Status: complete
Leader: Dr Mark Stafford Smith, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems,
Alice Springs
Full title: Analytical and modelling methods for characterising
regional community, economic and natural resource dynamics
Project 3.1.5
Summary | Background | Objectives |
Contribution to CRC objectives, themes and
projects | Approach and methods | Outcomes | Outputs |
Project
team |
This project is a year-long scoping study that explores what
questions and attributes might underpin a systems framework to help
facilitate sustainable land-use decisions in regional and remote
communities.
Such a framework would encompass economic, social, natural
resource and institutional dimensions, and would facilitate an
understanding of how the social and economic resilience of rural
and remote communities and their capacity for change interacts with
land use.
The study aims to establish whether it is possible to develop
such a framework, and/or if the approach used is worth pursuing
further.
Attributes to consider might include community size and
relationships with other communities, demography, wealth, access to
services, employment base, etc. This framework would use Australian
Bureau of Statistics, Bureau of Resource Science, the National Land
& Water Audit and similar datasets and existing R&D outputs
as well as expert opinion of the working group members, to predict
the capacity of a range of communities to respond to defined
economic, social and environmental pressures.
These outcomes will require an as yet unknown consortium of
researchers to make strategic co-investments in modelling capacity
and infrastructure. Effective relationships with government
agencies, regional communities and other clients will need to be
established to ensure relevance.
Australia’s policy environment is changing as federal and
state governments devolve responsibilities to regional communities
for the management and administration of regional issues;
specifically natural resource and development matters.
Regional communities, therefore, need to understand the
fundamental requirements of regional systems—from natural
resource, social and economic perspectives, and how those areas
interact—to make effective decisions regarding sustainable
development.
Communities in Australia’s tropical savannas are under
siege from a variety of processes and circumstances, some of which
are generic issues in regional Australia, but many of which are
restricted to sparsely populated rangeland areas.
For example, throughout the savannas, primary industries have
traditionally provided the major source of regional income and
employment, but increasingly there is an explicit uncoupling of
grazing, agriculture and mining from regional economies so that
communities are becoming more dependent on welfare payments.
The existing infrastructure for understanding regional dynamics
is predominantly Canberra-based and has relatively limited
investment in the specifics of savanna regions.
In order to maximise the TS–CRC’s contributions in
regional planning and management, a core capacity in regional
analysis and modelling that encompasses economic, social, natural
resource and institutional dimensions is required.
We need to develop a sustained capacity in state-of-the-art
regional-scale systems analysis to support communities and decision
makers in implementing ecologically sustainable regional
development in the savannas.
None of the partners to the CRC currently have this capacity.
Nor does it exist elsewhere in a form tailored to the needs of
remote Australia. However, some of the partners to the CRC would be
core contributors to its development.
A project is needed to reflect deeply on the approaches that
could be taken to a systems analysis of savanna regions which goes
beyond traditional sectoral models, whether economic input-output
models, resource-driven limits models or demography driven
paradigms, to a genuinely integrated systems view.
To undertake preliminary development of data analysis and
modelling resources and infrastructure to:
- support regional partnerships in exploring regional dynamics so
as to prioritise regional strategies in terms of their likely
ability to achieve the best possible outcomes with limited
financial and human resources.
- better equip government, R&D providers and other agencies
to target appropriate investments in partnerships with different
regional communities in planning for sustainable regional
development.
These objectives will be achieved by:
- developing partnerships between regional communities/decision
makers and research providers to identify key gaps in the existing
ability to analyse regional dynamics;
- developing a consortium of research institutions and a team of
researchers with the capability of developing a process and
technology framework;
- demonstrating opportunities through a focused set of activities
designed to inform regional investments of Savanna CRC resources
with a preliminary profile of regions across the CRC’s area
of interest.
The project sits within Theme 3, and contributes to the broad
CRC objectives Viable and socially desirable regions and productive
and capable people. While the core project group is drawn from a
single CRC partner, CSIRO, the main workshop will draw in others
(particularly the University of Queensland, Qld Dept. Natural
Resources & Mines and the NT Dept. Primary Industries &
Fisheries), and make links to project such Project 3.2.1
Bioregional Planning. It is anticipated that any subsequent project
phases would necessitate significant links across agencies.
A small coordinating team has been established with systems
analysis skills. Once the slope and focus of core issues is
refined, a general conceptual model—or alternative models of
the system initially being debated—will be created. The team
will then assemble some literature and ideas for a second larger
workshop.
In this workshop additional experts will be assembled, bringing
a diversity of sectoral and disciplinary expertise to bear. By the
end of this workshop one or more integrated models of the critical
pathways of regional functioning will have been developed and
simplistically coded into a quantitative framework using
VENSIM.
Systems analysts will further develop the simple models and
collate appropriate regional socioeconomic, cultural and
environmental information to act as inputs to the models. Accepting
that many of the hypothesised processes will not be able to
parametised, we will carry out an extensive sensitivity analysis of
the significance of different processes in the models.
Once we have an understanding of this, we will perform another
round of sensitivity analysis, this time aimed at the sensitivity
of the outcomes to driving characteristics that differ between
savanna regions. With innumerable caveats, this will provide a
first attempt to prioritise research, monitoring and capacity
building needs in regions of different types.
The final step will be to document these findings and formally
identify
- whether the approach is worth pursuing; if so,
- what types of partners and who are needed for the pursuit,
and
- what research is next most critically needed in terms of the
most sensitive parts of the models.
Answers to these issues will form the basis for recommendations
to the TS–CRC on how to proceed. Two ancillary products will
be more of a discursive analysis of linkages in savanna regions,
and a collation of a contextual data base of data going beyond the
underlying resource data.
What contributions would successful completion of this project
make to improved management in the savannas, with particular
reference to the activities of institutions, groups and people
collaborating in the TS–CRC?
Informed investment by the CRC in the development of an
integrated, multi-agency modelling & analysis infrastructure
clearly based on client needs
Investment in TS–CRC regional case studies informed by a
preliminary analysis of the social, economic and environmental
status and trajectories of all the regions in the Savannas.
As a result of 1) & 2), development of regional development
and policy choices regarding resource use in the Savannas based on
best available information and knowledge.
Outputs
A report profiling the savanna regions in terms of their
economic, social and natural resource status and trajectory, with
conceptual and coded models of the process links between these
factors.
A report assessing options for strategic R&D and
infrastructure investment to build a state-of-the-art regional
modelling capacity for the Savannas.
These outputs are available in a single report which can be
downloaded as a PDF from the links below. It is also available in
summary form.
Mark Stafford Smith, CSIRO SE
Romy Greiner, CSIRO SE
Dan Walker, CSIRO SE
Vanessa Chewings, CSIRO
Colin Mayocchi, CSIRO
