieve good biodiversity conservation outcomes within global Sustainable Development Goals. Our five speakers offer different perspectives and solutions around the socio-economic factors influencing practical community and government attitudes and actions, the value of indigenous involvement, and the opportunities arising from technological innovation and knowledge-sharing. All speakers have been directly involved with members of their community affected by conservation actions. We ask the following questions to focus our discussion: • does the human community 'own' biodiversity conservation enough to make it sustainable in the long-term? What can we learn from each other? • Is t...
The Secretariat to the Australian Landcare Council provided a table summarising government and no... more The Secretariat to the Australian Landcare Council provided a table summarising government and non-government investment programs in ILM. We used this table to guide our searching of web sites and other documents to compile an Excel spreadsheet which now includes 2,229 records of separate projects. We were not able to source complete data on a number of the identified sources of investment, including those from State governments, investments by private corporations and not-for-profit organisations. Nevertheless, the data set is the most comprehensive that has ever been assembled on ILM in Australia. While substantial literature exists on Indigenous land management, the relevant documents are widely scattered across internet sites, in diverse State and Territory jurisdictions, in regional and local government and non-government organisations, and across sectoral boundaries (e.g. water management reports, biodiversity management reports). We anticipate that the opportunities and barri...
Uploads
Papers by Cathy Robinson