Dale A, Turnour J, Burns S, Burford M, Stewart-Koster B, Waltham N, Burrows D, Douglas M, Bock E, and Baresi U (2024). Regional planning and assessment for sustainable development in the Gilbert River Catchment: Analysis Report. A report to the National Environmental Science Program. Reef and Rainforest Research Centre (RRRC), Cairns.
Overview
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 is viewed as the integrated achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and the legislative concept of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD). Operationalising this relies on
applying emerging concepts of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) thinking at the development project scale.
This research aims to address current failings in the regional-scale planning and development assessment system that currently hinder economic development in rural and Indigenous communities and fail to secure key biological and cultural values within the northern Queensland landscape. Nowhere is this problem more evident than in the Gilbert River catchment in Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria. To explore opportunities for improving the system of planning and development assessment across northern Queensland and northern Australia in general, this project has been developed closely with: the Commonwealth’s Department of Climate Change; Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW); the Marine and Coastal and the Resilient Landscapes 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).
This Analysis Report focuses on issues affecting Queensland’s Gilbert River catchment, as one of three sentinel case studies exploring these issues across the northern Australian landscape. The second is in the Douglas Daly Region in the Northern Territory (NT), and the third is in 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 contribute to 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).
A recent, collaborative analysis of the many complex issues facing future decision-making in the Gilbert River catchment (undertaken as NESP Research Project 1.32) showed 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 report undertakes a more detailed governance systems analysis of the current system of decision-making influencing catchment-based outcomes that are important for sustainable development within the catchment and community. The analysis is based on (i) a detailed literature review of some 21 governance sub-domains that influence the achievement of sustainable development outcomes and, (ii) detailed interviews with 14 important catchment
stakeholders.
This Analysis Report has enabled consideration of these findings and identified key ‘pre-conditions of success’ and proposed new approaches to integrated planning and development assessment within the Gilbert. The work has also led to a series of recommended next steps focused on potential solutions for strengthening the current governance system. These are presented in a separate Solutions Report. These solutions will explore the application of new mapping and facilitative approaches to help build cross-governmental and regional consensus about appropriate development models. They also explore the need to build long-term local institutional capacity for ecosystem service market attraction and offset management for landscape-scale conservation.
This work in the Gilbert, and sibling analyses in the Douglas Daly and in the Pilbara, are resources that 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.
