Thursday 12 March 2009

1-2pm, in Fenner School's Forestry Lecture Theatre

Exploring methods and concepts that will take integration practice forward in Natural Resource Management

Tally Palmer ¹ (Speaker) and Harry Biggs ²

^{1 University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Broadway, NSW, Australia and National Research Foundation, Pretoria, South Africa, 2 South African Nation Parks (SANPARKS), Skukuza, South Africa.}

Abstract

Catchments are the geographical units that encompass natural resources. In this presentation we look at the challenges that face managers, researchers and communities involved in catchment managment - particularly from the water resource perspective, and explore concepts that will take integration practice forward .

Key players in both South Africa and Australia that have the goal of balancing natural resource protection and use include Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs); local, state/provincial and federal/national regulators, managers and policy-makers; and industrial, agricultural and domestic resource-users. In both countries meaningful, effective communication between discipline specialists, resource-users, communities, and resource managers is not the norm. We use two case studies and the theoretical lenses of i) transdisciplinarity and ii) social-ecological resilience to explore the challenges of integration and effective communication and mamangement. Case Study 1 (Australia): The Upper Nepean catchment case-study used a transdisciplinary approach to address the question What are the risks to maximising the environmental benefits expected from environmental flows? In the case study a practical, workshop-based process was developed that clearly articulated disciplinary, institutional and community representations, and took account of both practical and value-driven constraints. Case Study 2 (South Africa) was a review of the Kruger National Park Rivers Research Programme and the 1994-2002 South African Water Law Review process using social-ecological resilience perspectives, specifically the idea of “windows of opportunity”. We also consider the potential of “integration and implementation science”. Integration methods are particularly important as climate change exacerbates ecosystem stressors.

Bio

Professor Tally Palmer is the Director of the Institute for Water and Environmental Resource Management at the University of Technology Sydney, and the UTS Director of the Centre for Ecotoxicology, a joint initiative between UTS and the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change. She is a riverine aquatic ecologist who has broad experience in aquatic ecosystem and pollution research and research applications in water resource management. “It is vital to make research useful to water resource users, managers, and decision-makers.” Tally now focuses on the ways in which new thinking about integration can assist natural resource managers take account of a wide variety of data, information and knowledge in the search for innovative approaches to resource sustainability.

The Fenner School Seminar Series is held in the Forestry Lecture Theatre, Forestry Building 48, Linnaeus Way (comes off Daley Road), ANU (Acton) campus, ACT

The seminar will start at 13:00 and finish at 14:00