Papers and reports by Jason Alexandra
Australasian Journal of Water Resources, 24(1), 9-11., 2020
Australia's mega-fires of 2019-2020 have burnt over ten millions of hectares1-almost twice the si... more Australia's mega-fires of 2019-2020 have burnt over ten millions of hectares1-almost twice the size of the 2019 Amazon fires (The Guardian 2020; Woodward 2020). Forested mountain ranges across the country-the sources of many significant rivers-including from Eastern Victoria to SouthEast Queensland have burnt. Destructive mega-fires are increasing globally, requiring us to rethink how we live in flammable landscapes (Moritz et al. 2014; Pyne 2018). We know from experience in Australia that major fires are 'resetting' events for communities (Teague et al 2010; Griffiths 2016) and ecosystems (Adams 2013; Keenan and Nitschke 2016). These fires may also trigger the resetting of national climate policies (both adaptation and mitigation), given that they have sparked a fierce national debate about climate change and its impacts.
Australian farm policy journal, 2019
Irrigated agriculture is the major water user in
Australia. Reliable high-value production enable... more Irrigated agriculture is the major water user in
Australia. Reliable high-value production enabled
by irrigation contributes significantly to the value
of agricultural production yet there are deep
uncertainties about how future water availability
will be affected by climate change, with repeated
warnings about drier futures for southern and
eastern Australia. This paper explores issues of water
insecurity in Australian irrigated agriculture from
the perspective of the policy and climate risks. For
example, Australia’s National Water initiative aims
to increase water security for water entitlement
holders but also assigns risks to water security
arising from climate change and changes in policy
settings. Focusing mostly on recent reforms to water
policy, it looks at how issues of security are defined
and addressed in the Murray Darling Basin. The
paper outlines ideas about water security through
supply-side engineering before exploring how climate
and policy reforms have altered ideas about water
security. However, with climatic sources of water (rain)
the key but uncontrollable variable, in future water
security, it seems that learning to adapt, may be the
best responses to the eradicable uncertainty and
irreducible risks induced by a changing climate.
This document outlines the scenarios used for a foresighting workshop to identify future R&D prio... more This document outlines the scenarios used for a foresighting workshop to identify future R&D priorities for Tasmanian irrigation.
The widespread adoption of irrigation represents a significant shift in Tasmanian agriculture. Expansion of irrigation continues with new schemes in planning, construction and commission phases. Foresighting or scenario planning was used to assist in the planning process. The scenarios were focused through the lens of irrigation, water resources and related industries, but to do so will need to take into account broader socio-political, economic and environmental drivers, such as global food and fibre supply and demand and climate change impacts, both direct and indirect. Each scenario covered a range of drivers or driver types spanning natural resources and climate, socio-political, market and industry development etc. These were constructed to focus stakeholders thinking and discussion on the nature, roles and focus of the innovation systems and the way specific RD&E interacts with the issues and addresses specific risks and opportunities. The scenarios were intended to be sufficiently provocative as to generate debate, yet sufficiently ground in plausible trajectories of change as to be credible.
The scenarios were used to elicit a variety of responses about stakeholders beliefs or conceptualisation of the “nature of the future” and be used to draw people into discussion about pathways to preferred futures, with a particular emphasise on how R&D can contribute to achieving this.
Executive Summary
This document summarises preliminary findings of stakeholder consultation on fu... more Executive Summary
This document summarises preliminary findings of stakeholder consultation on future RD&E priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania. The Tasmanian Government and the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) have commissioned a project to identify RD&E priorities that will contribute to delivering preferred futures for Tasmania. A series of project briefings and stakeholder consultations took place the week ending 14 March2014. Additional consultations have been conducted via phone and face-to-face interviews. About 70 people have been involved in the consultation to date. Informants have been approximately equal thirds each from the government, R&D and tertiary education sectors, and the private sector, mostly from agricultural and associated industries.
The main themes emerging from the consultation include the need for future RD&E for:
1. Sustainable resource management – specifically approaches to monitoring and minimising risks arising from intensification of land and water use such as salinization, water logging, eutrophication, flow stress, species loss etc.;
2. Viable, efficient industries – realising opportunities from irrigation, including through optimal production systems and through marketing, branding, QA, new crops, tapping into emerging markets and facilitating development opportunities;
3. Food cultural landscape systems - understanding production landscapes as integrations of material, energy and cultural systems. Water, energy, food system linkages and relationships, need to be better understood to support effective policy, governance and business decisions; and
4. Complexity and futures scanning – a key challenge identified is that business and the community face a sense of escalating and compounding rates of change. Vague aspirations of “resilience” and “adaptive capacity” need to be operationalised using practical approaches to scanning, interpreting and adapting to different change trajectories (futures).
This is the report of a scoping workshop held in Broome Western Australia (WA) on November 3, 201... more This is the report of a scoping workshop held in Broome Western Australia (WA) on November 3, 2015. The workshop was called to explore options for improving water governance in the Kimberley. The workshop initiated discussions on the potential of the water stewardship system and stronger participatory processes to contribute to developing agreed ways forward for managing water in Northern Australia. It focused on identifying issues and options for water stewardship in the Fitzroy River Basin, with the view that this could be used as a model for other river systems in northern Australia.
With increasing concerns about development activities and new proposals in the Fitzroy Valley and West Kimberley, the workshop was structured to provide an opportunity to identify constructive ways of achieving preferred water futures. Over 20 people representing traditional owners, NGOs, researchers and community members gathered at the workshop to discuss how Kimberley people can have a deeper understanding and stronger voice in decisions about the future use and management of rivers and groundwater.
Despite substantive research and community development efforts of recent years, there remains a pressing need to build capacity for participatory governance of water within the wider context of choices about desirable futures and appropriate economies. This demands integrated approaches to building and sustaining industries and communities, whilst also protecting cultural and natural heritage, including living waters and landscapes that make Northern Australia unique. This report summarises the opportunities and challenges identified and charts possible future directions, including future research questions.
Water is a valuable and scarce resource requiring governments to limit diversions, such as, throu... more Water is a valuable and scarce resource requiring governments to limit diversions, such as, through imposing the Murray-Darling Basin Cap on Surface water Diversion (the Cap) in 1995.
This report documents a foresighting workshop held in Launceston, Tasmania in April 2014. It was ... more This report documents a foresighting workshop held in Launceston, Tasmania in April 2014. It was one important step
in a process of stakeholder consultation exploring research, development and extension (RD&E) priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania. The workshop used foresighting methods to involve stakeholders in exploring and generating ideas on the kinds of irrigation-related RD&E that could assist in delivering preferred futures for Tasmania. It was intended to be a forum for exploring possibilities. Approximately 40 industry and government stakeholders generated a wide range of priorities for
future RD&E as well as ideas on how to organise, deliver, and structure RD&E. There was consensus that irrigation-related RD&E is critical to Tasmania and to the challenges of creating a more sustainable and prosperous futures. The workshop identified the need for broad partnerships across the research, education, policy and private sectors. There was strong advocacy for the adoption of ambitious goals, and dynamic and responsive implementation.
Four dominant themes emerged. Future RD&E should:
1. Enable decisions that result in more productive, profitable and viable farms;
2. Assist in attracting investment in production, processing, manufacturing and exporting;
3. Protect catchment health and sustain productivity; and
4. Establish effective innovation networks that actively contribute to the above goals.
The following overarching questions encapsulate and summarise the directions identified:
1. How do we achieve more productive, profitable and viable farms that are able to optimise resources (land, water, capital, labour) and sustain production, while also
minimising risks like salinity, eutrophication and soil decline?
2. How can we attract investment in processing, advanced manufacturing, exporting and marketing that sustains demand for Tasmanian primary products?
3. How can we protect catchment health and sustainably manage natural resources at the farm and catchment scale?
4. What approaches and arrangements for RD&E (the innovation systems) are required to achieve the above goals?
This report provides a summary of the workshop and its key findings. It was part of a process of stakeholder consultation exploring research, development and extension (RD&E) priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania.
This report summarises the findings of the Ecovine project, which focused on developing effective... more This report summarises the findings of the Ecovine project, which focused on developing effective systems for managing Australia's rural environments. Ecovine was initiated by a consortium of industry, government and non-government organisations committed to producing a holistic land management solution.
The consortium - the Australian Conservation Foundation, Southcorp Wines and Land & Water Australia (a Commonwealth R&D Corporation) - identified a pressing need to improve
private and public sector's environmental management in rural Australia and called for a strategic assessment at enterprise and regional scales. It was concerned about the adequacy of existing approaches, aware that to reverse landscape decline - land, water and habitat degradation - coherent, effective and informed systems, capable of shaping the future of Australia's rural landscapes, are required. Systems must be able to stimulate, mobilise and direct the efforts of both the public and
private sector. The consortium wanted an improved understanding of the capacity of current management systems to generate environmental outcomes and identify opportunities for
improvement. The project aimed to identify opportunities to develop stronger and more effective links between the environmental management efforts of industry, community and governments, using the viticulture industry as a case study.
Rod May was an Australian organic farming pioneer rand community leader - a man of the earth. He... more Rod May was an Australian organic farming pioneer rand community leader - a man of the earth. Here is a short piece about how he integrated science into community development, ecological restoration and organic farming
Executive Summary
Changing landscapes
Landscape change is fundamental landuse, land management an... more Executive Summary
Changing landscapes
Landscape change is fundamental landuse, land management and vegetation management changes undertaken on a major scale to improve landscape health and address NRM problems such as loss of biodiversity, salinity, declining water quality etc.
This is the final report of a short consultancy project that explored landscape change and the opportunities to use policy and planning reforms and to bring major investment to these challenges.
The project investigated landscape change options for the non-irrigated agricultural landscapes of the Goulburn Broken Catchment in Northern Victoria. The Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority commissioned a team of consultants lead by Jason Alexandra of Alexandra and Associates Pty Ltd to undertake the work.
The project ran for 4 months – June, July, August and September 2002. The project brief required:
• An analysis and synthesis of many of the complex environmental, economic and social factors determining landscape health and landuse in the Goulburn Broken Catchment, a region with many of the environmental and natural resource issues typical of much of the temperate agricultural areas of South Eastern Australia;
• A strategic assessment of the policy, planning and investment opportunities for accelerating landscape change;
• The conceptual design and development of an investment framework capable of channelling substantial amounts of private sector capital into revegetating and repairing the catchment;
• GIS modelling of landscape change options to assess their potential areas of impact within a case study area in the catchment.
The project looked into:
• Funding NRM - How to attract and manage sufficient investment to finance landscape change on a scale sufficient to achieve NRM outcomes.
• Aligning change mechanisms - How to systematically match priorities for changes in landuse or management with potential mechanisms.
• Choosing and using mechanisms - How to develop improved capacity for choosing and using new and existing mechanisms (policy and planning instruments) to generate measurable landscape change.
• Linking statutory and catchment planning - How to use the statutory and catchment planning framework to achieve NRM outcomes.
• Achieving landscape change - How to apply new and existing mechanisms in a coordinated targeted and cost effective fashion to achieve landscape change.
• Opportunities to use more spatially explicit planning to support implementation of the various NRM strategies - salinity, water quality, biodiversity etc.
There was consensus that irrigation-related RD&E is critical to Tasmania and to the challenges of... more There was consensus that irrigation-related RD&E is critical to Tasmania and to the challenges of creating a more sustainable and prosperous futures. The workshop identified the need for broad partnerships across the research, education, policy and private sectors. There was strong advocacy for the adoption of ambitious goals, and dynamic and responsive implementation towards those goals.
Four dominant themes emerged. Future RD&E should:
1. Enable decisions that result in more productive, profitable and viable farms;
2. Assist in attracting investment in production, processing, manufacturing and exporting;
3. Protect catchment health and sustain productivity; and
4. Establish effective innovation networks that actively contribute to the above.
The following overarching questions encapsulate and summarise the directions identified:
1. How do we achieve more productive, profitable and viable farms that are able to optimise resources (land, water, capital, labour) and sustain production, while also minimising risks like salinity, eutrophication and soil decline?
2. How can we attract investment in processing, advanced manufacturing, exporting and marketing that sustains demand for Tasmanian primary products?
3. How can we protect catchment health and sustainably manage natural resources at the farm and catchment scale?
4. What approaches and arrangements for RD&E (the innovation systems) are required to achieve the above goals?
This report provides a summary of the workshop and its key findings.
Since the 1960s there has been deep concern about global limits and limited resources. With co-au... more Since the 1960s there has been deep concern about global limits and limited resources. With co-author Andrew campbell, in this article we ask: what’s not “peak” in the world and how can these more abundant resources be used to resolve the “peak everything” challenge? We look to where solutions could be found.
The management of native vegetation and biodiversity has been highlighted as a priority issue by ... more The management of native vegetation and biodiversity has been highlighted as a priority issue by Land & Water Australia for future R&D investment because of its critical role in provision of ecosystem services (eg fresh water), in improving landscape function (eg in controlling salinity and erosion), in enhancing production (eg through provision of shelter) and in mitigating climate change (eg through carbon sequestration).
Extensive national scoping of the R&D needs and opportunities led to the development of an investment prospectus which has been discussed with a wide range of potential program partners. These discussions have led to this program plan which aims to address vegetation and biodiversity issues in both the intensive and extensive landscapes of Australia. The plan is organised around six themes which have a strong focus on improved knowledge generation, application and adoption. The six R&D themes are:
1. Understanding and valuing landscape processes, including the role and function of biodiversity in the delivery of ecosystem services
2. Understanding risks and threatening processes in order to develop effective responses
3. Understanding ecosystem processes, condition and dynamics
4. Informing policy and management - developing Australia’s capacity to effectively manage vegetation and biodiversity
5. Enhancing national R&D capacity in native vegetation, ecosystem services and biodiversity
6. Effective communication and adoption.
The program will be a collaborative partnership between a wide range of agencies with interest in native vegetation and biodiversity.
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Papers and reports by Jason Alexandra
Australia. Reliable high-value production enabled
by irrigation contributes significantly to the value
of agricultural production yet there are deep
uncertainties about how future water availability
will be affected by climate change, with repeated
warnings about drier futures for southern and
eastern Australia. This paper explores issues of water
insecurity in Australian irrigated agriculture from
the perspective of the policy and climate risks. For
example, Australia’s National Water initiative aims
to increase water security for water entitlement
holders but also assigns risks to water security
arising from climate change and changes in policy
settings. Focusing mostly on recent reforms to water
policy, it looks at how issues of security are defined
and addressed in the Murray Darling Basin. The
paper outlines ideas about water security through
supply-side engineering before exploring how climate
and policy reforms have altered ideas about water
security. However, with climatic sources of water (rain)
the key but uncontrollable variable, in future water
security, it seems that learning to adapt, may be the
best responses to the eradicable uncertainty and
irreducible risks induced by a changing climate.
The widespread adoption of irrigation represents a significant shift in Tasmanian agriculture. Expansion of irrigation continues with new schemes in planning, construction and commission phases. Foresighting or scenario planning was used to assist in the planning process. The scenarios were focused through the lens of irrigation, water resources and related industries, but to do so will need to take into account broader socio-political, economic and environmental drivers, such as global food and fibre supply and demand and climate change impacts, both direct and indirect. Each scenario covered a range of drivers or driver types spanning natural resources and climate, socio-political, market and industry development etc. These were constructed to focus stakeholders thinking and discussion on the nature, roles and focus of the innovation systems and the way specific RD&E interacts with the issues and addresses specific risks and opportunities. The scenarios were intended to be sufficiently provocative as to generate debate, yet sufficiently ground in plausible trajectories of change as to be credible.
The scenarios were used to elicit a variety of responses about stakeholders beliefs or conceptualisation of the “nature of the future” and be used to draw people into discussion about pathways to preferred futures, with a particular emphasise on how R&D can contribute to achieving this.
This document summarises preliminary findings of stakeholder consultation on future RD&E priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania. The Tasmanian Government and the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) have commissioned a project to identify RD&E priorities that will contribute to delivering preferred futures for Tasmania. A series of project briefings and stakeholder consultations took place the week ending 14 March2014. Additional consultations have been conducted via phone and face-to-face interviews. About 70 people have been involved in the consultation to date. Informants have been approximately equal thirds each from the government, R&D and tertiary education sectors, and the private sector, mostly from agricultural and associated industries.
The main themes emerging from the consultation include the need for future RD&E for:
1. Sustainable resource management – specifically approaches to monitoring and minimising risks arising from intensification of land and water use such as salinization, water logging, eutrophication, flow stress, species loss etc.;
2. Viable, efficient industries – realising opportunities from irrigation, including through optimal production systems and through marketing, branding, QA, new crops, tapping into emerging markets and facilitating development opportunities;
3. Food cultural landscape systems - understanding production landscapes as integrations of material, energy and cultural systems. Water, energy, food system linkages and relationships, need to be better understood to support effective policy, governance and business decisions; and
4. Complexity and futures scanning – a key challenge identified is that business and the community face a sense of escalating and compounding rates of change. Vague aspirations of “resilience” and “adaptive capacity” need to be operationalised using practical approaches to scanning, interpreting and adapting to different change trajectories (futures).
With increasing concerns about development activities and new proposals in the Fitzroy Valley and West Kimberley, the workshop was structured to provide an opportunity to identify constructive ways of achieving preferred water futures. Over 20 people representing traditional owners, NGOs, researchers and community members gathered at the workshop to discuss how Kimberley people can have a deeper understanding and stronger voice in decisions about the future use and management of rivers and groundwater.
Despite substantive research and community development efforts of recent years, there remains a pressing need to build capacity for participatory governance of water within the wider context of choices about desirable futures and appropriate economies. This demands integrated approaches to building and sustaining industries and communities, whilst also protecting cultural and natural heritage, including living waters and landscapes that make Northern Australia unique. This report summarises the opportunities and challenges identified and charts possible future directions, including future research questions.
in a process of stakeholder consultation exploring research, development and extension (RD&E) priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania. The workshop used foresighting methods to involve stakeholders in exploring and generating ideas on the kinds of irrigation-related RD&E that could assist in delivering preferred futures for Tasmania. It was intended to be a forum for exploring possibilities. Approximately 40 industry and government stakeholders generated a wide range of priorities for
future RD&E as well as ideas on how to organise, deliver, and structure RD&E. There was consensus that irrigation-related RD&E is critical to Tasmania and to the challenges of creating a more sustainable and prosperous futures. The workshop identified the need for broad partnerships across the research, education, policy and private sectors. There was strong advocacy for the adoption of ambitious goals, and dynamic and responsive implementation.
Four dominant themes emerged. Future RD&E should:
1. Enable decisions that result in more productive, profitable and viable farms;
2. Assist in attracting investment in production, processing, manufacturing and exporting;
3. Protect catchment health and sustain productivity; and
4. Establish effective innovation networks that actively contribute to the above goals.
The following overarching questions encapsulate and summarise the directions identified:
1. How do we achieve more productive, profitable and viable farms that are able to optimise resources (land, water, capital, labour) and sustain production, while also
minimising risks like salinity, eutrophication and soil decline?
2. How can we attract investment in processing, advanced manufacturing, exporting and marketing that sustains demand for Tasmanian primary products?
3. How can we protect catchment health and sustainably manage natural resources at the farm and catchment scale?
4. What approaches and arrangements for RD&E (the innovation systems) are required to achieve the above goals?
This report provides a summary of the workshop and its key findings. It was part of a process of stakeholder consultation exploring research, development and extension (RD&E) priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania.
The consortium - the Australian Conservation Foundation, Southcorp Wines and Land & Water Australia (a Commonwealth R&D Corporation) - identified a pressing need to improve
private and public sector's environmental management in rural Australia and called for a strategic assessment at enterprise and regional scales. It was concerned about the adequacy of existing approaches, aware that to reverse landscape decline - land, water and habitat degradation - coherent, effective and informed systems, capable of shaping the future of Australia's rural landscapes, are required. Systems must be able to stimulate, mobilise and direct the efforts of both the public and
private sector. The consortium wanted an improved understanding of the capacity of current management systems to generate environmental outcomes and identify opportunities for
improvement. The project aimed to identify opportunities to develop stronger and more effective links between the environmental management efforts of industry, community and governments, using the viticulture industry as a case study.
Changing landscapes
Landscape change is fundamental landuse, land management and vegetation management changes undertaken on a major scale to improve landscape health and address NRM problems such as loss of biodiversity, salinity, declining water quality etc.
This is the final report of a short consultancy project that explored landscape change and the opportunities to use policy and planning reforms and to bring major investment to these challenges.
The project investigated landscape change options for the non-irrigated agricultural landscapes of the Goulburn Broken Catchment in Northern Victoria. The Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority commissioned a team of consultants lead by Jason Alexandra of Alexandra and Associates Pty Ltd to undertake the work.
The project ran for 4 months – June, July, August and September 2002. The project brief required:
• An analysis and synthesis of many of the complex environmental, economic and social factors determining landscape health and landuse in the Goulburn Broken Catchment, a region with many of the environmental and natural resource issues typical of much of the temperate agricultural areas of South Eastern Australia;
• A strategic assessment of the policy, planning and investment opportunities for accelerating landscape change;
• The conceptual design and development of an investment framework capable of channelling substantial amounts of private sector capital into revegetating and repairing the catchment;
• GIS modelling of landscape change options to assess their potential areas of impact within a case study area in the catchment.
The project looked into:
• Funding NRM - How to attract and manage sufficient investment to finance landscape change on a scale sufficient to achieve NRM outcomes.
• Aligning change mechanisms - How to systematically match priorities for changes in landuse or management with potential mechanisms.
• Choosing and using mechanisms - How to develop improved capacity for choosing and using new and existing mechanisms (policy and planning instruments) to generate measurable landscape change.
• Linking statutory and catchment planning - How to use the statutory and catchment planning framework to achieve NRM outcomes.
• Achieving landscape change - How to apply new and existing mechanisms in a coordinated targeted and cost effective fashion to achieve landscape change.
• Opportunities to use more spatially explicit planning to support implementation of the various NRM strategies - salinity, water quality, biodiversity etc.
Four dominant themes emerged. Future RD&E should:
1. Enable decisions that result in more productive, profitable and viable farms;
2. Assist in attracting investment in production, processing, manufacturing and exporting;
3. Protect catchment health and sustain productivity; and
4. Establish effective innovation networks that actively contribute to the above.
The following overarching questions encapsulate and summarise the directions identified:
1. How do we achieve more productive, profitable and viable farms that are able to optimise resources (land, water, capital, labour) and sustain production, while also minimising risks like salinity, eutrophication and soil decline?
2. How can we attract investment in processing, advanced manufacturing, exporting and marketing that sustains demand for Tasmanian primary products?
3. How can we protect catchment health and sustainably manage natural resources at the farm and catchment scale?
4. What approaches and arrangements for RD&E (the innovation systems) are required to achieve the above goals?
This report provides a summary of the workshop and its key findings.
Extensive national scoping of the R&D needs and opportunities led to the development of an investment prospectus which has been discussed with a wide range of potential program partners. These discussions have led to this program plan which aims to address vegetation and biodiversity issues in both the intensive and extensive landscapes of Australia. The plan is organised around six themes which have a strong focus on improved knowledge generation, application and adoption. The six R&D themes are:
1. Understanding and valuing landscape processes, including the role and function of biodiversity in the delivery of ecosystem services
2. Understanding risks and threatening processes in order to develop effective responses
3. Understanding ecosystem processes, condition and dynamics
4. Informing policy and management - developing Australia’s capacity to effectively manage vegetation and biodiversity
5. Enhancing national R&D capacity in native vegetation, ecosystem services and biodiversity
6. Effective communication and adoption.
The program will be a collaborative partnership between a wide range of agencies with interest in native vegetation and biodiversity.
Australia. Reliable high-value production enabled
by irrigation contributes significantly to the value
of agricultural production yet there are deep
uncertainties about how future water availability
will be affected by climate change, with repeated
warnings about drier futures for southern and
eastern Australia. This paper explores issues of water
insecurity in Australian irrigated agriculture from
the perspective of the policy and climate risks. For
example, Australia’s National Water initiative aims
to increase water security for water entitlement
holders but also assigns risks to water security
arising from climate change and changes in policy
settings. Focusing mostly on recent reforms to water
policy, it looks at how issues of security are defined
and addressed in the Murray Darling Basin. The
paper outlines ideas about water security through
supply-side engineering before exploring how climate
and policy reforms have altered ideas about water
security. However, with climatic sources of water (rain)
the key but uncontrollable variable, in future water
security, it seems that learning to adapt, may be the
best responses to the eradicable uncertainty and
irreducible risks induced by a changing climate.
The widespread adoption of irrigation represents a significant shift in Tasmanian agriculture. Expansion of irrigation continues with new schemes in planning, construction and commission phases. Foresighting or scenario planning was used to assist in the planning process. The scenarios were focused through the lens of irrigation, water resources and related industries, but to do so will need to take into account broader socio-political, economic and environmental drivers, such as global food and fibre supply and demand and climate change impacts, both direct and indirect. Each scenario covered a range of drivers or driver types spanning natural resources and climate, socio-political, market and industry development etc. These were constructed to focus stakeholders thinking and discussion on the nature, roles and focus of the innovation systems and the way specific RD&E interacts with the issues and addresses specific risks and opportunities. The scenarios were intended to be sufficiently provocative as to generate debate, yet sufficiently ground in plausible trajectories of change as to be credible.
The scenarios were used to elicit a variety of responses about stakeholders beliefs or conceptualisation of the “nature of the future” and be used to draw people into discussion about pathways to preferred futures, with a particular emphasise on how R&D can contribute to achieving this.
This document summarises preliminary findings of stakeholder consultation on future RD&E priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania. The Tasmanian Government and the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) have commissioned a project to identify RD&E priorities that will contribute to delivering preferred futures for Tasmania. A series of project briefings and stakeholder consultations took place the week ending 14 March2014. Additional consultations have been conducted via phone and face-to-face interviews. About 70 people have been involved in the consultation to date. Informants have been approximately equal thirds each from the government, R&D and tertiary education sectors, and the private sector, mostly from agricultural and associated industries.
The main themes emerging from the consultation include the need for future RD&E for:
1. Sustainable resource management – specifically approaches to monitoring and minimising risks arising from intensification of land and water use such as salinization, water logging, eutrophication, flow stress, species loss etc.;
2. Viable, efficient industries – realising opportunities from irrigation, including through optimal production systems and through marketing, branding, QA, new crops, tapping into emerging markets and facilitating development opportunities;
3. Food cultural landscape systems - understanding production landscapes as integrations of material, energy and cultural systems. Water, energy, food system linkages and relationships, need to be better understood to support effective policy, governance and business decisions; and
4. Complexity and futures scanning – a key challenge identified is that business and the community face a sense of escalating and compounding rates of change. Vague aspirations of “resilience” and “adaptive capacity” need to be operationalised using practical approaches to scanning, interpreting and adapting to different change trajectories (futures).
With increasing concerns about development activities and new proposals in the Fitzroy Valley and West Kimberley, the workshop was structured to provide an opportunity to identify constructive ways of achieving preferred water futures. Over 20 people representing traditional owners, NGOs, researchers and community members gathered at the workshop to discuss how Kimberley people can have a deeper understanding and stronger voice in decisions about the future use and management of rivers and groundwater.
Despite substantive research and community development efforts of recent years, there remains a pressing need to build capacity for participatory governance of water within the wider context of choices about desirable futures and appropriate economies. This demands integrated approaches to building and sustaining industries and communities, whilst also protecting cultural and natural heritage, including living waters and landscapes that make Northern Australia unique. This report summarises the opportunities and challenges identified and charts possible future directions, including future research questions.
in a process of stakeholder consultation exploring research, development and extension (RD&E) priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania. The workshop used foresighting methods to involve stakeholders in exploring and generating ideas on the kinds of irrigation-related RD&E that could assist in delivering preferred futures for Tasmania. It was intended to be a forum for exploring possibilities. Approximately 40 industry and government stakeholders generated a wide range of priorities for
future RD&E as well as ideas on how to organise, deliver, and structure RD&E. There was consensus that irrigation-related RD&E is critical to Tasmania and to the challenges of creating a more sustainable and prosperous futures. The workshop identified the need for broad partnerships across the research, education, policy and private sectors. There was strong advocacy for the adoption of ambitious goals, and dynamic and responsive implementation.
Four dominant themes emerged. Future RD&E should:
1. Enable decisions that result in more productive, profitable and viable farms;
2. Assist in attracting investment in production, processing, manufacturing and exporting;
3. Protect catchment health and sustain productivity; and
4. Establish effective innovation networks that actively contribute to the above goals.
The following overarching questions encapsulate and summarise the directions identified:
1. How do we achieve more productive, profitable and viable farms that are able to optimise resources (land, water, capital, labour) and sustain production, while also
minimising risks like salinity, eutrophication and soil decline?
2. How can we attract investment in processing, advanced manufacturing, exporting and marketing that sustains demand for Tasmanian primary products?
3. How can we protect catchment health and sustainably manage natural resources at the farm and catchment scale?
4. What approaches and arrangements for RD&E (the innovation systems) are required to achieve the above goals?
This report provides a summary of the workshop and its key findings. It was part of a process of stakeholder consultation exploring research, development and extension (RD&E) priorities for irrigated agriculture in Tasmania.
The consortium - the Australian Conservation Foundation, Southcorp Wines and Land & Water Australia (a Commonwealth R&D Corporation) - identified a pressing need to improve
private and public sector's environmental management in rural Australia and called for a strategic assessment at enterprise and regional scales. It was concerned about the adequacy of existing approaches, aware that to reverse landscape decline - land, water and habitat degradation - coherent, effective and informed systems, capable of shaping the future of Australia's rural landscapes, are required. Systems must be able to stimulate, mobilise and direct the efforts of both the public and
private sector. The consortium wanted an improved understanding of the capacity of current management systems to generate environmental outcomes and identify opportunities for
improvement. The project aimed to identify opportunities to develop stronger and more effective links between the environmental management efforts of industry, community and governments, using the viticulture industry as a case study.
Changing landscapes
Landscape change is fundamental landuse, land management and vegetation management changes undertaken on a major scale to improve landscape health and address NRM problems such as loss of biodiversity, salinity, declining water quality etc.
This is the final report of a short consultancy project that explored landscape change and the opportunities to use policy and planning reforms and to bring major investment to these challenges.
The project investigated landscape change options for the non-irrigated agricultural landscapes of the Goulburn Broken Catchment in Northern Victoria. The Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority commissioned a team of consultants lead by Jason Alexandra of Alexandra and Associates Pty Ltd to undertake the work.
The project ran for 4 months – June, July, August and September 2002. The project brief required:
• An analysis and synthesis of many of the complex environmental, economic and social factors determining landscape health and landuse in the Goulburn Broken Catchment, a region with many of the environmental and natural resource issues typical of much of the temperate agricultural areas of South Eastern Australia;
• A strategic assessment of the policy, planning and investment opportunities for accelerating landscape change;
• The conceptual design and development of an investment framework capable of channelling substantial amounts of private sector capital into revegetating and repairing the catchment;
• GIS modelling of landscape change options to assess their potential areas of impact within a case study area in the catchment.
The project looked into:
• Funding NRM - How to attract and manage sufficient investment to finance landscape change on a scale sufficient to achieve NRM outcomes.
• Aligning change mechanisms - How to systematically match priorities for changes in landuse or management with potential mechanisms.
• Choosing and using mechanisms - How to develop improved capacity for choosing and using new and existing mechanisms (policy and planning instruments) to generate measurable landscape change.
• Linking statutory and catchment planning - How to use the statutory and catchment planning framework to achieve NRM outcomes.
• Achieving landscape change - How to apply new and existing mechanisms in a coordinated targeted and cost effective fashion to achieve landscape change.
• Opportunities to use more spatially explicit planning to support implementation of the various NRM strategies - salinity, water quality, biodiversity etc.
Four dominant themes emerged. Future RD&E should:
1. Enable decisions that result in more productive, profitable and viable farms;
2. Assist in attracting investment in production, processing, manufacturing and exporting;
3. Protect catchment health and sustain productivity; and
4. Establish effective innovation networks that actively contribute to the above.
The following overarching questions encapsulate and summarise the directions identified:
1. How do we achieve more productive, profitable and viable farms that are able to optimise resources (land, water, capital, labour) and sustain production, while also minimising risks like salinity, eutrophication and soil decline?
2. How can we attract investment in processing, advanced manufacturing, exporting and marketing that sustains demand for Tasmanian primary products?
3. How can we protect catchment health and sustainably manage natural resources at the farm and catchment scale?
4. What approaches and arrangements for RD&E (the innovation systems) are required to achieve the above goals?
This report provides a summary of the workshop and its key findings.
Extensive national scoping of the R&D needs and opportunities led to the development of an investment prospectus which has been discussed with a wide range of potential program partners. These discussions have led to this program plan which aims to address vegetation and biodiversity issues in both the intensive and extensive landscapes of Australia. The plan is organised around six themes which have a strong focus on improved knowledge generation, application and adoption. The six R&D themes are:
1. Understanding and valuing landscape processes, including the role and function of biodiversity in the delivery of ecosystem services
2. Understanding risks and threatening processes in order to develop effective responses
3. Understanding ecosystem processes, condition and dynamics
4. Informing policy and management - developing Australia’s capacity to effectively manage vegetation and biodiversity
5. Enhancing national R&D capacity in native vegetation, ecosystem services and biodiversity
6. Effective communication and adoption.
The program will be a collaborative partnership between a wide range of agencies with interest in native vegetation and biodiversity.
The Victorian Irrigation Act of 1886 gave legislative effect to his ideas that “the state should exercise the supreme control of ownership over all rivers, lakes, streams and sources of water supply ” [Brett ] (p. 114).
The Victorian Act became the foundation of
Australian water law, partly dispensing with the British “riparian doctrine” und.
As the owner, states granted “water rights” to develop irrigation. These were attached to land titles until late in the
20th century, when, consistent with prevailing market orientated political ideologies governments created tradable titles to water, effectively “privatising” publicly owned water resources. Throughout the 20th century boosterism dominated Australia’s water policies. Due to an alignment of prevailing ideologies and technologies, most rivers in Southern and Eastern Australia, including in the MDB, were dammed at the nation’s expense to supply irrigation.
While irrigation secures agricultural production in a variable climate, these impressive water storages are more than pragmatic responses to a variable climate. Large dams provide potent symbols of the modern state satisfying dreams of taming rivers, greening deserts and making land productive that run deep in the nation’s psyche.
Irrigation development was enabled by technology but driven by ideals of progress, agrarianism and national development.
Are we losing the authority and legitimacy needed to govern the Basin?
Pressure is mounting for further reforms due to corrosive scandals – eg ABC 4 corners.
Inquiries have revealed serious concerns about probity, integrity, maladministration and the adequacy of compliance and enforcement regimesSA Royal Commission.
This crisis draws attention to the need for reforms to governance institutions.
Lets openly explore the redesign of the institutional architecture in the MDB.
Profound social and climate challenges
Reformed models used in adaptively governing large complex socio-ecological systems
What arrangements are suited to the challenges of governing the Basin in the 21st century?
We need for institutions with capacity for strategic navigation, goal seeking and the cultural co-construction of authority.
Anthroscapes of the Anthropocence
Biodiverse mega cities - a design brief (Jason Alexandra)
A fundamental question facing humanity is how do we sustain humans and other species (biodiversity) given that the world operates as one vast interconnected system that relentlessly exploits natural resources. This presentation outlines a design brief for biodiverse cities - an overstated situation analysis framing the context is followed by an indication of prospective areas for solutions development and deployment.
The modern world functions as a giant global city with over 4 billion people - this unprecedented empire of consumption is linked by transport networks moving materials, goods and peoples on a scale unparalleled in human history. Flotillas of ships, countless trucks and trains and squadrons of airplanes criss-cross the planet. Everyday huge numbers of people move. Millions of motor vehicles deliver the armies of commuters needed to sustain commerce and the institutions of state. A vast global hinterland supplies food, fibre, water and raw materials. Armies of machines reshape the face of the earth – building, mining, farming etc - while millions of pumps and cascades of dams remodel the hydrology of the world’s rivers, catchments and aquifers. Fleets of trawlers dredge the oceans to supply the city’s insatiable desire for seafood.
A global biodiversity and extinction crisis is unfolding due to the cumulative impacts of the cities’ relentless appetites and technological prowess. A range of shocks could accelerate this crisis including the unfolding climate chaos with intensifying droughts in the mid latitudes and devastating monsoonal floods in the tropics.
During the 20th century, the world population tripled, water use increased six-fold and the area devoted to agriculture escalated. Technology, consumption patterns and growth in population delivered unprecedented rates of change to global systems. Humans became the world’s dominant evolutionary force. The 21st century is the “Anthropocene”. Therefore, as citizens of the Anthropocene we must accept our new responsibilities for looking after both human needs and the planetary life support systems including biodiversity. We must learn how to “garden” the planet out of self-interest and to sustain culture and nature. We need the “global city” to function and thrive while transitioning it to a system that can:
1. Conserve and enhance biodiversity and sustain critical ecosystem services
2. Supply 9 billion people’s needs for food and resources
3. Operate after the end of cheap fossil energy and the decarbonising of the economy (eg reduce emissions and increase sequestration)
4. Adapt to climatic chaos unprecedented since the birth of agriculture.
The following are suggested as possible directions:
1. Mobilise global interest and resources towards biodiverse cities, both within the cities’ precincts and through their functional relationships –eg supply chains.
2. Celebrate nature and incorporate biodiversity conservation as a priority into the physical and cultural fabric of the city
3. Innovate the innovation systems - unleash human creativity in all its forms, especially in the design or sustainability sciences that can help reshape cities and civilisations.
4. Develop “green” design solutions in urban planning, water and energy infrastructure, building and manufacturing
5. Support urban food gardens and peri-urban farming, that is diverse and uses a design based approach to maximising synergistic benefits
6. Unleash a global program of eco restoration, reafforestation and permaculture.
agroecology and permaculture to explore options for applying ecological design as a planning and problem-solving framework. The paper concludes that design-based approaches offer significant opportunities for using ecological science to integrate conservation and production in agricultural
landscapes in ways that can meet human needs while also conserving biodiversity under climate change.
With widespread concerns about ecological, economic and cultural impacts of resource developments, including new irrigation in the West Kimberley, a project was structured to provide an opportunity to identify constructive options for improving water governance. Traditional owners, NGOs, researchers and community members gathered in Broome to discuss how Kimberley people can have a stronger voice in shaping water futures.
The project findings include that:
1. There remains a pressing need for participatory processes that build trust and contribute to developing agreed ways forward.
2. Development models appropriate to the Kimberley need to sustain industries and communities and protect cultural and natural heritage, including living waters and landscapes
3. The ecological, material and cultural values of the riverine systems are inseparably intertwined. It is therefore reasonable to claim that all the water is already allocated and new extractive uses are a form of reallocation. Existing traditional uses need to be formally recognised as a form of water property right prior to allocation of new extractive rights.
4. Caution is required in issuing new extractive water licences. There remain many unresolved issues regarding the relationships between proposed new water rights and existing customary use and native title rights. Lengthy legal proceedings could result if the native rights, heritage values and customary use are degraded by extractive uses.
With widespread concerns about ecological, economic and cultural impacts of resource developments, including new irrigation in the West Kimberley, a project was structured to provide an opportunity to identify constructive options for improving water governance. Traditional owners, NGOs, researchers and community members gathered in Broome to discuss how Kimberley people can have a stronger voice in shaping water futures.
The project findings include that:
1. There remains a pressing need for participatory processes that build trust and contribute to developing agreed ways forward.
2. Development models appropriate to the Kimberley need to sustain industries and communities and protect cultural and natural heritage, including living waters and landscapes
3. The ecological, material and cultural values of the riverine systems are inseparably intertwined. It is therefore reasonable to claim that all the water is already allocated and new extractive uses are a form of reallocation. Existing traditional uses need to be formally recognised as a form of water property right prior to allocation of new extractive rights.
4. Caution is required in issuing new extractive water licences. There remain many unresolved issues regarding the relationships between proposed new water rights and existing customary use and native title rights. Lengthy legal proceedings could result if the native rights, heritage values and customary use are degraded by extractive uses.
In “The Anthropocene and Geography III: Future Directions” Noel Castree appeals to geographers to actively engage in debates about the Anthropocene. Challenging geographers to recast knowledge about human and ‘natural’ environments so as to imaginatively and practically ‘re-graph the geo’.
The rivers of the Anthropocene provide rich material for both reimagining and reordering causal relationships between humans and ‘nature’. The slow emergency of the world's rivers can be attributed to three deeply entrenched historical causes - catchment deforestation; extraction of water; and pollution – central to agrarian, hydraulic and industrial civilisations. Despite anthropogenic climate change rendering the ideal of ‘natural’ rivers redundant, significant effort is being devoted to restoring rivers internationally. Australia's Murray Darling Basin demonstrates the difficulties of redressing established patterns of exploitation, with institutionalised worldviews reinforcing the status quo and limiting reform, demonstrating that new governance models need to be based in different rationalities, the rethinking and reordering of fundamental relationships and imaginatively mapping possibilities. Therefore an explicit challenge of re-graphing the geo is the harnessing of creative powers through engaging people in processes that disrupt and reorder, recombine, contrast, and challenge notions of possible futures. Enabling the creative processes of “world making” reveals much about our mental models that shape our conceptualisation of what is likely, desirable or possible. Drawing on work in the Kimberley, Tasmania and the MDB, this paper explores participatory, future orientated and empowering planning approaches that help redefine our relationships to rivers.
The study methodology involved interviews of experts and practitioners across the irrigation sector coupled with a structured literature review to cross-confirm findings. Respondents were generous with their time and ideas. In addition to expressing strong support for and interest in the initiative they provided a wide array of relevant information and suggestions.
The general conclusion is that there is significant potential to increase water and energy productivity in irrigated agriculture through efficiency measures, the electrification of pumping and the adoption of solar power. Achieving this demands a coordinated RD&E program supported by alignment of water and energy policy at the highest level.
Substantiate "clean and green" claims
Australian agricultural industries must generate credible systems for managing their environmental effects, and for measuring and communicating their environmental performance. Failing this, they risk the imposition of harsher regulation, missing market opportunities, and conveying a negative image to the public.
The use of independent certification systems and/or systematic approaches to managing the environment could assist rural industries respond to environmental challenges and is likely to improve market opportunities.
Individual producers or entire industries should no longer expect government, peak industry bodies, processors or marketing boards to do their PR on environmental issues. Markets are seeking assurance and verification of quality claims, including claims regarding environmental impacts of production in very specific ways.
Claims need to be authenticated. Verification systems require "chain of custody" or audit trails from paddock to plate to be credible, as well as rigorous and detailed systems setting targets and for measuring environmental effects.
Internationally recognised certification systems use independent inspection and auditing procedures to provide assurances on the environmental credentials of a diverse range of products, marketed around the world. In the primary industries, there are systems for certifying forestry, fisheries and organic agricultural products.
There are now also generic standards ISO 14000 for implementing environmental management systems. These are applicable to a wide range of industries.
Environmental management systems (EMS) are methodical approaches to organising the planning, implementation and review of an organisation's or business's attempts to manage its impacts on the environment. They aim to achieve "continuous improvement" using a "plan, act, monitor and review" cycle adaptive environmental management within the commercial sphere.
Australian agricultural industries have the opportunity of learning from efforts to develop certification systems in fisheries, forestry and organic farming. They can also learn from the adoption of EMS to ISO 14000 standards across a range of other industries.
Governments have an international obligation to support and develop capacity in environmental management and reporting. Australian governments can harness the power of the market to generate improved environmental outcomes, but concerted efforts that are relevant to, and have the support of, the private sector are necessary.
This is the report of a project which used a consultative approach to identify the crucial policy reforms needed to permit farm forestry to flourish. Farm forestry development would be accelerated by the removal of the chief cultural, market and public policy impediments, but numerous other factors will contribute to the successes or otherwise of farm forestry.
The report sets farm forestry development in context, describes the principal impediments and the options for overcoming them.
community groups, and businesses) in six regions from around Australia were identified. The practicality of these
indicators and their value as decision-making tools was explored. Links with environmental indicators recommended
for national state of the environment reporting were identified. The use of data gathered by the community to
support these indicators was investigated.
• explore the use of environmental indicators as tools to improve the flow of information to regional environmental
managers;
• explore links between environmental indicators useful to regional environmental managers and those used for
reporting on the state of the environment at the national scale; and
• explore the role of community environmental monitoring in providing information about trends in the environment
to managers and for use in state of the environment reporting.