In many parts of the world, agricultural productivity is being undermined by soil salinisation. For the semi-arid to arid coastal areas of the Indus Basin in Sindh, Pakistan, salt transport into the crop root zones is enhanced by high evapotranspiration rates and the prevalence of shallow watertables. Surface water supply at this downstream end of the basin is insufficient to flush out salt build-up and the use of groundwater of marginal quality contributes to salinity accumulation. Seawater intrusion is further exacerbating these salinisation trends. To improve understanding of how these inter-related trends are impacting groundwater, we developed a MODFLOW 2005 model for a case study area in Sindh encompassing the Pinyari Canal Command Area (CCA) and coastal district of Sujawal. The SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 climate change scenarios were simulated to understand possible future outcomes from rising sea levels and reduced canal water supplies and their consequential impacts up to 2100. We then simulated a mix of adaptation strategies, including transforming cropping systems towards water efficient crops, and use of green infrastructure as a nature-based solution to build resilience by mitigating impacts from climate change along the coastal belt. However, even with these adaptations, our assessment suggested that waterlogging and salinity will only be marginally reduced, while salinity mobilisation under climate change will accelerate. The looming threats from climate change will thus require water and land managers to bolster green infrastructure with other mitigation strategies that rely on grey infrastructure, and to modify how they implement this mix of adaptation and mitigation strategies to ensure they are co-developed with coastal communities affected. Such a co-development approach is needed to ensure communities who continue to live in such semi-arid to arid coastal areas are engaged in ways that build their resilience and ongoing livelihood sustainability.

Effective governance of social-ecological systems (SES) is an enduring challenge, especially in coastal environments where accelerating impacts of climate change are increasing pressure on already stressed systems. While resilience is often proposed as a suitable framing to re-orient governance and management, the literature includes many different, and sometimes conflicting, definitions and ideas that influence how the concept is applied, especially in coastal environments. This study combines discourse analysis of the coastal governance literature and key informant interviews in Tasmania, Australia, demonstrating inconsistencies and confusion in the way that resilience is framed in coastal governance research and practice. We find that resilience is most often framed as (1) a rate of recovery from disturbance or (2) the process of acting in response to, or anticipation of, a disturbance. A third framing considers resilience as an emergent property of SESs. This framing, social-ecological resilience, accounts for multiple configurations of SES, which necessitates adaptation and transformation strategies to address changes across temporal and spatial scales. Coastal managers recognised the value of this third framing for governing coastal SESs, yet the confusion and inconsistency in the literature was also evident in how they understood and applied resilience in practice. Expanding the use of social-ecological resilience is essential for more effective coastal governance, given the dynamics of coastal SESs and the intensity of social, economic, and environmental drivers of change these systems face. However, this requires addressing the unclear, confused, and superficial use of resilience-oriented concepts in research and policy discourse.

Agricultural intensification is increasing global demand for water, with groundwater especially susceptible given its year-round reliability. Climate change impacts on groundwater recharge exacerbate uncertainties for future access and use, especially for large aquifers across alluvial plains such as the Indus Basin of Pakistan. To generate better understanding of climate change impacts on groundwater balances in such contexts, we used MODFLOW 2005 to quantify the groundwater budget of the Northern Rohri Canal Command Area under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 climatic scenarios, while also taking climatic regionalisation into account. Under a baseline scenario, total annual pumping in the northern Rohri command was estimated to be 3.619 billion cubic metres (BCM), and the total net loss in storage over the simulation period from October 2010 to April 2014 was estimated at 1.244 BCM per year. By 2047, net decline in storage is projected to more than double to 2.185 per year under RCP 4.5 scenario and 2.214 under RCP 8.5. Our estimates suggest that a sustainable yield across the command area should be managed at approximately 3 ± 0.3 BCM per year to ensure sufficient adaptive reserves of groundwater for access during times of drought and inadequate surface supply, while also reducing waterlogging impacts from high watertables. This first-time estimate of sustainable yield provides irrigation system managers with an overall guide from which divisional-scale measures to achieve the goal can be identified through stakeholder engagement.

In light of the global challenges of the Anthropocene, including biodiversity loss, there are increasing calls for positive, inspirational futures to motivate action and help steer away from current, largely unsustainable trajectories. The three horizons framework is an approach in future studies that engages with normative futures and helps develop pathways towards them. However, this approach has not been applied to explore opportunities for biodiversity conservation with farming communities. We developed a template to apply the three horizons framework in combination with storytelling to explore positive futures for agricultural landscapes with rich biodiversity. We then applied this method over two workshops with a rural community in a farming landscape of south-eastern Australia facing typical contemporary challenges of an ageing population, climate change, biodiversity loss and global market uncertainty. In the workshops, six pathways for change were developed. We unpack these narratives of change to contrast problem framings, future aspirations and mechanisms of change and discuss implications for conservation. We discuss our approach to integrating diverse perspectives and values, creating actionable knowledge and highlight the role of governance and policy to support individual and collective agency. We conclude that the three horizons approach has the potential to create actionable knowledge through locally meaningful narratives of change, and thus influence priorities and empower local action. For lasting on-ground change, leadership and effective cross-scale governance is required.

AbstractThe growing issues with groundwater quality and quantity worldwide are particularly impacting regions of South Asia, where groundwater use plays a crucial role in human well‐being. As the severity of the situation becomes clearer, there are increasing calls for transformation in water management. In this paper, we consider institutional influences on transforming groundwater management by reflecting on our recent collaborative research in Pakistan and a scoping study in Sri Lanka. In Pakistan, we have shown that it is possible for previously “siloed” stakeholders to develop shared understandings of the groundwater situation and build useful and enduring practice networks. Such shared understandings can support collaborative planning, but must be informed by effective monitoring and modeling, and an institutional willingness to think beyond traditional formal regulatory tools. Regional and local scale planning could encourage interactive processes for broader thinking. Given the similarity in the human‐groundwater situation between parts of Pakistan and Northern Sri Lanka, we undertook a small study to see if similar collaborative research would be valuable there. Our brief visit confirmed commonalities in the situation. By reflecting on our experience in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, we make a case for encouraging and embracing collaborative research as part of transforming water resources management. Our approach emphasizes the important contributions of both water managers and users and encourages ways of integrating paradigms, knowledge, norms, and practices. Establishing genuine co‐inquiry among groundwater managers and users requires a deeper appreciation of the constraining and enabling roles established institutions can play and thus ultimately a transformation in institutional arrangements.

High quality research informed by systems thinking can contribute to positive outcomes in complex, dynamic situations related to managing natural resources such as water. This chapter refers to social-ecological systems thinking to identify characteristics of high quality transdisciplinary research that makes a lasting impact. We primarily draw on lessons from a four-year research for development project that focused on learning how to improve groundwater management in Pakistan. Uncontrolled and unmonitored use of groundwater for irrigation has resulted in declining water levels in parts of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan. The project sought to address this by developing and supporting professional relationships among groundwater managers from government agencies, university researchers and farming communities. Six in-depth case studies, two from each province, enabled groundwater monitoring capacity, and understanding of the social and economic aspects of water use, to be developed together. Stakeholder forums ultimately developed as platforms for co-learning and collaborative planning around on-farm interventions and mobile applications. In this chapter we present the background literature that informed us, and what we did. We also reflect on what could be improved in similar future projects. We note the constraints of short term project funding on this type of collaborative learning based project, and highlight where structured and consistent investment in water resources planning is required. We also suggest that projects such as this would be improved by incorporating ecological perspectives alongside technical, social and economic aspects.

Pakistan has a vision to become one of the top ten global economies by the middle of this century, but has to achieve that transition despite being one of the most water-stressed and arid countries in the world. Its water availability goes through extremes from too much to too little water, and climate change is projected to exacerbate these extremes. For decades, the monumental Indus Basin Irrigation System has been a lifeline, allowing Pakistan’s agricultural economy to boom. While the system continues to grow, intensification of agriculture has meant surface water supply is being rapidly replaced with groundwater, and Pakistan has now become the fourth largest groundwater withdrawing country in the world. Yet Pakistan is also among the top five wastewater producing countries, with only 1.2% of that wastewater being treated. This chapter introduces the challenges Pakistan faces in achieving a more sustainable use of its water resources, emphasising that many of these challenges require social and institutional change. It then provides an overview of the chapters, showing how each chapter contributes to a deeper understanding of these challenges, as well as offering practical suggestions for how Pakistan’s future challenges can be addressed.

Conventional approaches to environmental governance and management are limited in their responses to uncertainty and complexity of social-ecological system (SES) change. Prevailing neoliberal and efficiency-based mindsets tend to focus on avoiding risk and creating "fail-safe" systems. In the last decade, resilience thinking has emerged as a means to transition from risk-averse, and command-and-control governance approaches towards those that are more adaptive, innovative and collaborative. To examine the practical usefulness of a resilience thinking approach, we used a complex, multi-layered case study of Tasmanian coastal governance. Drawing on the diverse expertise and a variety of key governance actors, we identified crucial problems being experienced with the Tasmanian coastal governance regime and discussed potential contributions of resilience thinking to address them. Thematic analysis of the results revealed three major contributions: resilience thinking (1) provides a way to think about change and uncertainty; (2) is compatible with proactive and entrepreneurial leadership; and (3) effectively considers issues of scale in the decision-making process. We conclude by offering practical suggestions towards devolved leadership and improved cross-scale collaboration, and consider the possibility of a hybrid resilience and risk-based approach to coastal management and governance.

This paper outlines the experience of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in developing and managing research for development projects concerning land and water resources. The complexity of the contexts in which such research is undertaken has resulted in two discernible shifts. First, to more effectively guide project design and implementation, there has been a shift to focus on research for development aims in terms of what can be achieved by the end of the project, and the project's intended longer term impacts. Improved use of impact pathways analysis has enabled projects in complex contexts to be better designed and evaluated for improvements. Second, there has been a move from interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary approaches that can put farmers and land managers firmly at the centre of the research. These shifts have led to an appreciation that research will need to more strategically address issues of equity in development.

Scholars argue that conventional environmental governance approaches have not been effective in reversing or slowing the deterioration of coupled social-ecological systems (SESs). Recent research suggests that resilience thinking offers a useful framework to analyse problems in SESs and could help improve the effectiveness of associated governance systems. Much of the available literature explores this from a theoretical perspective, identifying advantages from resilience thinking to improve governance of SESs. This paper builds on this literature, creating a set of attributes that are used to assess the specific challenges of a particular multi-level Tasmanian coastal governance context, and thus clarify where intervention responses are best directed. In this context, a low level of resilience capacity was apparent across the entire governance system. At the national level, we determined that knowledge management and sharing processes, and the diversity of expertise were the only attributes contributing to resilience capacity, with other attributes insufficiently developed to support any level of resilience. The performance was similarly poor at the Tasmanian state level, with leadership, adaptive planning, organisational flexibility and a supportive legislation framework at critically low capacity. Inter-organisational attributes also required significant improvement. On the other hand, a regional natural resource management body and two coastal local governments demonstrated attributes supportive of resilience capacity, including aspects related to leadership, transparent decision-making, stakeholder engagement, organisational learning, knowledge sharing and flexibility. These findings confirm that resilience thinking can offer practical suggestions for how to improve governance of this, particularly challenging context.

Developing regional scenarios enables planners to engage land managers in discussions about the future, especially in contexts that are complex, uncertain and difficult to control. Richly-crafted qualitative narratives are an effective way to document future scenarios that integrate social, economic and biophysical attributes. Converting such narratives into spatial representations of future landscapes often relies on computational modelling. This paper presents an alternative technique. Key themes from scenario narratives are translated into spatial representations using simple rule sets within a Geographic Information System (GIS). The technique was applied to a case study exploring future scenarios for biodiversity in a predominantly privately-owned agricultural landscape. Iterative analysis of scenarios and their spatial implications enables land managers to explore outcomes from potential interventions and identify strategies that might mitigate the impact of future issues of environmental concern.

Global biodiversity is facing an extinction crisis. Australia has one of the highest terrestrial species extinction rates in the world. Scientists, policy advisors and governments have recommended that the issue be addressed at a landscape-scale, while noting that there are significant knowledge gaps that are hampering implementation of such an approach. From 2011–2015, the Australian Government funded a transdisciplinary research program, the Landscapes and Policy Hub, to meet this need. Transdisciplinary research is widely acknowledged as essential to address the complexity of contemporary environmental problems. Given that such research programs are in their infancy, it is important to evaluate their efficacy and provide an empirical basis for improving their design. This paper presents an evaluation of the strategies fostering transdisciplinarity adopted by the Landscapes and Policy Hub. A heavy emphasis on communication, with skilled knowledge brokering, regular face-to-face meetings using participatory activities and shared field engagements enhanced transdisciplinary interaction between researchers and research users. However, establishing a fully integrated interdisciplinary research program remained a challenge. Efforts to enable shared conceptual frameworks to emerge through adaptive application of theory in practice could have been balanced with increased effort at the outset for researchers and research users to collaboratively formulate shared research questions, leading to the establishment of teams that could address these questions through cross-mobilisation of interdisciplinary expertise.

Biodiversity loss is a globally significant problem. Institutional failure to halt this loss suggests current arrangements are not fit for the purpose of conserving biodiversity. The objective of this paper is to diagnose institutional fitness for conserving biodiversity in the Tasmanian Midlands of Australia, a highly modified agricultural landscape with critically endangered biodiversity values. This paper presents and applies a novel diagnostic framework that adopts a broad view of institutional fit, drawing on concepts from adaptive governance, institutional theory, and public administration, and finds four areas of poor fit that can guide reform efforts. The first is a narrow framing of biodiversity objectives, leading to neglect of key social and ecological concerns. Second, the interplay of current arrangements fails to buffer key economic and political drivers, and compromises adaptive capacity. Third, limited government authority and embedded power relations raise questions about the effectiveness and fairness of current approaches. Finally, the reluctance of governments to devolve authority and decision-making powers to self-organizing networks constrains adaptation. This suite of fit problems constrains achievement of biodiversity conservation, particularly in dealing with landscape multifunctionality, the need to balance private landholder rights and responsibilities, and the need to consider how to respond to emerging novel and hybrid ecosystems.

All environments have been modified by human activity and those interactions produce “winners” and “losers”. Improvements require changes in human behaviour, especially when these activities deny opportunities for future generations. However, changing human behaviour can be difficult to accomplish. We need to establish better ways to reach and implement sound decisions. For social researchers, a key assumption is that complex and difficult natural resource management (NRM) issues are often best addressed by engaging stakeholders in processes that involve dialogue, learning and action – that is, by engaging and building human and social capital. In this chapter we identify some of the social research principles and practices that will enhance groundwater governance. Social researchers have developed principles and approaches for effective stakeholder engagement, social impact assessment, collaborative approaches for NRM governance and changing the use and management of land and water by rural landholders. We conclude with a discussion of some of the challenges for social scientists contributing to larger integrated programs.

Governance arrangements frame and direct how land managers respond to the multiple demands and challenges of conserving biodiversity. Biodiversity conservation requires attention to how social-ecological systems (SES) change and can be influenced overtime, It is important that governance settings within these systems can support achievement of biodiversity outcomes. Two questions then arise. Will current arrangements lead to desirable biodiversity outcomes, and if not, are there other arrangements that plausibly might do better? However, methods for answering these questions in collaboration with critical stakeholders such as policy makers and land managers are not evident in the literature. The aim of this paper is to explore the use of a participatory scenario planning process to test the efficacy of proposed governance reforms for enhancing biodiversity outcomes in two contrasting landscapes in Australia. A workshop process was used to consider the effect of the reform options on key drivers of change, and thus how these affected drivers would in turn modify future scenarios, and the biodiversity outcomes of these scenarios. In both landscapes, there was a preference for reforms that retained governmental influence or control, in contrast to academic calls for adaptive governance that emphasises the importance of self-organisation and devolution of authority. The workshop process, although complex and cognitively challenging, was regarded by participants as suitable for testing the utility of alternative governance options for biodiversity conservation. Challenges for the future include designing and considering reforms based on what is possible rather than probable or preferable, and engaging participants over time to build knowledge, engagement and trust. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing these challenges. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improving biodiversity futures requires a systems-based appreciation of the dynamic human and biophysical interactions shaping landscapes. By combining a structured approach to identifying key drivers of change on biodiversity with a collaborative approach to scenario planning, biodiversity planners and managers can work with stakeholders to identify a range of possible futures and explore their implications. This paper presents an approach to developing scenario narratives constructed against key drivers of change identified through a social-ecological systems analysis. The approach facilitated the integration of stakeholder and expert input to inform system dynamics affecting biodiversity outcomes, helping to direct and discipline the collective imagination, and to challenge assumptions and reveal new opportunities and strategies. Examples are provided to show how conventional notions about preserving biodiversity remnants "as is" were not a good fit for the diverse range of futures imagined, and that restoration ecology would have to expand to incorporate ideas of landscape fluidity and novel ecosystems. Aspects of the scenario narratives highlighted the need for new conservation strategies for the endangered native grassland ecological community within the Tasmanian Midlands case study, and a re-focusing on new locations across that landscape. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The poor performance of biodiversity institutions has prompted calls for reform. Adaptive governance has been promoted as a means of supporting improved biodiversity outcomes. However, incorporating adaptive elements into biodiversity governance has been a challenge. In particular, efforts to make institutions more “adaptive” often fail to account for existing capacity and context-specific factors. Clear guidance on how to move from general, ambitious adaptive governance prescriptions to specific, context-dependent recommendations is needed. This paper demonstrates how insights from pragmatism can inform an approach for designing institutional reforms that address current shortcomings in adaptive governance approaches. This design scaffolds reform options on a platform of existing competency and institutional legacy. Informed by the results of a prior institutional diagnosis, reform development followed a three-stage process: defining plausible reform spaces; identifying reform possibilities within these spaces; and elaborating reform options. Two very different landscapes provided the case studies: (1) a highly modified agricultural landscape, where private landholders are responsible for managing biodiversity as a public good; (2) a group of national parks, where the state holds primary responsibility. The reforms in the agricultural landscape build on successful landholder and organizational efforts to self-organize and pursue innovative solutions, while those for the protected area enable greater managerial discretion and address the challenges of working across multiple government jurisdictions. This context-driven approach draws on insights from pragmatism to provide guidance on the design of institutional reforms that meet the demands of adaptive governance in a way that is both systematic and realistic.

abstractTransformation is a key concept in social-ecological systems research, and transition theory in particular; however, the essential elements of a transformation are yet to be clearly articulated. This article explores the changes that took place when Australian governments deliberately set out to restructure the Australian dairy industry. Using the subtropical dairy industry as a case study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with industry stakeholders. Our analysis was structured around transition concepts thus testing the framework's efficacy. We found that deregulation substantially altered the culture of the industry and the structure and working practices of the production system, supply chain, industry organisations and government agencies. Transition theory and its concepts provided a useful framework to explain how systemic change transformed the industry. Transition theory identified the multi-scalar nature of the interactions between structure and practice and the social and power relationships that reinforced change.