Knowledge and Innovation for challenging times

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Knowledge and Innovation for challenging times
achieving policy traction Pathfinders
ConferenceCanberra 27 May 2009

• Andrew Campbell
• Director, Future Farm Industries CRC

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Sustaining Australia in a period of rapid change
and collapsing revenues

1. Challenges
2. Imperatives for Innovation Learning
3. How to get there

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Two Questions

• What sorts of innovation and learning do we need
  to best meet the challenges we face?
• How do we get there?

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1. Challenges

• Food and Health
• Water
• Energy
• Biodiversity
• Climate

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Feeding the world

• The world needs to almost double food production
  by 2050, improve distribution
• We have done this in the past, mainly through
  clearing, cultivating and irrigating more land
• and to a lesser extent better varieties, more
  fertiliser etc
• Climate change is narrowing those options, with
  limits to water, land, energy nutrients
• We need a third agricultural revolution
  (Julian Cribb)

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Water

• Each calorie takes one litre of water to produce,
  on average
• Like the Murray Darling Basin, all the worlds
  major food producing basins are effectively
  closed or already over-allocated

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Land soil

• The FAO has assessed trends in land condition
  (measured by net primary productivity) from
  1981-2004
• Land degradation is increasing in severity and
  extent
• gt20 percent of all cultivated areasgt30 percent
  of forestsgt10 percent of grasslands
• 1.5 billion people depend directly on land that
  is being degraded
• Land degradation is cumulative

http//www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000874/i
ndex.html
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Energy nutrients

• The era of abundant, cheap fossil fuels is over
• Rising energy costs rising fertiliser costs

Remaining reserves (billions of barrels) of crude
oil (EWG 2007)
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Biodiversity

• Even BCC (before climate change) we were already
  on the cusp of the third wave of extinction in
  Australia
• Climate change drives wicked threats to
  biodiversity
• Changing the availability and use of water
• Increasing risks from invasive animals and weeds
• Stimulating changes in land use behaviour
• Affecting the habitat niches of many species
• Altering fire regimes intensity
• Biodiversity is easily overlooked squeezed
  between water, energy and food security

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Climate Chaos the meta driver of rapid
environmental change
Global Carbon emissions
Global Population
Source WBCSD IUCN 2008 Harvard Medical
School 2008
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The response menu

• The nature of the human economy
• Decoupling economic growth from carbon pollution
  is the biggest structural reform ever attempted
• Human behaviour social organisation
• Systemic reform
• Energy
• Transport
• Farming Systems
• Urban design planning
• The built environment
• Making better use of knowledge

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2. Imperatives for Innovation Learning

• Joined up Science (not just RD)
• the full knowledge system from data to
  innovation
• Joined up Policy
• PolicyScience interaction
• more on that at tomorrow afternoons
  workshop(me, Kate Andrews, John Kerin Tony
  Peacock)
• A literate and discerning polity

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RDOptions

• We need to be operating in each of these quadrants

Source FFI CRC EverCrop
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Implications for knowledge needs through the
Cynefin lens

• Climate change spans all these domains
• If temp increase gt 2ºC, then were in chaos
• The challenge is to handle the necessary range of
  simultaneous responses
• to work across all of these domains
• to develop a system-wide perspective
• the knowledge systems and learning strategies
  to underpin that perspective
• and to bring people along

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Observations on the current situation

• Community concern exceeds political will
• Knowledge at all levels is patchy
• De Nile aint just a river in Egypt (Mark
  Twain)
• Research investment is concentrated in a few big
  players
• and on incremental tweaks to the status quo
• Alternative technologies/approaches struggle for
  funds
• SMEs need to be more engaged better resourced
• We need nimble, lateral, unconstrained
  innovators(unfettered by in-house lawyers) and
  IP straitjackets
• Cross-system ( social) learning is poor

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Joined-up Science and Innovation

• Explicit, conscious work is needed in all four
  Cynefin quadrants a strategic, portfolio
  approach
• Agree with Cutler comments about the need for a
  central brain, and for coordination without
  centralism
• We have to learn to manage whole landscapes for
  multiple values and outcomes (ecological, social
  and economic)
• The big science of CSIRO BoM et al needs to
  be complemented and augmented by other approaches
  and many smaller players, alone and
  collaboratively

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Joined up Policy

• As in science, we are dealing with the big issues
   climate, water, energy, food, health, fire
   separately
• Potential synergies are being missed, and future
  tensions overlooked  collateral damage seems
  inevitable
• There is no big picture vision or coherent
  narrative for the future of Australias
  environment and food systems in a
  carbon-constrained world
• Climate change (chaos) literacy is far too low
• in the wider community
• in the bureaucracy
• in corporate boardrooms management

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A literate and discerning polity

• Kevin Rudd, Westminster Abbey, 31 March 2009
• suggesting that the free market needs a moral
  compass
• To these values of security, liberty and
  prosperity must also be grafted the values of
  equity, of sustainability and community.
• Equity, Sustainability, Community sounds like
  Landcare to me
• We need a more mature national conversation
  around sustainability and resilience
• Informed by science (but not exclusively)
• Engaging citizens students at all levels
• Exploiting web 2.0 technologies
• Vic Bushfires debate suggests we have a long
  way to go

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3. How to get there?

• Some principles
• Some ideas

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Some principles

• Building Resilience
• Balancing centralism and subsidiarity
• Re-engaging stakeholders and devolving
  responsibility
• Taking the time necessary to sort through
  complex, contested, connected issues
• Building, sustaining and using a comprehensive
  evidence base (think about the whole knowledge
  system)
• Investing in skills, knowledge, innovation and
  leadership
• Budgeting for longer term durability

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Some ideas - planks in a platform

1. Rejuvenate Landcare and Re-engage the Community
2. Reinforce the Regional/Catchment Model
3. Revolutionise Environmental Agricultural
   Research, Extension and Education
4. Rewire Environmental Information Systems
5. Re-unite the Carbon, Water, Energy, Food, Farming
   and Fire agendas
6. Reform Drought Policy Rural Regional Services
7. Redesign the Institutional Architecture

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Planks in a platform

1. Rejuvenate Landcare and Re-engage the Community
2. Reinforce the Regional/Catchment Model
3. Revolutionise Environmental Agricultural
   Research, Extension and Education
4. Rewire Environmental Information Systems
5. Re-unite the Carbon, Water, Energy, Food, Farming
   and Fire agendas
6. Reform Drought Policy Rural Regional Services
7. Redesign the Institutional Architecture

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Re-uniting the Carbon, Water, Energy, Food,
Farming and Fire agendas

• With some pressing demands  environmental and
  political  these big issues are being dealt with
  in silos
• Important linkages and potential synergies (and
  trade-offs) are being lost in the noise and
  short-term deadlines
• The policy agendas, and the knowledge agendas,
  for these big, difficult issues need to be mapped
  carefully and better aligned into a more coherent
  overall framework
• These issues demand an engaged, informed
  community base
• And an HR strategy (training, education,
  leadership, career paths) to attract, develop and
  retain the people we need to lead and manage
  through an incredibly demanding period

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Redesigning the Institutional Architecture

• We need a new cooperative environmental
  federalism
• COAG framework with Inter-Governmental Agreement
  (IGA)
• Building on ( learning from) the water agenda
• Review of EPBC Act is an opportunity
• Coordinated policy decision-making around one
  big picture
• Vertically integrated long-term budgets
• Better integrated and more cohesive advisory
  arrangements
• Professional knowledge management
• Close porous interface between policy science
• Direct accountable connections to the evidence
  base
• Long term learning hard-wired into the system
• Strategic research knowledge  a bigger
  better LWA?

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Rewiring Environmental Information Systems

• We need to consider the whole knowledge system
• Its pathetic that we cannot report
  authoritatively on condition and trends for
  Australias natural resources. We need
• Stable long-term monitoring systems (a national
  dashboard)
• The National Land Water Resources Audit set out
  what where how
• A national capability for ecological analysis
  synthesis
• A network of well-instrumented sentinel sites
  transects
• Citizen science using latest technologies and web
  2.0 platforms
• Broadband roll-out a great opportunity
• Closely linked with schools-based programs a
  revitalised landcare movement

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Our future is in our hands

• The future is not some place we are going to,
  but one we are creating. The paths to it are
  made, not found.  Phillip Adams
• To decide not to succeed, is to decide to fail
   Greg Bourne
• We are in a mental dance between fate and desire
• We know that whats coming at us is big, ugly
  and scary
• We know that much of it we cant influence
• But we do have choices, and some influence
• Now is for far-sighted reform leadership at all
  levels
• Equity, Community and Sustainability are the
  right values

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Take home messages

• We are living through a period of unprecedented
  environmental change, that is likely to intensify
  this is not a blip
• Business as usual is not a viable trajectory
• Incremental tweaking of the status quo (in
  science and policy) will not be an adequate
  response to the challenges we face
• We need to generate and use knowledge far better
  than ever before
• CRCs and the science community more broadly have
  a critical role
• There is an opportunity right now to reframe and
  refocus the Australian sustainability journey
  for the next decade and beyond

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For more infoincluding background papers,
presentations and images
www.triplehelix.com.au