Philip J. Wallis’s research while affiliated with Monash University (Australia) and other places

Historically, governing, and thus planning, the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) has been framed in a plethora of ways. Seemingly, ‘the plan’ and planning has to be all things to all people, but the reforms, instituted in the Water Act 2007 (Cwlth), have resulted in greater complexity, uncertainty and controversy. Effective governing of the Basin along an unfolding, viable trajectory within an Anthropocene-world seems more elusive than ever. In this context, we propose a research and praxis agenda for dramaturgy as an initiative that seeks ‘effective’ water governance in the MDB. A dramaturge is someone,group, body or process who writes/adapts a play, brings forth a particular type of performance set in an ever-changing audience/context. Dramaturges engage in praxis. Two exemplar dramaturgies , developed through ex poste and ex ante analyses, are outlined. Each can be refined or consolidated in an on-going deliberative inquiry-process that generates social learning and effects concerted action for future MDB governance. Our research inquiry is exploratory but is based on a choice to frame governance from a cyber-systemic perspective, a praxis continually enacted through the interactions of actors, their symbols and frames and feedback dynamics between the social and biophysical world. We show how a dramaturgical framework can be used to analyse a policy process to reveal the important symbolic and performative dimensions, which are usually unrecognised.

While there is continued interest in Deliberative Policy Analysis (DPA) its practice element appears to have been underappreciated. We reflect on our experience of using a systemic co-inquiry to provide new insights into operationalizing DPA that may assist it to speak more immediately to issues related to governing in the Anthropocene. Natural resource management (NRM) in Australia embraced the global turn to governance, but demonstrated how difficult it is to achieve systemic, collaborative approaches to management policy. The treadmill of our title symbolizes the experience of community and organizational stakeholders in the case area, who were constantly in motion but achieving no forward movement in collaborative governance. A systemic co-inquiry into how decision making and action taking in NRM could be improved began in 2015. Systemic co-inquiry is a facilitated process that enables emergence of ideas and opportunities for transforming a situation. We describe this process, present how it was used in the case area, then critically reflect on its contributions for governance and practice, and its theoretical and political implications. Describing and critiquing our use of systemic co-inquiry provides new insights to address challenges for future DPA.

Since the mid-2000s, there has been increasing recognition of the promise of collaborative research and management for addressing complex issues in sustainably managing fresh water. A large variety of collaborative freshwater research and management processes is now evident around the world. However, how collective knowledge development, coproduction, or cocreation is carried out in an ethical manner is less well known. From the literature and our experiences as applied, transdisciplinary researchers and natural resource management practitioners, we seek to describe and explore these aspects of empirical cases of collaborative freshwater research and management. Drawing on cases from Indigenous community-based natural resource management in northern Australia, flood and drought risk management in Bulgaria, water management and climate change adaptation in the Pacific, and regional catchment and estuary management in Victoria and New South Wales in Australia, we identify lessons to support improved collaborative sustainable freshwater management research and practice. Cocreation represents an emerging approach to participation and collaboration in freshwater management research–practice and can be seen to constitute four interlinked and iterative phases: coinitiation, codesign, coimplementation, and coevaluation. For freshwater researchers and managers and their collaborators, paying attention to these phases and the ethical dilemmas that arise within each phase will support the cocreation of more effective and ethical research–practice through: sensitizing collaborators to the need for reflexivity in research–practice, proposing action research codesign as a method for managing emergent questions and outcomes, and supporting more equitable outcomes for collaborators through an emphasis on coevaluation and collaborative articulation of the links between research outputs and practice outcomes.

How mechanisms for inclusive governance are understood is built on the framing choices that are made about governance and that which is being governed. This chapter unpacks how governance can be understood and considers different historical and contemporary framings of water governance. A framing of “governance as praxis” is developed as a central element in the chapter. What makes governance inclusive is explored, drawing on theoretical, practical and institutional aspects before elucidating some of the different mechanisms currently used or proposed for creating inclusive water governance (though we argue against praxis based on simple mechanism). Finally, the factors that either constrain or enable inclusive water governance are explored with a focus on systemic concepts of learning and feedback.

Adaptation Pathways (AP) is receiving increased theoretical and practical interest as an approach to planning for climate change that engages with conditions of uncertainty. Participatory action research with environmental and natural resource management (NRM) planners, revealed that the contested, complex nature of NRM challenges the ready utility of AP planning implied by many other published examples. Findings indicate this is because current AP approaches do not yet engage with contested goals and knowledge, and tend to assume that actions to achieve goals are largely technical and unproblematic. Drawing on these findings, this paper develops an argument for a diagnostic, problem-structuring approach as one way of improving the utility of AP planning in contested, complex problems. We posit this approach could help guide selection of ‘fit-for-problem’ analysis and planning methods to develop practicable AP plans that support efforts towards transformational adaptation. Issues of engaging with diverse problem frames, scientific contestations, and institutional dimensions of governance remain potentially fruitful research foci in AP planning.

This paper critically reflects on a trial process for building the capacity of researchers to influence policy-makers in the urban water sector in Australia. Framed as an action research inquiry, this study brought together multidisciplinary teams of researchers to make policy pitches to simulated panels of current and former politicians, senior bureaucrats and industry representatives. The simulations were analysed with respect to tactics for pitching, methods of communication, use of evidence and participants’ reflections on the experience. Participants effectively used scientific research evidence to support a broad vision of water sensitive cities, but were less effective in articulating risk analyses, assessing economic impacts, and proposing appropriate policy instruments to enable their proposed visions to be operationalised. Dramaturgical analysis highlighted the implications of positioning scientists versus policy-makers, which ‘typecast’ participants in roles that restricted scientists’ ability to credibly argue policy ideas. It is proposed that teams of scientists and policy-makers ‘rehearse’ together to manage expectations, develop arguments that will cut through in policy contexts, and produce ideas that shape and are shaped and improved by the policy context.

This article reflects critically on the use of a wiki as a data repository for knowledge transfer and as a mediating technical platform for social learning in the context of a multi-country programme of agricultural research for development. The wiki was designed to foster sustainable social learning and an emergent community of practice among biophysical and social researchers acting for the first time as co-researchers. Over time, the technologically mediated element of the learning system was judged to have failed. The article is based on an inquiry that asked ‘How can learning system design cultivate learning opportunities and respond to learning challenges in an online environment to support research for development practice?’ The article also considers the wider context and institutional setting in which the knowledge work took place.

Water governance has emerged as a field of research endeavour in response to failures of current and historical management approaches to adequately address persistent decline in ecological health of many river catchments and pressures on associated communities. Attention to situational framing is a key aspect of emerging approaches to water governance research, including innovations that build capacity and confidence to experiment with approaches capable of transforming situations usefully framed as 'wicked'. Despite international investment in water governance research, a national research agenda on water governance was lacking in Australia in the late 2000s as were mechanisms to build the capacity of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and collaborative policy practice. Through a two-year Water Governance Research Initiative (WGRI), we designed and facilitated the development of a community of conversation between researchers concerned with the dynamics of human-ecological systems from the natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, policy, economics, law and philosophy. The WGRI was designed as a learning system, with the intention that it would provide opportunities for conversations, learning and reflection to emerge. In this paper we outline the starting conditions and design of the WGRI, critically reflect on new narratives that arose from this initiative, and evaluate its effectiveness as a boundary organisation that contributed to knowledge co-production in water governance. Our findings point to the importance of investment in institutions that can act as integrative and facilitative governance mechanisms, to build capacity to work with and between research, policy, local stakeholders and practitioners.

Our natural resource base is the primary source of our wealth and well-being. This means that looking after land, water and the other species with which we share the country underpins sustainability. Although there are some good news stories, widespread trends of continuing degradation indicate that we are unlikely to pass on the country to future generations in a better condition than we found it. Limiting such degradation, let alone maintaining or enhancing the condition of our natural resources, will be an increasing challenge under a changing climate. This report contributes to addressing that challenge. It is a key output of a collaborative process, throughout 2013-14 that linked university researchers and government extension specialists with natural resource management (NRM) planners and practitioners across south-eastern Australia. This endeavour has been referred to as SCARP, the Southern Slopes Climate Change Adaptation Research Partnership. This report is a key reference document to inform the development of regional NRM strategies, operational plans and even the development of specific programs and projects. Its central focus is strategic planning for NRM in a changing climate. While much of material referenced in the report is generally relevant to NRM climate planning, we have specifically focused on the Southern Slopes region in south-eastern Australia. While the specifics of the future remain unknown, research across the physical, biological and social sciences provide substantial insight into the plausible future impacts of climate change, and into possible ways to both mitigate risks and take advantage of future opportunities. This report synthesises such research to provide a broad knowledge-base to inform the development of NRM strategies.