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Accelerated impacts of climate change pose significant challenges for natural resource management (NRM), challenging traditional decision-making approaches. Foresight provides a range of suitable methods for informing NRM due to high uncertainty and complexity. Foresight processes are inherently political endeavours because they are used to allocate resources and engage in normative questions of what constitutes a desirable future. Existing empirical examples suggest that broader political and institutional settings may constrain foresight in NRM. However, to date, research has not explored the broader contexts that shape foresight processes. The paper draws on qualitative and quantitative data from an exploratory survey with 32 regional NRM organisations (NRMOs) across Australia. It develops an exploratory framework that situates foresight interventions within nested scales, to consider how broader socio-cultural, political and institutional contexts shape and constrain how NRMOs apply foresight and how its outcomes are taken up in decision-making. We have found that NRMOs are using a broad range of foresight methods with five categories of outcomes, including relationship building, knowledge generation and integration; capacity building; strategy development; and normative outcomes. We argue that increased attention to normative outcomes may support NRM to explicitly engage with the political dimensions of long-term planning. Despite this, the broader socio-cultural and environmental contexts create a challenging disjunct wherein foresight interventions face multiple constraints and tensions. • A wide range of foresight methods are being used in natural resource management. • Foresight supports engagement with normative dimensions of environmental planning. • A nested framework supports analysis of contexts in which foresight is used. • Socio-cultural, political and environmental contexts can limit impact of foresight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water governance is facing rapid transformations as cyber-physical systems (CPS) are deployed across water-related sectors and river basins. These CPS — often considered as artificial intelligence-enabled, automated or 'smart' technological systems — are promoted for improving monitoring, management and governance of hydrological systems. We review recent applications of CPS, highlighting their diverse functions across the water cycle, including in rural, urban and coastal settings. We then focus on how smart technologies connect to people, policy and ecosystems. Key to our argument is that integrating the social and ecosystem dimensions into CPS research and design will be vital for sustainable transformations in water management and governance, as per a cybernetic approach. This includes consideration of social data requirements, end-user experience, sociopolitical and environmental impacts, as well as acceptability, of CPS. • Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are increasingly common across the water cycle. • CPS are transforming how we manage and govern water safely and sustainably. • Cybernetic approaches can enable social and environmental dimension inclusion in CPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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