Lake Eyre Basin Rivers Assessment Implementation Plan Project: Milestone 3 Report Governance arrangements for the lebra

Triple loop learning and LEBRA governance

At its August Workshop, the SAP recommended that the LEBRA adopt a triple loop learning approach, which takes the SAM approach and adds additional considerations as to whether norms, institutions and paradigms need altering through fundamental changes to governance arrangements (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: Aspects of triple loop learning

Source: Chapin et al. 2009

The implications of this approach go beyond the governance arrangements for the LEBRA itself. It does suggest, however, that the broader LEBIA governance arrangements may not require immediate, or at least radical, modification until such time as feedback provided by the conduct of the LEBRA suggests what appropriate governance measures need to be taken.

4. The revised LEBRA methodology

Purpose of the LEBRA

The purpose of the LEBRA is to gain an understanding of the LEB’s condition in order to:

• 
  underpin responses to condition, including a range of on-ground management, government and industry policy, enterprise and personal decision making and local and regional resource planning responses
  
• 
  form consistent messages appropriate to, and encourage constructive dialogue between, specific target audiences about condition, outlook and appropriate responses
  
• 
  guide ongoing research, investigation and monitoring efforts so that they can form a reliable basis for evidence-based responses.
  

The participating government, community, industry and research partners will support this purpose by engaging in an adaptive management process. This process involves collaboration in undertaking the Rivers Assessment, interpreting its results in terms of required responses, influencing the implementation of responses and evaluating these responses.

Taking a resilience approach to the LEBRA

It is widely acknowledged that Australian river landscapes are under pressure and continue to degrade under existing management practices. This is not surprising. Landscapes and ecosystems are moving targets characterized by episodic change, patchiness, variability, multiple scales of operation and multiple stable states in both the social and biophysical domains (Gunderson and Holling 2002). Time and time again, landscapes and ecosystems managed for some type of equilibrium carrying capacity have been thwarted by surprise events, changes in thresholds and market failures (Carpenter and Folke 2006). Time and time again it has been shown that optimizing efficiency to deliver a defined benefit does not lead to sustainability, but rather to collapse (Walker and Salt 2006). New ideas are required to improve the management and monitoring of Australian river landscapes and ecosystems. Resilience Thinking provides one umbrella under which to consider the future management of river ecosystems.

Resilience is the amount of change a system can undergo (its capacity to absorb disturbance) and remain within the same regime that essentially retains the same function, structure and feedbacks (Walker and Salt 2006). Resilience Thinking seeks to determine how societies, economies and ecosystems can be managed to confer resilience, that is, how to maintain the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance without changing to a different state.

Resilience Thinking offers nine fundamental principles that may form components of a framework for managing and monitoring the resilience of the Lake Eyre Basin:

1. 
   Recognition of the potential for alternate stable states to exist within riverine landscapes.
   
2. 
   Recognition that riverine landscapes properties can vary significantly within a stable state.
   
3. 
   Riverine landscapes properties can display significant spatial and temporal variability at different scales within a stable state.
   
4. 
   Thresholds do exist within riverine landscapes and act as tipping points between alternate stable states.
   
5. 
   Thresholds exist at multiple scales but not all result in a shift to an alternate state.
   
6. 
   Slow variables are important in driving regime shifts.
   
7. 
   Riverine landscapes cycle through adaptive loops and their position within the loop sets their form and function.
   
8. 
   Riverine landscapes are essentially social-ecological systems integrating ecosystems and human society.
   
9. 
   Managing and monitoring riverine landscapes for resilience requires adaptability or the capacity to adapt to and influence change.
   

There are two additional approaches that are complementary to Resilience Thinking, which provide different components of a framework for managing and monitoring of resilience in riverine landscapes. The ecosystem approach focuses on the interactions among ecological entities and their environments, and thus, takes an encompassing and synthetic view of nature rather than a fragmented view (Likens 1992). The ecosystem approach recognizes the influences of disturbance, scale spatial heterogeneity and spatial variability on the relationships between ecological entities and their environments. Contemporary views of ecosystems also view humans as a keystone species within the ecosystem.

The ecosystem approach offers six fundamental principles that may form components of a framework for managing and monitoring resilience in riverine landscapes:

1. 
   Variability and heterogeneity are fundamental drivers of pattern and process in riverine landscapes.
   
2. 
   Fluxes and cycling of materials and energy are important drivers of riverine landscapes.
   
3. 
   Riverine landscapes are hierarchically organised whereby patterns and processes must be viewed at different scales.
   
4. 
   Understanding riverine landscapes requires a focus on interactions between different disciplinary elements (e.g. biological, chemical geomorphological, hydrological, social and economic).
   
5. 
   Riverine landscapes can be understood via causal or correlative approaches: the choice of method depends on prior knowledge and the scale of focus.
   
6. 
   Humans are keystone elements of riverine landscapes: they are drivers of change and users of ecosystem goods and services.