Climate Change Impacts on Natural Resource Management Work: Opportunities for Resilient and Adaptive Practice

Description: This project is funded by La Trobe University and undertaken in collaboration with North East Catchment Management Authority and Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority in Victoria, Australia. The project team acknowledges that the land and waters involved in this research are unceded lands of First Nations peoples.

Everyone relies on the natural environment for their existence, and the natural environment relies on people and their work in natural resource management (NRM). NRM work refers to activities to protect, restore, and manage natural spaces. Such work is under increasing pressure from climate change, which stresses and disrupts NRM work influencing its effectiveness.

The aim of the project is to develop a framework of climate change impacts on NRM work including the ways work is exposed to climate change, and how these exposures interact with vulnerabilities and sensitivities of work. This understanding will inform the identification of strengths and vulnerabilities of NRM work, and opportunities to shape resilient and adaptive NRM.

Key concepts will be developed:

• Work as purposeful activity.

• NRM as a set of practices.

• Climate change impacts as concurrent, cascading, and compounding.

• Adaptation in relation to NRM work.

The project takes a collaborative and place-based approach and methods include interviews to understand NRM work, case studies to examine climate change impacts, and workshops to develop a framework of impacts and opportunities.

Dates

State ongoing
Start 2024-01-15
Form updated 2024-02-24

Report authors

Lisa de Kleyn (link)
0000-0002-6672-0188
L.deKleyn@latrobe.edu.au
Report completion

Jack Nunn
Report checking

Location

North-east Victoria, Australia

Other IDs

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Aims

To develop a conceptual framework of Natural Resource Management (NRM) work that extends the boundaries of work to include formal and informal roles, public and private spheres, and paid and volunteer arrangements.

To understand NRM work as a practice, whereby activities are the focus on meaningful activity, and practices are influenced by institutional arrangements, knowledges, meanings, and local conditions.

To understand the impacts of climate change on NRM work including exposures, vulnerabilities and sensitivities, and impacts from ongoing stressors to extreme events, that cascade through systems, and compound vulnerabilities.

To inform the identification of strengths and vulnerabilities of NRM work, and a framework of opportunities to shape resilient and adaptative NRM.

Keywords

Natural resource management

Climate change

Climate change impacts

Work

Case study research

Community needs and expectations

First Nations people's self-determination

Collaborative research

Category

research

Inputs

group of individuals

Stage: Project inception
Start: 2024-01-15
End 2024-12-31

Research team (7)

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Task: Support the development of the scope, aims, and objectives of the project. Refine considerations of the impact of the project, and public engagement. Provide expert advice on topics of NRM, climate change impacts, climate change adaptation, and social justice.
Method: Formal group
Recruitment: Directly contacted based on their potential contribution to the project.
Communication: Meetings every 6 weeks (online video calls, face to face meetings), emails, shared documents.
Barriers: Competing work commitments and significant workloads.
Compensation: paid
Declared interests: Practice: supporting resilient and adaptive NRM work. Policy: recommendations for reinforcing a supportive institutional framework in the context of climate change. Academic: contributions to considerations of climate change impacts of work, NRM work, and social justice in public engagement.
Impact: Practice, policy, and academic impact will be discussed and developed collaboratively and based on a project demonstrating research ethics and integrity.

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These discussions are being held with team members as part of the project inception, and will be ongoing throughout the project.

organisation

La Trobe University (link)

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Task: Funding body
Compensation: volunteer

group of individuals

Catchment Management Authority partners (2)

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Task: Project partners co-developing the research. Shaping the aims, objectives, outcomes, impact, and public engagement. Participating in the research through case studies. Providing expert NRM input. Participating in reflexive evaluation.
Method: The methods will correspond with project stages and involve in-person and online meetings, and field work. With the whole team, meetings every 6 weeks (online video calls, face to face meetings), emails, shared documents.
Compensation: other

funding

(link)

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25000 (AUD)

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Grant (ABC Scheme)

time

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100 hours

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Catchment Management Authorities staff time (in-kind)

Outputs and impacts

learning item

A framework of climate change impacts on Natural Resource Management (NRM) and opportunities for resilient and adaptive NRM work.

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