Sustainable Regional Development
 CSE
is providing rural and regional communities with options for
adapting to economic, environmental and social change. We
analyse systems to help guide sustainable development at a community,
regional and national scale.
We investigate the best ways to use limited
resources and develop partnerships to promote community development. Enabling Australian society to make well-informed choices about national resource policy, management and investment options is a key goal of CSE.
We model the flow of materials and energy through our economy to determine the best practices to support sustainability in Australia. Our research considers climate change and its impact on biodiversity, management of water, cropping and pastoral lands.
Current activities
Research effort is focused on:
- Regional and community resource dynamics
- Adaptive governance
- Investing in sustainability
- Indigenous livelihoods.
Research examples:
 Decision support for natural resource policy and investment appraisal - (CSIRO.au Web site) aims to develop analytical techniques to support natural resource investment decisions and policy choices.
Sustainable Landscape Planning in the Wet Tropics - This project in northern Australia is involving people in a landscape planning process that aims to understand their future visions of landscapes in the Wet Tropics. Instiutional Arrangements - a collaborative natural resource management team studying the services people obtain from their environments and the economic and social values of these services.
Healthy Planning Project - this project will develop and apply methods for long-term monitoring and evaluation of regional natural resource planning in the three northern states – Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia. This project builds on a previous project that improved regional planning integration in savanna regions.
Research in action:
past projects, achievements and articles
 Criteria and methods for evaluating regional plans in the tropical savannas report pdf file (Kb) (CRC for tropical savannas Web site). A guide for planners and reviewers.
Evaluating regions plans in Australia's Tropical Savannas (CRC for tropical savannas Web site)
This two-year project with the CRC for Tropical Savannas reviewed regional natural resource management (NRM) planning practice across the tropical savanna regions of Australia. More than 45 regional plans were evaluated to determine the technical capacity of these plans to deliver on stated sustainability objectives. This provided an understanding of the current situation in planning and a benchmark for preparing and evaluating future plans.
 Balancing Act - The 2005 report from this project by scientists from CSIRO and the University of Sydney is a world first.
It looks across 135 industry sectors of the Australian economy and highlights sustainability challenges for different industries and pinpoints areas in the production chain where a focussed effort would make a significant difference.
Agriculture: adapting to climate change pdf file (87 Kb)
Nick Goldie and Monica Van Wensveen describe how Australian farmers can lessen the imapct of climate change by developing more 'resilient' agricultural systems.
ECOS 115, April-June 2003
Future Dilemmas - The report (pdf file 514 Kb) from this project on Australian life towards 2050 suggests that we need to break excessive consumer habits and slow down the economic growth driving the depletion of our natural resources.
Future Sustainability of the Australian Grains Industry - an investigation in to long term sustainable farming options for the Australian grains industry.
The Ecosystem Services Project examined the importance of correctly valuing the benefits given to us from the ecosystems in which we live.
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