Monitoring and adaptively reducing system-wide governance risks facing the GBR: Final report

The state and trend of the Great Barrier Reef’s (GBR) ecological health remains problematic, resulting in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) raising concerns regarding GBR governance (UNESCO, 2015). While UNESCO’s concerns triggered separate strategic assessments by the Australian and Queensland governments, independent and integrated review of the key risks within the overall system of governance influencing GBR outcomes is needed. As a case study of international significance, this project applied Governance Systems Analysis (GSA); a novel analytical framework that identifies, benchmarks and enables monitoring of the integrity of those governance themes, domains and subdomains most likely to influence environmental and socio-economic outcomes in the GBR. Apart from enabling us to benchmark the current governance system as it affects the GBR, GSA’s application has facilitated two international papers of significance concerning this topic: 1. Paper 1: Risk analysis of the governance system affecting outcomes in the GBR (see Dale et al. (n.d. a) to be submitted to Global Environmental Change); and 2. Paper 2: Design principles for catchment scale governance to deliver water quality outcomes in Australia’s GBR (see Dale et al., n.d. b) invited and to submitted as part of a special issue of Environmental Management)