Future Leadership, Livelihoods and Landscapes by RIEL

Future Leadership, Livelihoods and Landscapes ANDREW CAMPBELL ABARES Regional Outlook Conference, 26 October 2011

http://riel.cdu.edu.au

Converging Insecurities • Climate change

• Direct impacts • Impacts of climate change policies – e.g. carbon markets

• Water • Every calorie we consume uses one litre in its production • Every litre weighs one kilogram — energy intensive to distribute it • Per capita freshwater availability declining steeply (globally)

• Energy — the era of cheap, abundant fossil fuels is coming to a close • Food — need to increase world production by 70% by 2050 • Using less land, water & energy and emitting less carbon • Improving nutrition, distribution, animal welfare, pollution • Looking after rural landscapes, biodiversity, animal welfare, amenity & communities

Profound technical challenges 1. To decouple economic growth from carbon emissions 2. To adapt to an increasingly difficult climate 3. To increase water productivity — decoupling the 1 litre per calorie relationship

To increase energy productivity – –

more food energy out per unit of energy in while shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy

To develop more sustainable food systems – –

while conserving biodiversity and improving landscape amenity, soil health, animal welfare & human health

6. ALL AT THE SAME TIME

We need a third agricultural revolution • High level goals: e.g. doubling food & fibre production while doubling water productivity, and becoming a net energy producer from farming & pastoral lands • How to get there? – Farming systems that make more efficient use of and conserve water, energy, nutrients, carbon and biodiversity – Smart metering, sensing, telemetry, robotics, guidance, biotech – Better understanding of soil carbon & microbial activity – Radically reducing waste in all parts of the food chain – Farming systems producing renewable (2nd gen) bioenergy • Also producing energy from waste

– Urban and peri-urban food production – Attracting talented young people into great careers

The integration imperative • Managing whole landscapes – – – – –

“where nature meets culture” (Simon Schama) landscapes are socially constructed beyond ‘ecological apartheid’ NRM means people management engage values, perceptions, aspirations, behaviour

• Integration - across issues — e.g climate, energy, water, food, biodiversity - across scales — agencies, governments, short-term, long-term - across the triple helix — landscapes, lifestyles & livelihoods

Murrumbidgee Irrigation - a current case • Bulk water distributor and seller in the MIA – $1B GVAP, and $7B value-add of food, wine and fibre production

• 100 year old irrigation & drainage network being modernised – – –

Replacing ‘leaky’, gravity-fed open earthen channels Piping and pressurisation will treble energy consumption And hence greenhouse gas emissions

• Options: – – – –

Biomass energy plant - 0.5m tonnes p.a. of ag & food process waste Solar thermal power plant on linear easements (C price-dependent) Conversion to biodiesel Carbon offsets through large scale tree planting

• Turning a water company into a water, energy & carbon company – Liberating opportunities through a more integrated approach 7

Planning landscapes & infrastructure • How can this all ‘fit’ at a landscape and regional scale? • The landscape needs to be re-plumbed, re-wired and re-clothed • We need new regional planning approaches that: • are robust under a range of climate change & demographic scenarios • build in resilience thinking (e.g. improve habitat connectivity & buffering, protect refugia) • accommodate carbon pollution mitigation options (energy, transport, food) • safeguard productive soil and allow for increased food production • facilitate recycling of water, nutrients and energy

Scales for response to climate change â&#x20AC;˘ Many of the main drivers of biodiversity loss operate at the landscape-scale e.g. habitat fragmentation, invasive species and changed fire regimes. â&#x20AC;˘ It is the scale which lends itsel

CSIRO 2010

The Cynefin knowledge framework* • Climate change spans all of these domains • If temp increase > 2ºC, then disorder & chaos will reign • The challenge is to handle the necessary range of simultaneous responses – to work in all of these domains at once – to develop a system-wide perspective – & the knowledge systems and learning strategies to underpin that perspective

* David Snowden & Mary Boone (2007) “Leader's Framework for Decision Making” Harvard Business Review

Response Options We need to be operating in each of these quadrants Develop research partnerships +/or link into existing collaborations

Source: FFI CRC EverCrop

Climate-smart land use in the Top End • Managing whole landscapes to increase carbon storage – – – –

Smarter fire regimes Better control of weeds and feral animals Substantial co-benefits for biodiversity (wildlife and plants) More sustainable livelihoods for traditional owners and pastoralists

• Increasing food production for local resilience and food security – –

Groundwater (sustainable yield) and wastewater-based irrigation mosaics Within and near to population centres

• Integrating production of renewable energy – Large scale (solar, geothermal, tidal) for regional centres and export – Small scale (solar, wind, biodiesel, biomass) for households and remote firms & communities 13

An engaged community base is crucial

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Rapid, often surprising, on-going environmental change will challenge governments and industries, and stress communities.

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Many responses (proactive and reactive) will need to be worked out at regional and local levels. Successful implementation of tough decisions depends on community support.

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This requires environmentally literate and capable delivery frameworks at regional scale, involving community leaders and engaging grassroots volunteers.

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Convergence in climate, energy, water and food mandates an integrated planning & delivery framework 14

NRM: sequential vs parallel evolution Three major developments in NRM over the last 20 years:

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Community landcare (writ large – e.g. land & sea mgt groups)

The regional model

Assets-based approach — ‘evidence-based’ targeting

There is a tendency to see these developments as sequential: each supplanting the previous approach

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Rather, they should be implemented in parallel − They are complementary, mutually reinforcing − Synergistic with good planning & delivery − Building sustainability and resilience

Sustainability and Resilience • Complementary concepts • Sustainability remains relevant and desirable − − − −

Living within our means Thinking long term (inter-generational equity) Distinguishing between depletable and renewable resources Avoiding or limiting actions that degrade, pollute, over-use or compromise ecosystem function

• BUT: Sustainability is less instructive around: − Social and economic dimensions − Operating in contexts with inherent variability 16

Resilience – the cool new kid on the block • Basically refers to the capacity of a system to absorb shocks, reorganise and retain the same functions − As resilience declines, it takes a progressively smaller shock to push a system across a threshold

• Adds value in explicitly embracing change and variability • Introduces the useful concept of thresholds or tipping points • Also embraces scale − Resilience at a given scale requires an understanding of at least one scale up & down 17