Dale A, Turnour J, Burns S, Bock E, and Baresi U (2024). Regional planning and assessment for sustainable development in the Gilbert River Catchment: Solutions Report. A joint report for the Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia (CRCNA), Townsville and Reef and Rainforest Research Centre (RRRC), Cairns.
Overview
Resolution of the highly contested nature of development in northern Australia needs new solutions if we are to achieve genuinely sustainable development in our regions. In this context, sustainable development at the regional and/or catchment scale represents the integrated achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and the Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) legislative concept. Operationalising this locally relies on applying emerging concepts of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) thinking at the development project scale.
This Solutions Report progresses innovative new directions that arise from our Analysis Report of the regional-scale planning and development assessment system in the Gilbert River in Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria. We have proposed these solutions to explore opportunities for improving the system of planning and development assessment across northern Queensland and northern Australia in general. The work has been developed closely with: the Commonwealth’s Department of Climate Change; Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW); two NESP hubs; the Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia (CRCNA); Regional Development Australia Tropical North Queensland (RDA TNQ); and, the Etheridge Shire Council (ESC).
Our Solutions Report seeks to propose ways to resolve key issues affecting Queensland’s Gilbert River catchment, just one of three sentinel case studies exploring these issues across the northern Australian landscape. The second is the Douglas Daly Region in the Northern Territory (NT), and the third is the Pilbara Region of northern Western Australia (WA). Together, these three case studies will develop the partnerships, knowledge and expertise needed to explore new directions for planning and development across northern Australia and help inform the contemporary policy and standards development work that supports the current reformation processes associated with the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
Our recent Analysis Report has explored the many complex issues facing current decision-making processes in the Gilbert River catchment, showing tensions between conservation and development; indicating the need for a more regionalised, engaged and evidence-based approach to planning, development assessment and conservation investment decisions. This Solutions Report builds on this work to propose, at the very least, the application of new mapping and facilitative approaches to help build cross-governmental and regional consensus about appropriate development models. It also explores the need to build long-term local institutional capacity for ecosystem service market attraction and offset management to deliver landscape-scale conservation works.
This combined work in the Gilbert, and sibling analyses in the Douglas Daly and Pilbara, are aimed to support the development of genuine reforms in planning and development assessment to guide the current Commonwealth ‘refresh’ of the nation’s Developing Northern Australia Whitepaper.
