Scenario planning for climate change adaptation for natural resource management: Insights from the Australian East Coast Cluster

Abstract

Natural resources and inherent ecosystem services have long been under pressure from unsustainable exploitation further exacerbated by climate change impacts. Managing natural resources in the Australian context is also a complex task because it involves a raft of stakeholders subjected to ongoing institutional changes and reductions in funding for programme implementation. This paper explores the use of scenario planning as a suitable tool to deal with the uncertainty and complexity inherent to natural resource management. Specifically, it reports on the development and application of explorative scenarios (multiple plausible futures) involving six natural resource management organisations and their communities of practice operating along the East Coast of Australia. Scenarios were developed based on two key drivers of change, namely: maturing approach to natural resource management; and community driven climate change action, to test the robustness and flexibility of a suite of existing strategies, policies and targets. Findings indicate that explorative scenarios were useful in the identification of strategies that may result in perverse or negative impacts under different futures; guide selection of different approaches in response to unexpected events; encourage a forwardlooking approach rather than relying on past experiences only; create flexible, robust strategies that are better able to deal with shocks and surprises; provide participating policy owners with an opportunity to consider future contexts for their policies to play out in; and, ascertain a range of possible pathways to achieve a vision or goals depending on changed circumstances.

Sustainable Management of the Coastal Water pH of Pulau Tuba Using the Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) Method

“…The estuarine ecosystem is important as the area is critical natural habitat (Carle, Benson, & Reinhardt, 2020) has significant economic value (Liu et al, 2020), performs environmental services (Carstensen et al, 2019) and acts as protective buffers (Pavoni et al, 2021). Anthropogenic activities would affect the natural balance of the estuarine ecosystem (Hillman et al, 2020) and impose increased pressure on vital natural resources (Serrao-Neumann et al, 2019). Furthermore, the threat to the coastal and mangrove ecosystem can be because of spill or dumping of fertilizers (Deegan, 2002); untreated sewage (Kelly et al, 2011); wastewater discharges from industrial facilities (Preisner et al, 2020); falling sediment (Eidam et al, 2021); and surface runoff from impervious surfaces (Rodrigues & Fidélis, 2021).…”

Harnessing the temporal and projective attributes of human agency to promote anticipatory climate change adaptation

“…The project used exploratory scenario planning to design collaborative adaptation pathways for the Shoalhaven region to address climate change impacts. Six full-day workshops were carried out for developing scenarios (Börjeson et al, 2006;Serrao-Neumann et al, 2019) and adaptation pathways planning (Walker et al, 2013; The adaptation pathway planning process was guided by the CoastAdapt approach (https://coastadapt.com.au/pathways-approach).…”

“…The project used exploratory scenario planning to design collaborative adaptation pathways for the Shoalhaven region to address climate change impacts. Six full‐day workshops were carried out for developing scenarios (Börjeson et al, 2006; Serrao‐Neumann et al, 2019) and adaptation pathways planning (Walker et al, 2013; see Table 1 for details). The project involved the participation of council personnel (practitioners), elected members and community members composing two strategic committees set up by the Shoalhaven City Council; the Natural Resource and Floodplain Management Committee and the Sustainable Futures Committee established in 2016 and 2017, respectively.…”

“…It is difficult, however, to determine the extent to which the scenario planning process helped to further develop participants' projectivity capacity, and mechanisms to asses this remain elusive (Burt & Nair, 2020). From an anticipatory identification perspective, as seen in other studies (Bartholomew, 2007;Rickards et al, 2014;Serrao-Neumann & Low Choy, 2018), dealing with future uncertainty and unforeseen changes was a difficult question for most people to answer during the interviews; whereas outputs from workshops showed a different picture. This finding aligns with Perez (2020) argument that scenario planning provides an opportunity for individuals to collectively discuss and solve complex issues.…”

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps: Navigating uncertainty in environmental flow management

“…Scenario planning workshops can include a large number of stakeholders and allow managers to think about events outside their own experience, and consider what type of policy/strategic decisions are required under a range of possible futures (Wodak and Neale, 2015;Shepherd et al, 2018). Fact sheets can be sent out prior to the workshop to ensure all participants have the same base level of information (Serrao-Neumann et al, 2019). Scenario planning workshops can challenge managers assumptions and improve knowledge of complex and dynamic issues.…”