Structural constraints preventing resilience practice and the adaptive management of natural resources in New South Wales

摘要

The dominant governance framework of scientific management seeks reduction of uncertainty before a decision is made and assumes that science can arrive at a single optimal solution to a given problem. Its application to the “wicked” problems of natural resource management and climate change adaptation, however, has been problematic. Alternative approaches that embrace uncertainty, namely resilience practice and adaptive management, have been advocated as more suitable for addressing these wicked problems. Together with the Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment Management Authority (HNCMA), I assessed the current natural resource management context in New South Wales (NSW) and addressed whether features of scientific management act as constraints to implementing resilience practice and adaptive management.Features of scientific management within the broader institutional framework for natural resource management were uncovered when observing the HNCMA’s approach to assessing the vulnerability of selected natural resource assets to climate change. These scientific management features generated inaccurate generalisations and obscured potentially important uncertainties. An alternative vulnerability assessment of upland swamps in the Blue Mountains extended the findings of the HNCMA vulnerability assessments. It identified determinants of swamp resilience, potential thresholds that govern swamp function, and variations in swamp vulnerability across the Blue Mountains. A scenario planning process explored multiple future trajectories of climate change and how such change may interact with other changes and impact on swamps in the Blue Mountains. The scenarios illuminated future pathways for adaptive management by the HNCMA centred around key uncertainties of fire management, groundwater management, and urban stormwater impacts.A review of HNCMA project delivery, however, exposed yet more features of scientific management that serve as barriers to the HNCMA implementing adaptive management to learn about key uncertainties. Of concern is that Australian and NSW Governments distort resilience practice and adaptive management away from their original contexts as means of managing in the face of uncertainty because they view the role of CMAs as extension arms that implement policy from the top-down. For resilience practice and adaptive management to succeed, an adaptive governance framework is required that views the roles of CMAs as learning organisations that create knowledge through their on-ground investment.