Cotton Catchment Communities CRC Communities Workshop contributing to natural resource policy

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Cotton Catchment Communities CRCCommunities
Workshop contributing to natural resource
policy

• 24 February 2009
• www.triplehelix.com.au

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Outline

• Dreaming the ideal
• Socio-economic impact
• NRM policy
• The intersections between them
• Influencing policy

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Dreaming the ideal

• What would success look like? CCCCRC would
• know its catchments communities backwards and
  inside-out mutually beneficial interactions
• be the go to organisation for all
  socio-economic impact data, for locals and
  outsiders
• build a lasting legacy of communities knowledge
  with durable, long-term knowledge custodianship
  sorted
• engage, employ or know the key experts at the
  interface between policy and regions
• become a valued knowledge platformthat persists
  beyond CRC program funding

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Socio-economic impact

• First understand the local community
• Key trends
• Factors affecting those trends
• Demographics
• Who lives here and why?
• how do they make a living?
• Drivers
• of community vitality, economic activity,
  employment
• Vulnerabilities
• What could weaken drivers or impose new costs?

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Resilience

• A much-used term the new sustainability?
• Like sustainability
• spongy, ambiguous, slippery concept
• but useful at its core
• Resilience is a crucial parameter in a highly
  variable system
• the ability to recover, to bounce back, without
  loss of fundamental capacity or key
  characteristics
• Key elements of resilience
• diversity (of industries, revenue, people etc)
• skills capacity
• adaptability, flexibility, nimbleness

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NRM Policy

• A curious choice for this workshop?
• why not education, or infrastructure, or
  employment, or population, or trade policy?
• Does not occur in a vacuum
• Responds to 3 key drivers
• Natural resource condition trends
• Driven by climate and use pressures (consumption)
• Stakeholder pressures/noise
• Political commitments momentum
• These tend to influence each other,usually with
  a time lag

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Anticipating and Influencing NRM Policy

• First, understand the drivers behind the
  particular policy
• E.g. for water policy, understand trends in both
  supply demand
• and how they relate to both the National Water
  Initiative (NWI) and the new Basin Plan
• Second, understand how policy is both interpreted
  and implementedin cotton catchments

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The National Water Initiative

• 1. clear and nationally-compatible
  characteristics for secure water access
  entitlements
• 2. transparent, statutory-based water planning
• 3. statutory provision for environmental and
  other public benefit outcomes, and improved
  environmental management practices
• 4. complete the return of all currently
  over-allocated or overused systems to
  environmentally-sustainable levels of extraction
• 5. progressive removal of barriers to trade in
  water and meeting other requirements to
  facilitate the broadening and deepening of an
  open trading water market
• 6. clarity around the assignment of risk arising
  from future changes in the availability of water
  for the consumptive pool
• 7. water accounting able to meet the information
  needs of different water systems in respect to
  planning, monitoring, trading, environmental
  management and on-farm
• 8. policy that facilitates water use efficiency
  and innovation in urban and rural areas
• addressing future adjustment issues that may
  impact on water users and communities
• recognition of the connectivity between surface
  and groundwater resources and connected systems
  managed as a single resource.

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Other NRM policy issues

• Water policy literacy is essential, but not
  sufficient
• Carbon, water, energy food are converging as
  policy challenges
• These have major implications
• for e.g. infrastructure, education, health,
  planning etc
• These are fast-moving policy domains
• Governments are struggling as well as communities
• Get on front foot, not too narrow in looking for
  support
• e.g. 2nd generation biofuels RD program
• cool communities, schools programs

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Influencing NRM Policy

• Its a crowded space, so understand where you
  fit, and collaborate where possible
• No point pressuring one level of government if
  decisions are made elsewhere
• Analyse carefully so you cant be brushed off
• Try to think through so that you can initiate
  projects that meet local needs while consistent
  with high level policy settings
• go upwards with solutions, not problems or wish
  lists

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Some components of the Australian NRM Knowledge
System
Australian Greenhouse Office

• RD Corporations
• Cotton
• Fisheries
• Forest and Wood Products
• Grains
• Grape and Wine
• Land Water Australia
• Rural Industries
• Sugar

Australian Bureau of Statistics
CSIRO ANU
Community Landcare groups
Geoscience Australia
Horticulture Australia
Hobby Farmers
Regional NRM Bodies
Knowledge Generation and Management
Knowledge Adoption
Universities
Water Authorities
Australian Wool Innovation
Australian Pork Limited
Indigenous Communities
Commercial Advisory Services
Indigenous Land Corporation

• Cooperative Research Centres
• E-Water
• Plant based Management of Dryland Salinity
• Irrigation Futures
• Weed Management
• Tropical Savannas Management
• Australasian Invasive Animals
• Coastal Zone, Estuary and Waterway Management
• Cotton Catchment Communities
• Desert Knowledge
• Greenhouse Accounting
• Sustainable Forest Landscapes
• Landscape Environments and Mineral Exploration

Commercial Farmers
Meat and Livestock Australia
Local Governments
Australian Govt NRM Facilitators
Community Water Grants
State NRM Ag Agencies
National Land and Water Resources Audit
Rural residential
National Landcare Program
Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry
Envirofund
Natural Heritage Trust
Dairy Australia
Department of Environment and Heritage
National Action Plan for Salinity and Water
Quality
Policy and Programs
National Water Commission
Legend Departments of State (FMA Act) Statutory
Agencies (FMA Act) within portfolios Statutory
Agencies (CAC Act) within portfolios Corporatised
RD Corporations (Statutory Funding
Agreement) Funding Programs
Bureau of Rural Sciences
Productivity Commission
National Water Initiative
Coastcare
Bushcare
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The Science-Policy Interface

• Contested, crowded, contextual
• Stakes high, decisions urgent, facts uncertain or
  disputed
• Science thrives on a contest of ideas
• This can be problematic in public debate
• Public officials just one of many sources of
  advice
• Durable relationships are critical
• Ministers/governments need wins, credit,
  initiatives
• Not problems, conflict, confusion

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Policy makers

• Are time-poor, information-overloaded people who
  dont read anything unless they have to
• Only know what they need to know when they need
  to know it
• Have a very short-term, reactive perspective
• Must be able to summarise info lt1 page for
  Minister
• Averse to anything too complicated
• Default to trusted sources, often in-house, even
  when they know those sources are out of date or
  incomplete
• Often have a jaundiced opinion of science,
  believing it is
• too slow and too expensive
• answering questions that no-one has asked,
  usually accompanied by requests for more funding

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Infiltrating Power with ScienceTips, Tools
Tricks

• 100 Key Influencers list, constantly updated
• including rising stars and Ministers kitchen
  cabinet
• Respect the no surprises rule always
• Synthesis products - distilled, digestible
  information targeted to end-user needs
• Timing is everything, and face to face is best
• Breakfasts, face to face briefings (facilitated
  one to one), field days
• Develop adoptability filters
• Employ knowledge brokers

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Infiltrating Power with Science thinking about
the research process

• Work hard to define the knowledge need
• with close involvement of end users (policy,
  industry, management etc)
• Distil the key research questions and scope the
  work
• Investigate possible collaborations
• Identify the necessary mix of disciplines
• Think about the form of funding
• Commissioning vs contestable
• Project vs program (cluster of related projects)
• Some form of Fellowship?
• And knowledge adoption plan

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Droplets www.myoung.net.au

• a good example of a knowledge synthesis product
• Others include Pannell Discussions and IACRC
  (Tony Peacocks blog)
• science for water policy - funded by LWA and
  CSIRO
• developed by Prof Mike Young, Adelaide University
• designed to get science into difficult policy
  issues quickly

• critical timing and no surprises
• influential already, even when unpopular

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Influencing NRM Policy (II)

• Identify potential allies and try to get them in
  the tent
• Ditto potential blockers - try to at least
  neutralise them
• Foster alliances across organisational boundaries
  that mean much more than just chasing
• Network relentlessly
• (Re)invest constantly in skills, capacity,
  leadership
• Systems make it possible, people make it happen.

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Dreaming the ideal

• What would success look like? CCCCRC would
• know its catchments communities backwards and
  inside-out
• be the go to organisation for all
  socio-economic impact data, for locals and
  outsiders
• build a lasting legacy of communities knowledge
  with durable, long-term knowledge custodianship
  sorted
• engage, employ or know the key experts at the
  interface between policy and regions
• become a valued knowledge platformthat persists
  beyond CRC program funding

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Flying some kites

• An NRM policy wiki for cotton (northern irrigated
  cropping?) catchments
• Community (full sense) skills audit (build a
  wider network)
• Regional leadership courses targeted at e.g.
  local govt, CMAs, community groups, young talent
  from the region (including people who have moved
  away)
• Experiment with web 2.0 social networking tools
• mutually beneficial interactions implies
  two-way communication keep the boundaries
  porous active
• fund the arrows, not just the boxes

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For more infoincluding detailed background papers
www.triplehelix.com.au