Understanding How Policy Actors Improvise and Collaborate in the Great Barrier Reef

Challenges and opportunities for assisted regional ecosystem adaptation: International experience and implications for adaptation research

“…Simplistic institutional and scientific approaches to action have proven ineffective and disruptive for negotiating consensus and compromise in the past [67]. Though there are also many examples in which consensus and compromise have been negotiated within the GBR [Vella and Baresi, 2017], the complexity and uncertainty associated with assisted ecosystem adaptation further adds to the challenge.…”

“…In practice, structuring public and stakeholder engagement in decision-making over such a large area and in context of a highly complex socially institutional and regulatory environment is also technically challenging due to the diverse range of parties and rights holders who have PLOS ONE interests at stake. Experiences involving policy-makers in science and community and multistakeholder parties together in dialogic spaces in the GBR [80] are a starting point that can be built upon. Further research into frameworks for supporting diversified involvement might usefully focus on maximizing the effectiveness of adaptive restoration initiatives and minimizing the chances that decisions are made unilaterally by groups of highly skilled but unrepresentative individuals and organizations.…”