Engaging a diverse group of stakeholders and community members in large-scale ecosystem management is widely understood to be important for robust and viable decision-making processes that meet standards of fairness and justice. However, diversity is not a singular concept; rather, it is conceptualised and operationalised differently, therefore requiring different resources and creating differing outcomes within a deliberation processes. In this paper we discuss the trade-offs associated with diversity in process and outcomes of deliberation of establishing membership in advisory groups for ecosystem restoration and assisted adaptation. We draw on the Engagement Advisory Group established within the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP) on the Great Barrier Reef, which aimed for ‘deep’ diversity (defined across diversity in gender, indigeneity, geography, committee experience, knowledge and skills, and epistemologies) across members. We investigate both the social and programmatic outcomes from the Advisory Group, and key aspects of the deliberative process employed. We argue that depending on how diversity is conceptualised and operationalised, this will establish trade-offs in how a deliberative process is run (resources required, facilitative style) and both social outcomes (networks gained, knowledge developed, and capacity built) and programmatic outcomes (advice given, and shifts in position). A conceptual model is developed to articulate these trade-offs, called the Diversity Trade-off Model of Deliberation, and can assist organisations to think critically about what they are trying to achieve through deliberation (outcomes), which can further inform their membership, and the process employed.

The Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan (Reef 2050 Plan) was crafted to protect, manage and enhance the resilience of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR). It explicitly recognises that strengthening governance is key to achieving its targeted outcomes. To date, however, the lack of evaluation of the impact of GBR governance (including many complex policies, programmes and plans) under the Reef 2050 Plan has hindered its adaption. This paper presents a first benchmark of the health of the governance system associated with the Reef 2050 Plan. A novel analytical framework was built to do this. It was populated through the gathering of multiple lines of evidence, including global theory and evaluation practice and case studies and primary data from interviews and workshops with Traditional Owners, experts across government, industry, non-government organisations and other governance systems experts. Our assessment has found the health of governance system to be emergent to maturing, yet strong by global standards. Strengths include robust global engagement, the integrative nature of the Reef 2050 Plan, crisis response systems and GBR Marine Park management. Weaknesses include the increased need for (i) power sharing with Traditional Owners; (ii) rebuilding governmental trust with the farming and fishing sectors; (iii) more contemporary spatial planning for GBR and catchment resilience; and (iv) greater subsidiarity to deliver government programmes. In conclusions, we strongly recommend that regular benchmarking and informed refinement of Reef 2050 Plan governance arrangements would mature the system toward better outcomes.

This paper presents learnings from community engagement and deliberation applied to ecosystem restoration and assisted adaptation in the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, a major research and development program identifying and testing novel management interventions for Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Technical, social, and ecological complexities and uncertainties associated with the Program have a major bearing on both the need and character of community engagement and deliberation. Our research used qualitative analysis of documents, interviews, and group discussions to elicit transferable insights from a social research team embedded within the Program. Our findings demonstrate that adaptive and deliberative approaches anticipate and respond to complex and changing contexts by fostering open dialogue, building mutual trust, and integrating community feedback into decision-making. This practice actively recognizes the rights and interests of stakeholders and First Nation peoples, shaping stronger partnerships, supporting inclusive collaboration, and enabling flexible adjustments throughout research and development programs.

Deliberative approaches to governance systems analysis and improvement are rare. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) provides the context to describe an innovative approach that combines reflexive and interactive engagement processes to (a) develop and design a framework to assess the GBR’s complex governance system health; and (b) undertake a benchmark assessment of governance system health. We drew upon appreciative inquiry and used multiple lines of evidence, including an extensive literature review, governance system mapping, focus group discussions and personal interviews. Together, these approaches allowed us to effectively engage key actors in value judgements about twenty key characteristic attributes of the governance system. These attributes were organised into four clusters which enabled us to broadly describe and benchmark the system. These included the following: (i) system coherence; (ii) connectivity and capacity; (iii) knowledge application; (iv) operational aspects of governance. This process facilitated deliberative discussion and consensus-building around attribute health and priorities for transformative action. This was achieved through the inclusion of diverse perspectives from across the governance system, analysis of rich datasets, and the provision of guidance from the project’s Steering Committee and Technical Working Group. Our inclusive, collaborative and deliberative approach, its analytical depth, and the framework’s repeatability enable continuous monitoring and adaptive improvement of the GBR governance system and can be readily applied to complex governance systems elsewhere.

The literature on resilience-building in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is predominated by institutional voices. Although community involvement is appreciated in this scholarship, the perspectives are mainly those of scientists and researchers. Community input is used mainly to inform and strengthen academic findings, and there are few articles in the voices and words of GBR community members. Our opinion piece, with its majority co-authorship by the Stakeholder Advisory Group of Australia’s Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP), addresses this literary gap. The piece draws upon the barriers to involvement in adaptation delivery as experienced by these GBR locals who have diverse backgrounds related to reef adaptation, including aquaculture, tourism, robotics, natural resource management, civil society, policy and Traditional Owner-led environmental stewardship. Currently, the social capital of communities is underutilised in GBR intervention delivery. However, with the urgency for action in the Reef, we call on governments and researchers to leverage the expertise, labour and infrastructure of local communities to strengthen institutional deployment capacities and thereby accelerate the scale and impact of adaptation efforts. We identify the key elements of inclusive deployment as shared leadership, flexible and inclusive funding, and innovative strategies to address permitting and regulatory barriers to community-led interventions deployment.

Transaction costs, related to either investigating improved land management practices (ILMP), engaging in adoption support programs for these practices and/or implementing changes on-ground, create barriers to ILMP adoption. Perceived and actual transaction costs have long been hypothesised as a potential barrier to grazier adoption of ILMPs in catchments to the Great Barrier Reef. Applying a framework derived from transaction cost theory, we assess this hypothesis. Through semi-structured interviews of a sample of participants in two ILMP programs, we find that ILMP adoption support program characteristics have a large influence on perceived and actual transaction costs of landholders seeking to engage in ILMP programs or adopt ILMPs. The importance of establishing and nurturing relationships between landholders and extension officers was also highlighted as critical to reducing landholder transaction costs. The degree to which relationships reduce transaction costs demonstrates the importance of fostering landholder leadership in ILMP program design as well as targeted extension in supporting adoption.

Governments employ a range of policy instruments to encourage landholders to adopt land management prac- tices that reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture. While the impact of policy instruments may be well- theorised, their implementation in diverse contexts and landholders' complex behavioural responses, makes measurement and prediction of the resulting adoption rates difficult. This constrains the ability of governments to select the optimal combination of policy instruments. We used a participatory modelling approach to incor- porate expert knowledge into a Bayesian network model exploring the effect of different policy combinations on the adoption of sustainable farming practices in the Great Barrier Reef catchment, Australia. The model in- tegrates policy instruments including regulating farming practices, offering financial incentives, and facilitating extension programs to educate and assist farmers. Results showed that the effectiveness of a policy instrument on practice adoption was expected to vary depending on which other instruments are implemented, the charac- teristics of the land managers, the surrounding social context, and the practice itself. This approach demonstrates the utility of Bayesian networks in integrating high-level multi-disciplinary knowledge to address complex environmental policy decisions such as water quality management in the Great Barrier Reef.

Conventional conservation and resource management strategies are, on their own, becoming less viable in the face of climate change and associated impacts. Assisted regional ecosystem adaptation is emerging as an option to preserve and maintain ecosystem integrity and functionality. However, decision-makers need to be increasingly aware of the challenges and opportunities posed by the engagement of broad and diverse communities potentially exposed to assisted regional ecosystem adaptation. While these challenges have been explored in the literature, the identification of strategies to overcome them has not been equally articulated. This research seeks to address this gap, focusing on assisted adaptation involving the deployment of novel technology in large-scale ecosystems. Drawing on a review of 824 reports, peer-reviewed manuscripts and books on participation theory and experience with novel technology development and assisted ecosystem adaptation, we identified four categories of strategies to be considered in addressing and overcoming large-scale ecosystem adaptation engagement related challenges: 1) strategies for understanding public acceptance; 2) models and frameworks for the governance of complex and uncertain risks; 3) public involvement and stakeholder engagement in technology assessment; 4) and frameworks, tools, and strategies for public deliberation. Building on these strategies, we present a conceptual framework that provides a basis for community engagement in assisted ecosystem adaptation.

Policy instruments-such as regulation, financial incentives, and agricultural extension-are commonly applied by governments to promote sustainable agricultural practices and tackle ecosystem degradation. Despite substantial investment, little data are available to gauge the impact of evolving policy mixes. We constructed a Bayesian network model to explore relationships between policy instruments, contextual factors, and adoption. Applying a series of scenarios, we present examples of how different instruments influence adoption and how their effectiveness is shaped by contextual factors. Scenarios highlight that the effect of policy instruments is often modest, and constrained by diverse practice and population characteristics. These findings allow us to reflect on the role of policy instruments, and the conditions necessary to support practice change. For example, our findings raise questions about the role of financial benefits versus financial capacity, and highlight the potential importance of concepts such as mental bandwidth in shaping both motivation and capacity to adopt.

The quality of water entering the coastal waters of the Great Barrier Reef continues to be of urgent concern for policy makers. Beef grazing and sugarcane cultivation pose special threats at the catchment scale, and past policy approaches and millions in investment have largely proved insufficient to reverse the associated decline in water quality. In this paper, we examine the role of regulation - as one tool of governance - in addressing threats to water quality to the Great Barrier Reef. By adopting a focused study of sugarcane and cattle grazing, and by drawing upon recent developments in regulatory theory, we evaluate the approaches adopted by government, including the recent re-introduction of legislative measures targeting nutrient and sediment loads. Scientific and government consensus appears to be that regulation should form part of a functioning environmental governance system, but it must also be supported by other measures such as economic incentives, education and outreach. Where regulation of land use is required, best practice suggests it should be risk-based, responsive, and cognisant of the regulated industry's attitudinal settings.

Governments in Australia and internationally are experimenting with policy instruments to facilitate the adoption of farming practices with reduced environmental impacts. The Great Barrier Reef (Australia) is one such case, where sustained efforts over 20 years have yielded insufficient progress towards targets to reduce the impacts of agriculture on water quality in downstream marine ecosystems. We present a critical review of policy instruments as implemented in Great Barrier Reef catchments. We catalogue the evolving mix of policy instruments employed in reef programs, and examine evidence of the effectiveness of agricultural extension, financial incentives, and direct regulation of farming practices. There is little robust evidence to assess instrument effectiveness, in part due to the evolving mix of the instruments employed, weak program evaluation and heterogeneity of agricultural enterprises. We identify the need to improve the understanding of instrument fit to landholders and enterprises. We recommend a modelling approach to clarify pathways to impact and guide improved policy evaluation.

The health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is rapidly declining, driven by multiple stressors including land-based impacts on water quality. For over fifteen years Australian Governments have been investing in programs to promote the voluntary adoption of agricultural practices that reduce nutrient, pesticide and sediment runoff. Insights from monitoring, modelling and research have been used to progressively refine and focus investments over time. Despite this, progress is clearly inadequate to achieve the ambitious program targets. More recently, policy makers have introduced new targets to enhance the active engagement of communities and land managers in programs to improve water quality outcomes. In this review article, we draw on the empirical evidence from the social science literature available from studies within the Great Barrier Reef catchments and consider implications for the current approach being used in Reef programs. Adopting a qualitative evidence synthesis approach, the review examines a nested set of themes: from landholder decision making on practice adoption; participation and engagement in programs; and the influence of the broader policy settings and instruments to deliver government plans and investment. The review highlights the influence of factors such diverse landholder goals and motivations, social and cultural risks of participation, and the benefits of knowledge exchange over knowledge transfer in building trust and commitment amongst landholders. The review also highlights the importance of maintaining collaboration and capacity in industry and natural resource management networks, and, committing to active experimentation and learning at both the farm and program levels. Critical knowledge gaps include the potential for greater participation of supply chain and private actors in program delivery, including exploring the efficacy of 'smart' regulation responses, and the impact of re-emergent place-based models for implementation.

Governments are increasingly using network governance arrangements to engage stakeholders in tackling complex water policy issues. Claims that this involves a shift from government to governance, with associated loss of state authority, are challenged by empirical literature. We draw on governmentality theory to explore the practices and power dynamics of water policy networks in six significant longitudinal case studies in Australia, the United States, and France. Though contexts differ, the analysis highlights the dynamic nature of these complex policy arenas, where governance arrangements and objectives are periodically revised in response to changing pressures. Governments clearly retain decision-making authority despite adopting more deliberative, networked approaches, and implementation remains challenging. Findings suggest that the hybrid and multiscalar nature of water policy governance warrants a more sophisticated understanding of the power dynamics and political dimensions of networked governance employed within hierarchical systems.

The Landholders Driving Change (LDC) project is working closely with graziers in the Bowen, Broken, Bogie (BBB) catchments from 2018 through to 2021 to tackle erosion and improve land management, productivity and water quality in this important Reef region. The LDC project is one of two Major Integrated Projects (MIPs) funded by the Queensland Government. The MIPs have been designed to work collaboratively with landholders to pilot a range of innovative methods to improve water quality entering the Reef lagoon. This report has been commissioned by the NQ Dry Tropics to support the trial and evaluation of new incentive approaches as part of the LDC project in the BBB. The project has: • Reviewed relevant land management practices with a focus on grazing and gully remediation and analysed the public and private benefits of practice change; • Collated and assessed potential incentives to facilitate adoption of desirable land management practices; • Reviewed and summarised learnings from previous incentive programs; and • Summarised incentive programs currently available to BBB landholders.

The Landholders Driving Change (LDC) project has been working closely with landholders in the Bowen, Broken, Bogie (BBB) catchments in the Burdekin region near Collinsville since 2017, to design and test innovative land condition and water quality improvement solutions that will protect both the graziers’ productive lands and the Great Barrier Reef. The LDC project is one of two Major Integrated Projects (MIPs) funded by the Queensland Government, designed to work collaboratively with landholders to pilot innovative methods to improve water quality entering the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. The Survey Analysis project is one component of the overall LDC monitoring and evaluation activities. The Survey Analysis project will analyse and report on landholder survey and event feedback data collected by the LDC project team for each year of the project. The Survey Analysis project will also design and analyse a project completion landholder survey that will be run in the final year of the project (2020). In 2018, the Survey Analysis project will: 1. Report on year 1 (preliminary baseline) landholder surveys; and 2. Draft the project completion landholder survey. This document reports on the results of the Year 1 Survey Analysis. This report (and subsequent annual reports) should seek to address the relevant evaluation questions from the LDC M&E Strategy, tabulating and interpreting results and making recommendations. A key function of the Year 1 report is to establish a project baseline and provide feedback on progress towards each project outcome area with considerations for adaptive management.

This chapter seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What are the values of the Great Barrier Reef? 2. How effective are better agricultural practices in improving water quality? 3. How can we improve the uptake of better agricultural practices? 4. What water quality improvement can non-agricultural land uses contribute? 5. How can Great Barrier Reef water quality improvement programs be improved? Each section summarises the currently available peer reviewed literature and comments on implications for management and research gaps. This chapter has a wider scope than previous Scientific Consensus Statements, including, for the first time, the social and governance dimensions of management and the management of non-agricultural land uses. These new sections are constrained by a lack of Great Barrier Reef–specific data and information. The relevance of information from other locations must be carefully considered. In comparison, the agricultural practice change and economics sections provide an update on material compiled as part of the 2013 Scientific Consensus Statement. This report has been confined to peer reviewed literature, which is generally published in books and journals or major reports. There is additional evidence in grey literature, such as project and program reports, that has not been included here. Each section of this chapter has been compiled by a writing team and then revised following a series of review processes.

[Extract] In preparation for the 2018 midterm review of Reef 2050 Plan, the Reef 2050 Plan Joint Implementation Team commissioned an expert consortium from CSIRO, the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences, James Cook University and Eberhard Consulting to provide advice on review options. This report provides a summary of the analysis undertaken to underpin the recommendations on scope and process of the midterm review, as well as providing recommendations on additional steps for the Joint Team to consider in preparation for the 2020 review. This report is supplemented by a separate Appendix Report that provides a more detailed account of the analysis undertaken.

This chapter seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What are the values of the Great Barrier Reef? 2. How effective are better agricultural practices in improving water quality? 3. How can we improve the uptake of better agricultural practices? 4. What water quality improvement can non-agricultural land uses contribute? 5. How can Great Barrier Reef water quality improvement programs be improved? Each section summarises the currently available peer reviewed literature and comments on implications for management and research gaps.