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Political economyWe interpret our political system as a market place in which participants attempt to maximise their utility (Abel and Langston in prep (PDF 343 KB)). Participants are voters, political parties, bureaucracies and interest groups, including industries, firms, the media, and groups of citizens pursuing a particular interest — pastoralists, the tourism industry, and Aboriginal groups for example. The aim of politicians is to be elected or re-elected. Political parties offer bundles of policies and institutional changes in the political market. The design of the bundles is based on the expected net return to the party in terms of political support. The bundles are designed to win at least 50% plus one of votes in 50% plus one of electorates. However, political support is not provided only through votes. Information is a key resource, and party organisations are needed. Both need funds, which are provided to political parties by industries that calculate the likely returns in terms of favourable policies and institutions. The set of existing institutions, such as laws, established by similar processes in the past, constrain the behaviour of all current participants in the process. Institutions and policies emerging from the bargaining process at the national level distribute benefits and costs within society, and affect the regional economy, population, and the condition of its land and water resources. PsychologyPersonal construct psychology explains why peoples' perceptions differ, why perceptions can be difficult to change, and why even radical changes can occur suddenly. People use experiences to build constructs which enable them to understand and predict events. People tend to accept information that confirms their constructs, and shed the rest. They may change the information to fit the constructs. The constructs are organised into mental models. The primary function of a mental model is simplifying complex reality. Simplification means that human perceptions are inaccurate because elements of reality are omitted. Because individuals select information and organise it differently, their mental models differ, and so do their interpretations of the world. Constructs are organised hierarchically into systems and sub-systems within a mental model. Together with the tendency to ignore or modify challenging information, hierarchy imposes some stability on the model, for a construct cannot necessarily be changed without changing other constructs until they are mutually compatible. This stability means direct experiences are often needed to challenge a person to change their constructs — "telling" is not usually enough. Our project was therefore designed to provide experiences through workshops that challenged participants mental models. It also provided opportunities for participants to learn about each others' mental models, without necessarily agreeing with each other. Such understanding is the first step in communication, and perhaps to negotiation of win-win solutions. Development theory"Development" is the paradigm which has dominated Australian society since first settlement. It is the use of social and economic capital to extract value from the natural capital that resides in ecosystems. By social capital we mean knowledge, memory, skills, organisations, networks and institutions. Economic capital is the physical means of production and distribution. Natural capital is the more-or-less self-maintaining ecosystems that provide humans with inputs to production, waste absorption and life support services, stabilising services (e.g. erosion control) and psychological satisfaction. Some of the value extracted is used to meet current needs, some is reinvested in social and economic capital for the further extraction of value from natural capital. Patterns of resource use are set, and benefits and costs are distributed in society through markets, policies and institutions (Political Economy). Landscape ecologyA well-functioning landscape could be used for a broad range of purposes. As function declines, that range decreases. In a well-functioning landscape infiltration, runoff and soil erosion are controlled by vegetation. Soil organic matter contributes to soil structure and cation exchange capacity. Loss of vegetation can break controls and seeds, water, nutrients, organic matter and sediments are exported with run-off and wind. Dysfunctional landscapes typically have significantly lowered levels of seeds, stored nitrogen and organic carbon in the topsoil, infiltration rates and herbaceous productivity. Some landscape types are able to tolerate more stress than others without loss of function — they are more resilient. Loss of function is not necessarily irreversible — vegetation can become re-established, soil organic matter re-accumulate, and function can thus return. Landscape function is also affected by the structure of vegetation. Woody plants protect soil from wind erosion, and cycle nutrients. In the absence of herbivores and fires, the density of trees and shrubs at a site is determined primarily by available soil moisture. Soil moisture depends on rainfall, topography, soil texture and structure and vegetation cover. Density of woody plants will increase until equilibrium with soil moisture and occasional fires is reached. If the landscape is burned when fuel load is high, woody cover will decline. Burning is currently influenced by legislation, including liability when fires escape, and pastoralists are reluctant to burn in New South Wales. Grazing prevents the accumulation of sufficient fuel to support fires in most years, so shrubs have increased and continue to do so. Shrubs tend to suppress grass growth, and shrub encroachment can make pastoralism financially unviable on susceptible land systems. Conservation biologyThe proposals in this project for conservation of native biodiversity on public or privately managed land are based on the CAR approach: comprehensiveness (C) — each community type is included in the conservation set; adequacy (A) — species within each community remain viable and the integrity of ecological processes are maintained; and representativeness (R) — the biological diversity within each community type is present within the conservation set. Fundamental to the CAR principle is that some agreed proportion of each ecological community is managed for conservation of biodiversity (C). An assumption is that the range of variation in climate, soils and vegetation within community is a proxy for the variation in biodiversity as a whole (R). The size, shape and spatial arrangement of conservation areas within the conservation set will be critical in achieving the objective of adequacy (A). Although it has known flaws, the CAR approach, if well designed and managed, should reduce extinction rates and help maintain ecosystem functions. It will also diminish the need for expensive biodiversity surveys. Complex adaptive systemsCAS theory simplifies complexity. While 'everything in a system is connected to everything else', many connections are weak and can be ignored. Components and processes are grouped and tightly linked at particular spatial and social scales in a hierarchy. Behaviour of a sub-system at one scale is qualitatively different from that of a sub-system at another scale (e.g. a farm compared with a region). The sub-systems are nested, finer within broader scale, and there are some important linkages across scales (e.g. voters influence policy; policy influences land use). Some processes in complex systems are non-linear (e.g. major technological change). Humans continue to face and adapt to non-linear change, perhaps at an increasing rate as the pace of climatic, ecological and social change increases, so theories must take account such changes. In this project we did so using historical and scenario analysis. Complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory treats a human society and the ecosystems it depends on as an integrated, evolving, self-organising system. Disturbances select for "fitness" of individuals, species adapt, and the system reorganises to accommodate the change. The evolutionary path of the system is the outcome of these adaptations. Humans do influence the behaviour and evolutionary path of social-ecological systems, but long term attempts to control them through hierarchical 'command and control' fail because the multiplicity of local processes, and their ecological and social heterogeneity, are not amenable to centralised control. Thus social-ecological systems are facing a future in which powerful climatic and economic drivers are likely to disturb them with unforeseen consequences for sustainability, yet top-down directives are ineffective. CAS theory points towards changes in the decision-making environment of resource users as a means of achieving a sustainable evolutionary path. In other words, changes to laws, policies and organisations. It also points towards the need to increase our capacity to learn from past disturbances in order to adapt to future change. Design for resilienceResilience is the ability of a system to undergo disturbances without loss of its essential functions. A resilient system persists for a long time despite disturbances. Aboriginal resource use systems were highly resilient — they lasted for at least 60,000 years. A resilient system may be highly variable, and the variations may be necessary if its resilience is to be maintained. This is because resources must be invested to maintain the mechanisms of resilience (e.g. stored food, financial savings), and in the absence of disturbances these investments are not made. The need to build resilience guided our policy workshops. The following principles were incorporated:
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