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Ways forward

Investing for the future

Key natural resource management challenges and opportunities

Australia faces many natural resource management challenges and opportunities as Australians seek to fine tune land use patterns and land, water and vegetation management practices. Within agricultural landscapes the overall objective must be to maximise profitability while minimising impact on the resource base. Communities are demanding high quality environments. To achieve this, trade-offs between productive use and conservation goals will need to be made, and the community must understand these so that benefits can be maximised for the wider public interest. Gaining an understanding of these issues requires full resource accounting that identifies social, economic and environmental benefits and costs of resource use.

The Audit assessment of Australia's catchments, rivers and estuaries contributes to this understanding by assessing the status of these systems in relation to current resource use patterns.

Key challenges

Land use

Many areas of Australia are incapable of sustaining the land uses that we have allocated to them. Drought, floods, fires, soil erodibility and fertility, topography and water balance are issues to consider as we seek more sustainable land use. The major challenge for Australia is to make land use more sustainable within the context and constraints of our natural resources, maintaining or enhancing productivity while minimising off-site impacts.

Australian land uses have foundations in practices imported with settlers from Europe; these have often been implemented without accounting for the differences in Australian landscapes and climate.

For example, early European settlers did not consider the threat of flooding when settling on the Hawkesbury and Hunter floodplains. Floods devastated these settlements not long after.

In Europe, treated sewage is piped into estuaries where snowmelt-flushed rivers swiftly remove it. In Australian tide-dominated estuaries which have long flushing times, this practice has led to high levels of nutrients being trapped in the estuaries, causing algal blooms that are only flushed out to marine environments by major floods.

The high density stocking of introduced hard hoofed grazing animals early in Australia's settlement also resulted in rapid changes to native pasture composition and major declines in productivity.

Responses to land use impacts have included:

• flood and erosion control for agricultural and urban areas;
• Australia-wide natural resource management programs such as soil conservation, Landcare, Natural Heritage Trust and the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality; and
• restructuring initiatives for agriculture (e.g. water reform, rural adjustment schemes).

Vegetation management

Australian Native Vegetation Assessment 2001 (NLWRA 2001c) details the type and extent of native vegetation loss across Australia. Approximately 67% of Australia's native vegetation in the intensively used areas (principally the agricultural and urban zones) has been cleared or substantially modified.

Biodiversity values, habitat fragmentation and nature conservation are discussed in the Audit Australian Biodiversity Assessment 2002 (NLWRA in prep.). Cover and vigour of native or introduced vegetation are key factors in minimising:

• soil erosion and degradation;
• changes to catchment hydrology;
• landscape water balance; and
• water quality deterioration.

With information provided by Audit assessments, regional natural resource managers and policy makers are now better equipped to address key challenges including:

• How do we best determine priorities for expenditure in revegetation versus improved management of existing remnant native vegetation?
• How do we best manage vegetation clearing, recognising continued community needs for improved infrastructure - roads, power lines, and urban and agricultural development?
• How do we best encourage land use practices that leave vegetative cover as a buffer against soil erosion and degradation and to trap sediment moving from the landscape into waterways?
• How do we best determine priorities for nature conservation values versus productive uses of our vegetation?

Extensive grazing management

Grazing is a major land use in many catchments in terms of the area of catchment used (e.g. two thirds of the North Coast Drainage Division is occupied by livestock grazing), with the major proportion involving grazing of unimproved native pastures in the rangelands. Financial returns per hectare are low and the level of investment in protective management is also low. In tropical Australia, the dry conditions of early summer in much of this grazing land leads to reduced ground cover, exacerbating the already high soil erosion hazard associated with the onset of intense monsoon rains at the end of the 'annual drought'.

Soil erosion and management

Accelerated soil erosion is a primary driver of natural resource degradation. It affects terrestrial, riverine, coastal and marine ecosystems by reducing primary productivity, changing catchment hydrology, smothering habitats and degrading water quality. Erosion processes and rates vary across Australia (NLWRA 2001b).

Improved soil management would provide significant returns in improved ecosystem condition. Until the 1980s, soil management and erosion control was a large part of government assistance to landholders. This assistance has declined but soil management remains an imperative.

Acidification, fertility loss, compaction and other elements of structural decline are also significant soil degradation issues that have off-farm impacts. Improved practice on-farm is the key to soil management and reducing off-farm impacts.

The Audit has assessed the sources and sinks of water-borne soil erosion (hillslope, gully and riverbank) and their relative contribution to sediment loads exported to Australia's coasts and estuaries at a catchment and river reach scale (NLWRA 2001b). Supported by Audit information and analytical frameworks the key challenges for regional resource managers and policy makers include:

• Where can investment best deliver gains - at local, catchment, State or national scales?
• What instruments are required to encourage improved soil management practices?

Eutrophication and nutrient management

Increased nutrient loads from both diffuse and point sources are a major cause of change in riverine and estuarine condition. Nutrient loads, particularly phosphorus, are strongly linked to eroded sediment loads and therefore much of the nutrient issue will be managed by managing soil erosion.

Similar questions on beneficiaries, costs and relative priorities as those for soil erosion and land use face regional planners and policy makers.

Landscape water balance and dryland salinity management

Dryland salinity is a problem resulting from changing the landscape water balance by replacing deep-rooted perennial native vegetation, which is efficient at using available water, with shallow-rooted agricultural crop species, which are relatively inefficient in terms of available water usage. It is ironic that on the driest inhabited continent on Earth, Australian agriculture has a sustainability issue relating to surplus water mobilising and relocating salts stored in subsurface soil profiles.

The National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality provides a framework for management and policy responses. Audit work designating groundwater flow systems (NLWRA 2001f) and assessing management options for differing systems (NLWRA 2001g) demonstrates the complexities and challenges involved in salinity management. Management scenarios need to deal with complexities such as response times, options for land use change, the scale of change, and trade-offs in terms of cost and benefit. Salinity management strategies such as revegetation and land use changes, which are primarily targeted at production outcomes, also offer synergies in terms of potentially significant ecosystem health benefits.

Challenges for regional groups and policy makers in combating dryland salinity include:

• the large scale of land use change required;
• limited opportunities for remediation; and
• many benefits of salinity control are realised off-farm.

Water resource use management

The Australian Water Resources Assessment 2000 (NLWRA 2001f) details the extent of water resource commitment, the continuing demands for water and the need for increased water use efficiency across all sectors. Water extraction is a key driver of ecological change in our river systems. However, demands for provision of environmental flows needs to be tempered with a recognition of the economic and social importance of irrigation - producing about 50% of Australia's agricultural production (NLWRA 2001g). The challenges facing regional planners and policy makers are recognised in the Council of Australian Governments Water Reform initiatives.

River and estuary management

Rivers and estuaries are key common property resources and have historically suffered misuse and neglect - the 'tragedy of the commons' (Hardin 1968), leading to degradation where major management and rehabilitation activities are required.

While recognising the need for river and estuarine rehabilitation, many river reaches and estuaries remain in near-pristine condition. Protective management of these is essential and far more cost-effective than remedial works.

Challenges for regional river and estuary managers and policy makers include:

• developing priorities and resourcing for remedial works and activities;
• designing and implementing protective management initiatives, to provide a representative system of riverine and estuarine reserves and to protect elements of the landscape that maintain river and estuary health (i.e. riparian and wetland areas);
• integrating riverine and estuarine management within wider ranging catchment management initiatives; and
• building increased community understanding of the values of rivers and estuaries and how best to improve all land use practices to minimise impact on these common property resources.

Biodiversity conservation and management

The level of representation of Australia's ecosystems within reserves (NLWRA 2001a, 2001c) points to the need for concerted efforts in biodiversity conservation, including off-park programs and special initiatives for river and estuary conservation. Detailed assessments of Australia's biodiversity status and management implications will be reported in the Audit Australian Biodiversity Assessment in 2002.

Urban and built environment catchment management

Australia's east coast, including much of the New South Wales coast and south-east Queensland, has the fastest growing urban populations in Australia. The impacts of this population density and that of other major urban centres on natural resource and catchment, river and estuary include loss of native vegetation, increased sediment, nutrient and other pollutant loads to waterways, changed catchment hydrology, increased water use and physical modifications to rivers and estuaries.

Integrating catchment, river and estuary management

The Audit undertook assessments based on an understanding of biophysical processes and documenting the causes of impact, to provide a basis for developing management strategies and tracking the effectiveness of management activities. Armed with the Audit information and analytical frameworks, the challenges now facing catchment, river and estuary managers and policy makers include:

• how best to link or integrate institutional arrangements for catchment planning, management and works across the management needs of catchments, rivers and estuaries;
• building recognition of differing levels of susceptibility and response times and resilience in our rivers and estuaries (based on their ecology and the relative importance of process drivers such as tidal and freshwater flows) into management responses;
• coordinated use of legislative and regulatory instruments to provide a more integrated and multi-objective management regime at State and local government scales; and
• generating an improved understanding of the linked nature of catchments, rivers, estuaries and near shore marine systems including the impacts of land use on other resources (e.g. fisheries) amongst the Australian community.

Tracing the links between land management and aquatic ecosystem condition - addressing the cause of the problem

• Gaining an understanding of how land management can change aquatic ecosystems will help identify appropriate management responses.
• Algae blooms in rivers and estuaries are generally considered a water quality problem associated with excessive nutrient levels - eutrophication. However, by examining the dominant source of the nutrients, the primary driver of this 'water quality' issue (and the appropriate focus for management responses) can be traced back to a 'land management' issue.
• Phosphates, the nutrients primarily responsible for algae blooms, are usually transported with fine sediment and deposited in rivers and estuaries. The nutrients attached to the sediment leads to blooms when water clarity, mixing and temperature are favourable. Algal blooms may in turn lead to a continued nutrient cycling problem, providing further opportunities for blooms. In some systems, regardless of the amount of nutrients available, algal blooms never occur. For example, waterways that are turbid may never provide favourable light conditions for algal growth. Nutrient loads in these systems may have other important impacts on riverine ecology (e.g. fungal disease in aquatic biota).
• Understanding the likely response of systems to perturbation allows performance targets to be set and management actions developed to address the cause of the problem. In this case, we need to focus on the source and supply of nutrients rather than the algal bloom (the symptom or indicator of dysfunction).

Building an information-based approach to natural resource management

Building on the lessons from the Audit

Based on progress made by the Audit, key guiding principles for subsequent assessments of Australia's catchments, rivers and estuaries include:

• be user and purpose driven: all information products need to be based on meeting the needs of natural resource managers at both regional and broader scales;
• be based on regional data where possible, resource assessment frameworks and regional data collection need to be co-designed to enable regional data to be incorporated into broader assessment frameworks and provided to clients (such as State of the Environment reporting) as integrated information products;
• use common spatial frameworks in order to be able to better integrate outputs and data across assessments, common spatial frameworks that integrate and link river reaches with sub-catchments, river basins and estuaries;
• provide integrated assessments: assessment activities should be timed and based on assessment and reporting frameworks that allow comprehensive integration between catchment, river and estuary components;
• include biophysical classification: conceptual models and analytical frameworks based on the predominant biophysical processes within catchment, river and estuarine systems are needed to improve the resolution of condition assessments for specific systems in specific regions;
• be comparable: comparability is essential for Australia-wide perspectives, however, data, assessment criteria and management requirements will differ regionally;
• build on existing activities: assessment methods need to build on and/or incorporate outputs of State assessment activities;
• include targeted and standardised data collection: improve collection of key data, gain agreement on assessment methods and effectively monitor change - includes defining data requirements such as quality and standards for collection;
• develop cost-effective technologies: innovative and inexpensive methods of data collection need to be developed (e.g. realising the full promise of remote sensing techniques);
• determine trend: while recognising that there is limited data available on trend, an assessment of change in condition should be attempted in the next assessment, building on the current assessment as a basis;
• include reference condition: reference condition or benchmarks for catchments, rivers and estuaries would provide more rigorous condition assessments;
• take account of variability in time and space: methods and analytical frameworks need to be sensitive to episodic and catastrophic events;
• include additional biota indicators: biota as indicators of ecosystem condition, need to be more comprehensively included in assessment activities, data limitations point to the need for strategic data collection; and
• include a human dimension: an integrated approach includes social and economic components and assesses and evaluates costs and benefits of various management activities.

Assessment as a framework for program adjustment and priority setting

Priorities for natural resource management will change as information on particular issues and their implications becomes available, implying the need for:

• ongoing assessment with reporting at regular intervals as a key input to program development;
• inclusion of enhanced information sets or conceptual models to provide up-to-date approaches to integrated natural resource management;
• reassessment of management activities and works priorities in the light of progress monitoring; and
• review and as necessary realignment of assessment and management activities incorporating results of research.

Assessment and reporting of the condition of Australia's catchments, rivers and estuaries needs to be an ongoing process. Five-yearly intervals could be most cost effective for Australia-wide assessment and reporting. Ongoing assessment will enable regional groups to undertake more frequent reporting and review to ensure efficiencies and effectiveness in their management programs.

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