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Governments employ a range of policy instruments to encourage landholders to adopt land management practices that reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture. While the impact of policy instruments may be well-theorised, their implementation in diverse contexts and landholders' complex behavioural responses, makes measurement and prediction of the resulting adoption rates difficult. This constrains the ability of governments to select the optimal combination of policy instruments. We used a participatory modelling approach to incorporate expert knowledge into a Bayesian network model exploring the effect of different policy combinations on the adoption of sustainable farming practices in the Great Barrier Reef catchment, Australia. The model integrates policy instruments including regulating farming practices, offering financial incentives, and facilitating extension programs to educate and assist farmers. Results showed that the effectiveness of a policy instrument on practice adoption was expected to vary depending on which other instruments are implemented, the characteristics of the land managers, the surrounding social context, and the practice itself. This approach demonstrates the utility of Bayesian networks in integrating high-level multi-disciplinary knowledge to address complex environmental policy decisions such as water quality management in the Great Barrier Reef. ● Impact of agriculture on the Great Barrier Reef can be reduced using policy instruments. ● Interactions between instruments for practice adoption are currently poorly understood. ● Mechanisms influencing the impact of policy instruments were explored using an expert-derived Bayesian network. ● Regulations, financial incentives, extension, governance and communication were considered. ● The model facilitates scenario analysis to help to inform policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, the Reef has been a site where Australian environmental policy has flourished, mirroring global environmental policy seeking to 'balance' human activity through 'ecologically sustainable development'. The article examines the parallel and intersecting processes of modern environmental policy and news media practice in the context of the Reef to unveil how Australia's news media are communicating critical moments in the protection of the Reef. Through two key conservation moments – the 1981 World Heritage Listing and the 2012 threat to place the Reef on the List of World Heritage in Danger – the article examines the role of news media in different geographic contexts, highlighting the complex politics of protection from early conservation campaigns to the contemporary era of protecting the Reef in the context of global environmental crisis. We identify how ecologically sustainable development discourses can be used to communicate positions that challenge and discredit policy initiatives aimed at protecting natural environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract There is growing recognition that coastal water quality is interdependent with agricultural management in coastal catchments. Economic-incentive-based instruments can be used to internalize the negative externalities from coastal water pollution. Bio-physical and socio-economic heterogeneity across farms is expected to be an important factor in explaining differing rates of adoption of management practices. This paper hypothesises that: i) different types of farmers are likely to respond differently to incentive payments that promote the adoption of management practices for Great Barrier Reef water quality improvement, and ii) if policy makers account for heterogeneity, cost-effectiveness of incentive payments will increase. Results show that if government paid farmers 100% of the transition costs of moving from their current practices to improved practices, and given current technologies, water quality improvement for the case-study region would be approximately 56% (measured as a reduction of dissolved organic nitrogen at the end of river). Total costs for the region would be almost AU$ 30 M over the planning horizon of one cropping cycle of 6 years. Results furthermore show that as the policy seeks more ambitious land-use changes, from common practice to improved practice to aspirational practice, the public cost of incentive payments increase at an exponential rate. Larger farms make the shift sooner as they are able to offset fixed investments against increased revenues over greater areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes are frequently criticised for lacking responsiveness to community concerns. • We analysed public consultation processes for three Liquefied Natural Gas developments located in the Great Barrier Reef region, Australia. • There is little deliberation occurring in existing processes but there is scope to introduce deliberative elements into mainstream EIA practice. • The principles and practices of deliberative democracy can provide insights into how EIA decisions could be strengthened and democratised. Abstract The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is a highly complex social-ecological system that is under pressure from a variety of human activities, including coastal development for industrial purposes. A 2012 World Heritage Committee review found that the speed and scale of large industrial developments along the GBR coast exceeded the capacity of governments to manage their impacts. Ameliorating the impacts of large developments in the GBR is likely to require changes to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes that form the centrepiece of Australian environmental legislation. As part of this, environmental managers must find ways to ensure that EIA decisions reflect both best-available science and community concerns. It has been suggested that innovative forms of structured decision making, such as public deliberation, could democratise impact assessment decisions, and could be accommodated within existing EIA processes, but the literature on this question is predominantly theoretical. In this paper, we explore the extent to which participatory and deliberative approaches have been integrated into existing EIA processes, using data from a survey of local residents in an area of the Great Barrier Reef coast undergoing rapid industrial development. We find that current processes provide few formalised opportunities for deliberative engagement, but that the principles of deliberative democracy could provide a foundation for more robust decision making, provided that such processes are part of an adaptive strategy of review over the life of a project, combined with genuine openness on the part of proponents and regulators to accept and respond to community knowledge. We elaborate on this through discussing a series of principles to support the integration of deliberative practices into EIA decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a response to the published Viewpoint by Larcombe and Ridd (2018). We agree with Larcombe and Ridd (2018) that scientific merit goes hand in hand with rigorous quality control. However, we are responding here to several points raised by Larcombe and Ridd (2018) which in our view were misrepresented. We describe the formal and effective science review, synthesis and advice processes that are in place for science supporting decision-making in the Great Barrier Reef. We also respond in detail to critiques of selected publications that were used by Larcombe and Ridd (2018) as a case study to illustrate shortcomings in science quality control. We provide evidence that their representation of the published research and arguments to support the statement that “many (…) conclusions are demonstrably incorrect” is based on misinterpretation, selective use of data and over-simplification, and also ignores formal responses to previously published critiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research science used to inform public policy decisions, herein defined as “Policy-Science”, is rarely subjected to rigorous checking, testing and replication. Studies of biomedical and other sciences indicate that a considerable fraction of published peer-reviewed scientific literature, perhaps half, has significant flaws. To demonstrate the potential failings of the present approaches to scientific Quality Control (QC), we describe examples of science associated with perceived threats to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia. There appears a serious risk of efforts to improve the health of the GBR being directed inefficiently and/or away from the more serious threats. We suggest the need for a new organisation to undertake quality reviews and audits of important scientific results that underpin government spending decisions on the environment. Logically, such a body could also examine policy science in other key areas where governments rely heavily upon scientific results, such as education, health and criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) represents a set of options available to an economy to reduce pollution. MACC are valuable tools in that they help not only understand the costs associated with a variety of abatement options but also provide information about the amount of pollutants which can potentially be reduced. MACC have therefore become increasingly popular as instruments to inform policy discussions and to prioritize investment opportunities to reduce pollution. Surprisingly though, there are not many tools available to produce MACCs with the flexibility and functionality as was required in recent research the authors were involved in. This technical paper presents the new tool 'ABATE' which arose from assessing options to improve water quality in the Great Barrier Reef. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the health of many coastal ecosystems declines, there is an increasingly urgent need for research that transcends academic disciplines and can respond to complex environmental problems. While the benefits of transdisciplinary research are widely recognised, there are institutional and practical constraints on researchers wishing to put these approaches into practice. In this paper we seek to understand how incorporating participatory elements into research design and data collection can enhance the benefits of a transdisciplinary approach and improve outcomes for scientists and users of research. To do so, we describe and reflect on a transdisciplinary research project conducted in a large industrial port in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia. Drawing on experiential observation and theoretical contributions from across the literatures on transdisciplinary and participatory research, we also develop an integrated research framework that can be applied across contexts. The research demonstrates that incorporating participatory techniques during the research scoping phase can help researchers to develop a transdisciplinary research programme that can both strengthen research outcomes and ensure their relevance to coastal communities and decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss the need to prioritize long-term protection of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia from climate change. They explain that GBR is the world's largest coral reef system and its condition is poor and deteriorating. The authors believe that improving the governance and management of GBR could reverse its rapid decline by changing policies that promote fossil fuels and economic development in the Reef region.

In a stated preference valuation survey, the expected benefits of environmental policies are generally presented to respondents without reference to the fact that the predicted outcomes are rarely known with certainty. This omission may reduce the credibility of the valuation scenario and contribute to hypothetical bias. In the study outlined in this paper, a choice experiment was conducted to elicit values for environmental improvements in the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), with outcome certainty included as a separate attribute. Different specifications of the utility functions, which imply different behavioural assumptions about the way choices have been made, generate variations in value estimates. Results showed that respondents incorporate outcome certainty into their decisions, but that an expected utility formulation, represented by the interaction between environmental protection and likelihood of occurrence, underestimated environmental values. Some environmental protection values appear to be independent of outcome certainty, which may be consistent with existence values and other non-use categories. A partial expected utility model is cautiously recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers wanting to increase protection of the Great Barrier Reef from pollutants generated by agriculture need to identify when measures to improve water quality generate benefits to society that outweigh the costs involved. The research reported in this paper makes a contribution in several ways. First, it uses the improved science understanding about the links between management changes and reef health to bring together the analysis of costs and benefits of marginal changes, helping to demonstrate the appropriate way of addressing policy questions relating to reef protection. Second, it uses the scientific relationships to frame a choice experiment to value the benefits of improved reef health, with the results of mixed logit (random parameter) models linking improvements explicitly to changes in "water quality units." Third, the research demonstrates how protection values are consistent across a broader population, with some limited evidence of distance effects. Fourth, the information on marginal costs and benefits that are reported provide policymakers with information to help improve management decisions. The results indicate that while there is potential for water quality improvements to generate net benefits, high cost water quality improvements are generally uneconomic. A major policy implication is that cost thresholds for key pollutants should be set to avoid more expensive water quality proposals being selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Engaging stakeholders in Great Barrier Reef climate change reduction and mitigation strategies is central to efforts aimed at reducing human impacts on the reef and increasing its resilience to climate change. We developed a theoretical framework to investigate subjective and objective constraints on cognitive, affective, and behavioural engagement with the Great Barrier Reef climate change issue. A survey of 1623 Australian residents revealed high levels of cognitive and affective engagement with the Great Barrier Reef climate change issue, but that behavioural engagement was limited by objective constraints that intervene between individuals’ desire to become engaged (affective engagement) and their ability to take relevant actions. Individuals were constrained from increasing their engagement with the Great Barrier Reef climate change issue primarily by lack of knowledge about actions they can take, lack of time, and having other priorities. Individuals’ age, gender, education level, income, and place of residence influenced the probability that they would experience these and other specific constraints on engagement. We suggest that future Great Barrier Reef engagement strategies must endeavour to identify specific behaviour that individuals can undertake to help reduce the impact of climate change on the reef, and find ways to help people overcome the constraints they face on engagement in those activities. The theoretical framework we developed should be useful for investigating constraints on engagement with other environmental issues, but further empirical and conceptual work is necessary. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Integration has become something of a byword for those concerned with environmental planning and management in Australia in recent years. Yet efforts to collaborate with non-state actors in policy development and implementation, and to co-ordinate local, state and federal government policies and activities suggest that integration can become an amorphous and often ambiguous goal. This article draws on recent collaborative and co-ordination efforts to address water quality issues in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef region to highlight some of these challenges. A preliminary assessment shows how a Reef-wide collaborative water quality partnership has risen to the challenge of integration. To date, this large-scale collaboration has focussed on co-ordinating a defensible knowledge-base to guide water quality management responses and developing an adaptive management strategy to test this knowledge through management experience and monitoring feedbacks. An initial evaluation of these efforts suggests the value of 'scaling-up' collaboration to facilitate integrated environmental management. There is no 'hard-wired' or structural solution to the problem on integration; instead, this experience shows that the development of collaborative partnerships also holds great promise. Such partnerships need to be carefully fitted to the particular management contexts in which integration is being pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prerequisite for meaningful environmental legislation is that it he based upon an adequate scientific understanding of the natural system to which It is applied. In 2003, the Australian Commonwealth and Queensland State governments introduced a Reef Water Quality Protection Plan. which aimed to "improve" water quality in river catchments adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef (GRR) and in nearby coastal waters. The Plan was introduced in the absence of any substantive evidence for regional degradation of GRR water quality. This paper reviews the available data regarding nutrient contents En the Tully River, north Queensland, which is cited as the best (available) evidence for human-related changes in nutrient export from (GBR) catchment [1]. It is shown that the claim of human-related nutrient enrichment in the Tully River, and regionally, is without substance. No detectable trends in GBR water quality have occurred since systematic measurements were first started in the 1980s. Environmental policies that are based on mischievous claims of chimerical damage to the Great Barrier Reef damage the reputation of science as a tool for disinterested analysis, and provoke widespread cynicism in the community regarding the integrity of contemporary environmental politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]