Featured publications
The Anthropocene Obscene
This study sought to offer authentic, affective representations of rapidly changing coastal regions through the voices of those on the frontlines of socio-ecological change.
Next generation adaptive capacity assessment
Highly-cited adaptive capacity scholarship is drawn on to identify gaps in understanding that inhibit policy uptake, and resultantly, efficient and effective capacity building interventions.
Adaptive critical infrastructure: what does it mean?
This paper uses a scoping literature review to investigate the relationship between critical infrastructure and climate change.
Impacts of tourism in coastal areas
This study sought to better understand the role of tourism in achieving sustainable development and resilience in coastal areas.
Final project report
Read the final project report, summarising the results of the research and presenting recommendations to provide the enabling conditions for transformational change in coastal governance.
| Title | Year | Journal | Summary | Link |
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Governance innovations in the coastal zone: Towards social-ecological resilience |
2024 | Environmental Science and Policy | Explores innovation in rapidly changing coastal communities. Finds that despite high levels of individual capacity and good-practice policy, most innovations are limited in scale and insufficient for transformative change. | |
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Is hope helpful or a hindrance? Implications for coastal governance |
2024 | Ocean and Coastal Management | In this commentary we ask whether hopefulness as expressed by coastal managers is misplaced and a barrier to change, or whether hope remains a necessary precursor to transformative action. | |
| The Anthropocene Obscene: Poetic inquiry and evocative evidence of inequality | 2023 | The Geographical Journal | Poetic inquiry is used to highlight contrasting lived experiences of vulnerability and worsening socio‐ecological outcomes among Australia's fastest growing coastal communities. | |
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Third-generation adaptive capacity assessment |
2023 | Climate and Development | Argues that addressing shortcomings in adaptive capacity assessment is contingent upon a next (third) generation of adaptive capacity, which incorporates the transfer of capacity. | |
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What influences the adaptive capacity of coastal critical infrastructure providers? |
2023 | Urban Climate | Examines perceptions of adaptive capacity held by critical infrastructure providers who have assets with assets at risk to coastal hazards in Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand. | |
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Threats to Australia's oceans and coasts |
2023 | Ocean and Coastal Management | Threats to Australia's oceans and coasts are systematically reviewed and described, drawing on academic literature from 2010 to 2020. | |
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Impacts of tourism on coastal areas |
2023 | Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures | Coastal tourism is often seen as an important part of an economic development strategy. However, most highly cited papers suggest that economic benefits are unequally distributed between tourism investors and resident communities. |
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Current information provision rarely helps coastal households adapt to climate change |
2022 | Sustainability | Governments provide information to households to help them adapt. However, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this strategy. This study examined the types of information guiding household response to climate risks. | |
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The influence of international agreements on disaster risk reduction |
2022 | International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction | This article explores the influence of global disaster risk reduction and sustainability frameworks on flood and drought risk management in Canada and Australia, from the perspective of government practitioners. | |
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Understanding preferences for coastal climate change adaptation: A systematic literature review |
2022 | Sustainability | Reports on the findings of a systematic literature review conducted to understand preferences for coastal adaptation options and the factors influencing these preferences. | |
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Disaster risk reduction and climate policy implementation challenges in Canada and Australia |
2022 | Climate Policy | This article examines the policy context for disaster risk reduction in Canada and Australia and investigates the state of flood and drought planning and preparedness. | |
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Problem framing for Australian coastal management |
2022 | Environmental Science and Policy | This paper explores how coastal problems and solutions are framed in Australia. | |
| Policy is rarely intentional or substantial for coastal issues in Australia | 2022 | Ocean and Coastal Management |
This paper analyses the intent and substance of 92 institutional instruments with a role in coastal management in Australia. |
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Towards adaptive coastal management law: Lessons from Australia and Brazil |
2022 | Ocean and Coastal Management | This article provides an analysis of adaptive management in two jurisdictions struggling with coastal erosion in the context of their legal arrangements for coastal management (Byron Bay Australia and Florianópolis Brazil. | |
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The tragedy of climate change science |
2021 | Climate and Development | Science has demonstrated the climate is changing, governments agree the science is settled, yet concerted action to mitigate and adapt to climate change is lacking. This study brought a spotlight to this conundrum, arguing for a change in scientific practice that might lead to concerted climate action. | |
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Path Dependency and Future Adaptation of Coastal Cities: Examples From the Asia-Pacific |
2021 | Frontiers Environmental Sciences | Explores coastal hazards, adaptation, capacity and path dependencies in coastal Asia-Pacific cities characterised by differing geographical settings and cultural contexts | |
| Crisis management: Regional app roaches to geopolitical crises and natural hazards |
2021 | Geographical Research | This paper critiques crisis management approaches in the Sunshine Coast, Australia and Gotland, Sweden | |
| Legal barriers to adaptive coastal management at a coastal erosion hotspot in Florianópolis, Brazil | 2021 | Marine Policy | Drawing on the management experience of Armação Beach, Brazil, this paper: (a) analyses how adaptive management has been used for coastal management and its applicable legal framework; and (b) identifies legal barriers to adaptive coastal management. | |
| Linking disaster risk reduction and human development | 2021 | Climate Risk Management | This paper explores government practitioners’ views on an integration of disaster risk reduction and human development in the context of floods and droughts in Canada and Australia. | |
| Pre-disaster planning and preparedness for floods and droughts: A systematic review | 2019 | International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction | This paper systematically reviews 147 articles on pre-disaster planning and preparedness for floods and droughts in developed countries, critiquing governance approaches. | |
| Towards adaptive coastal management: Lessons from a “legal storm” in Byron Shire, Australia | 2019 | Ocean and Coastal Management | This article explores how adaptive management can be better operationalised in the context of coastal management, using Byron Bay as a case example. | |
| The relationship between adaptive management and law: a systematic literature review | 2018 | Ecology and Society | Law is often seen as a barrier to adaptive management although there has been no synthesis on the challenges of legal constraints or how to overcome them. This study fills this knowledge gap by providing a systematic review on the relationship between adaptive management and law in social-ecological systems. | |
| Adaptation or manipulation? Unpacking climate change response | 2012 | Ecology and Society | It could be argued that manipulative behaviours are a subset of a broader suite of adaptive behaviours; however, this paper suggests that manipulative behaviours have fundamentally different intentions and outcomes. |
| Title | Year | Journal | Summary | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adaptive capacity of small-scale coastal fishers to climate and non-climate stressors in the Western region of Ghana | 2019 | Geographical Journal | Drawing on the capitals framework, this study examines the adaptive capacity of Small-scale coastal fisheries to the combined effects of climate-related and non-climate-related stressors. | Access publication |
| Just transformations to sustainability | 2019 | Sustainability (Switzerland) | The concept of just transformations makes explicit a need to consider social justice in the process of shifting towards sustainability. In this paper, we draw on the transformations, just transitions, and social justice literature to advance a pragmatic framing of just transformations that includes recognitional, procedural and distributional considerations. | Access publication |
| Old ways for new days: Australian Indigenous peoples and climate change | 2019 | Local Environment | This paper explores how Australia's Indigenous peoples understand and respond to climate change impacts on their traditional land and seas. | Access publication |
| Resilience and housing markets: Who is it really for? | 2019 | Land Use Policy | Ten years after the Global Financial Crisis, this research examines how resilience theory and rhetoric relating to the economy and housing markets has been translated into policy and practice. | Access publication |
| Rigour and rigour mortis? Planning, calculative rationality, and forces of stability and change | 2019 | Urban Studies | This research draws upon literature and empirical data, to analyse critically issues connected to the design, application and wider effects of calculative practices within planning. | Access publication |
| Socio-economic drivers of adoption of small-scale aquaculture in Indonesia | 2019 | Sustainability (Switzerland) | This paper examines what socio-economic factors affect people's perceptions of adoption of lobster aquaculture in rural households in Indonesia. | Access publication |
| The housing crisis as an ideological artefact: Analysing how political discourse defines, diagnoses, and responds | 2019 | Housing Studies | This paper provides a critical evaluation of the emergence and scope of political discourse connected to the housing crisis in New Zealand under three National Party led governments (2008-2017) to better understand the ways in which the issue has been problematized in politics and operationalized in policy. | Access publication |
| Working at the “speed of trust”: pre-existing and emerging social ties in wildfire responder networks in Sweden and Canada | 2019 | Regional Environmental Change | Applies survey data from crisis responders of large-scale wildfires in Sweden and Canada to investigate factors that shape actors’ (i) ability and willingness to form new social ties with other actors and (ii) propensity to “activate” pre-existing social ties. | Access publication |
| Flood Risk Management and Shared Responsibility: Exploring Canadian Public Attitudes and Expectations | 2019 | Journal of Flood Risk Management | This article presents results from a national survey of Canadians living in high‐risk flood areas, which probed their attitudes concerning the division of responsibility for flood mitigation and recovery among governments, insurers and homeowners, as well as their willingness to adopt protective behaviours. | Access publication |
| Communicating Disaster Risk? An Evaluation of the Availability and Quality of Flood Maps | 2019 | Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences | This study assessed the quality of flood maps available to the public in Canadian communities located in designated flood risk areas. | Access publication |
| Applying a Typology of Governance Modes to Climate Change Adaptation | 2018 | Multidisciplinary Studies in Politics and Governance | This article articulates and applies a typology of four modes of governance by which adaptation takes place (hierarchy, market, network, and community). Using examples of initiatives from across Canada, the article offers a framework for describing, comparing, and evaluating the governance of adaptation initiatives. | Access publication |
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The relationship between adaptive management of social-ecological systems and law: a systematic review |
2018 | Ecology and Society | This paper presents the results of a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on the relationship between adaptive management and law in relation to social-ecological systems. | Access publication |
| An Approach to Assess Learning Conditions, Effects and Outcomes in Environmental Governance | 2018 | Environmental Policy and Governance | Empirically examines relationships among the conditions that enable learning, learning effects and sustainability outcomes based on experiences in four biosphere reserves in Canada and Sweden. | Access publication |
| Flood Governance: A multiple country comparison of stakeholder perceptions and aspirations | 2018 | Environmental Policy and Governance | This study investigates how stakeholders perceive floods to be governed and how they believe decision-making ought to occur, with the intent of determining to what extent changing governance is evident on the ground and how well (or poorly) it aligns with desired governance arrangements. | Access publication |
| Global water governance and Climate Change: Identifying innovative arrangements for adaptive transformation | 2018 | Water (Switzerland) | In this paper, nine water case studies from around the world are analysed to help identify potential 'innovative arrangements' for addressing existing dilemmas. | Access publication |
| Integrating Conservation and Sustainable Development Through Adaptive Co-management in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves | 2018 | Conservation and Society | We examine four UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BRs) to better understand the extent to which they exhibit characteristics of adaptive co-management, integrated conservation and sustainable development and gain insights into how they do so. | Access publication |
| Living with disasters: social capital for disaster governance | 2018 | Disasters | This paper explores how social networks and bonds within and across organisations shape disaster operations and strategies. | Access publication. |
| Risky spaces: Creating, contesting and communicating lines on environmental hazard maps | 2018 | Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | This paper examines the tensions involved in the production, presentation and revision of hazard maps, focusing on the controversies that have become increasingly common when they are used to change government policy. | Access publication |
| The Dark Side of Transformation: Latent Risks in Contemporary Sustainability Discourse | 2018 | Antipode | The notion of transformation is gaining traction in contemporary sustainability debates. The authors identify five latent risks associated with discourse that frames transformation as apolitical and/or inevitable - refered to as the dark side of transformation. | Access publication |
| Application of re/insurance models to estimate increases in flood risk due to climate change | 2018 | Geoenvironmental Disasters | This article presents research that used re/insurance catastrophe models to estimate the influence of climate change on flood-related losses. | Access publication |
| The roles of capitals in building capacity to address urban flooding in the shift to a new water management approach | 2018 | Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space | The emerging shift from science-based command and control ‘old’ water management to a dynamic and integrative systems view of water is explored using the concept of capacity, operationalized using the livelihoods capitals approach, via cases of urban flooding from Canada and Australia. | Access publication |
| Adaptive capacity: From assessment to action in coastal social-ecological systems | 2017 | Ecology and Society | Drawing on case studies of coastal communities from around the globe, we describe and compare 11 approaches used to study adaptive capacity of social and ecological systems and highlight considerations for framing research, choosing an assessment approach, analysis challanges, and good practices to foster adaptive capacity. | Access publication |
| Diagnosing adaptive comanagement across multiple cases | 2017 | Ecology and Society | We operationalize a diagnostic approach to set a new direction for adaptive comanagement research. We believe it offers a unifying methodological approach to advancing adaptive comanagement research. | Access publication |
| Environmental sustainability: A case of policy implementation failure? | 2017 | Sustainability (Switzerland) | A systematic literature review is conducted, identifying factors contributing to the lack of progress on environmental sustainability, inlcuding conflict between the objectives of environmental policies and those focused on economic development, a lack of incentives to implement environmental policies, and a failure to communicate objectives to key stakeholders. | Access publication |
| How do environmental governance processes shape evaluation of outcomes by stakeholders? A causal pathways approach | 2017 | PLoS ONE | Multi-stakeholder environmental management and governance processes are essential to realize social and ecological outcomes. Participation, collaboration, and learning are emphasized in these processes; to gain insights into how they influence stakeholders’ evaluations of outcomes in relation to management and governance interventions we use a path analysis approach to examine their relationships in individuals in four UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. | Access publication |
| Is Adaptive Co-management Delivering? Examining Relationships Between Collaboration, Learning and Outcomes in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves | 2017 | Ecological Economics | This paper examines relationships among perceived processes and outcomes in four UNESCO biosphere reserves (BRs). The analysis highlights that a better process is associated with more positive outcomes and that collaboration and learning make unique contributions to outcomes. | Access publication |
| Redefining community based on place attachment in a connected world | 2017 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | The authors propose redefining community based on place attachment in the context of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Adopting a place attachment framing is argued to provide a means to capture the neglected nonmaterial bonds people form with the environment, which could be leveraged to foster transnational environmental stewardship. | Access publication |
| Risky times: Hazard management and the tyranny of the present | 2017 | International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction | This paper examines how the processes and practices of hazard management skew decision-making towards current concerns, shaping the treatment of the future in the present. | Access publication |
| Water security in times of climate change and intractability: Reconciling conflict by transforming security concerns into equity concerns | 2017 | Water (Switzerland) | This paper considers how to achieve equitable water governance and the flow-on effects it has in terms of supporting sustainable development, drawing on case studies from the international climate change adaptation and governance project (CADWAGO). | Access publication |
| Adaptive capacity and climate change: the role of community opinion leaders | 2016 | Local Environment | The authors examine the role of community opinion leaders in developing and mobilising stocks of adaptive capacity, revealing a largely unexplored mechanism for building on latent social capital and associated networks that have the potential to transcend local-scale efforts. | Access publication |
| Communities and change in the anthropocene: understanding social-ecological vulnerability and planning adaptations to multiple interacting exposures | 2016 | Regional Environmental Change | This review and synthesis paper presents a conceptual framework for integrating multiple exposures into vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning. | Access publication |
| Contemporary water governance: Navigating crisis response and institutional constraints through pragmatism | 2016 | Water (Switzerland) | The aim of this study was to understand how stakeholders perceive ecosystems and the relationship with preferences for governance approaches in the context of water governance. | Access publication |
| Ecosystem perceptions in flood prone areas: A typology and its relationship to preferences for governance | 2016 | Water (Switzerland) | This study queried stakeholders' internal representations of ecosystems (resistance- or resilience-based), preferences for governance actors and mechanisms for flooding, and the relationship between them in five different regions of the world. | Access publication |
| How are coastal households responding to climate change? | 2016 | Environmental Science and Policy | This study examines household actions taken to address climate change and associated hazards in two Australian coastal communities. | Access publication l |
| Interrogating resilience: Toward a typology to improve its operationalization | 2016 | Ecology and Society | The authors argue that the current confusion and ambiguity within resilience thinking is problematic for operationalizing the concept within policy making. They identify core conceptual elements to be considered in policy responses if resilience is to fulfill its potential in improving decision making for change. | Access publication |
| Rapid regional-scale assessments of socio-economic vulnerability to climate change | 2016 | Environmental Research Letters | This paper reports on research that tested a rapid assessment approach of socio-economic vulnerability in Australia's natural resource management regions. | Access publication |
| Responsibility and liability in emergency management to natural disasters: A Canadian example | 2016 | International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction | This paper argues that a lack of standards in emergency management legislation, restrictive access to financial assistance and/or compensation and reduced government exposure to civil liability at common law expose private landowners to greater vulnerability to disasters and the liability attached. | Access publication |
| The governance of adaptation: Choices, reasons, and effects. Introduction to the special feature | 2016 | Ecology and Society | In this introduction to a Special Issue on the governance of adaptation, the authors review the current state of evidence and the contribution of the articles published in the Special Feature. The contributing papers suggest that the way issues are defined has important consequences for the support for governance interventions, and their effectiveness. | Access publication |
| Water: Drought, crisis and governance in australia and brazil | 2016 | Water (Switzerland) | This paper compared the contemporary water governance frameworks of Australia and Brazil in relation to three elements of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM): integration, participation, and information/knowledge. | Access publication |
| Organizational approaches to the facilitation of education for sustainability: An interpretive case study | 2015 | Sustainability (Switzerland) | In this article, the authors report on an interpretive case study of the Environment and Schools Initiative (ENSI), a Decentralised Global Network (DGN) operating for over 26 years in over 25 countries. Findings highlight six dimensions of the ENSI DGN important to the effective facilitation of Education for Systainability. | Access publication |
| Reframing water: Contesting H2O within the European Union | 2015 | Geoforum | 78 pieces of water legislation across the European Union are reviewed, critically analysing the different ways in which water has been defined. THe authors argue that the act of defining water is not only a deeply social and political process, but that it often privileges specific worldviews | Access publication |
| Seeing is questioning: Prompting sustainability discourses through an evocative visual agenda | 2015 | Ecology and Society | The author explores the potential utility of visual imagery to engage viewers in connecting ways with dynamic social-ecological contexts. | Access publication |
| Adapting to climate change in South East Queensland, Australia | 2014 | Regional Environmental Change | This introduction to the Special issue explains that the edition contributes to the emerging evidence base for adaptation in South East QLD, but more broadly, draws together disciplines and theories that provide lessons for future regionally scaled adaptation studies | Access publication |
| Building adaptive capacity in South East Queensland, Australia | 2014 | Regional Environmental Change | This paper offers an assessment of adaptive capacity across a range of sectors in South East Queensland, Australia. | Access publication |
| Priming the governance system for climate change adaptation: The application of a social-ecological inventory to engage actors in Niagara, Canada | 2014 | Ecology and Society | The authors describe the method and outcomes from the application of a social-ecological inventory to "prime," i.e., hasten the development of, a regional climate change adaptation network. By considering the social and ecological aspects of a system, a more comprehensive inventory is achieved that provides a foundational platform to facilitate or support climate change adaptation processes that are participatory and learning oriented. | Access publication |
| Strengthening threatened communities through adaptation: Insights from coastal Mozambique | 2014 | Ecology and Society | The authors investigate how adaptation is negotiated in two coastal fishing communities by documenting livelihood stressors, household assets, adaptive strategies, and factors that facilitate or inhibit adaptation. | Access publication |
| Toward a new conceptualization of household adaptive capacity to climate change: Applying a risk governance lens | 2014 | Ecology and Society | The authors argue that comprehensive assessments of adaptive capacity need to examine these influences of adaptive cpacity and influences on adaptive in combination to capture a dynamic and integrated view of households that better reflects their positioning and role(s) in broader social-political contexts. | Access publication |
Research insights
We have put together this series of research insight resources to promote key findings from our sustainability research. Each key research insight explores a major theme and a downloadable PDF resource is available.
- What's the problem with the coast?
- Threats to Australia's oceans and coasts
- The tragedy of climate change science
- Path dependency and future adaptation of coastal cities
- The (Anthropocene) Obscene
- Inequity in Australian coastal communities
- Impacts of tourism in coastal areas
- Manipulation is disguised as adaptation
- Policy is rarely intentional or substantial for coastal issues in Australia
- Balancing legal flexibility and certainty for adaptive management
- Legal certainty creates path dependency
- Legal flexibility helps and hinders adaptive management
- Lack of comprehensive pre-disaster planning for floods and droughts
- Capacities and needs are important for flood and drought risk reduction
- Crisis management requires an approach that extends beyond traditional arrangements
- Implementing international agreements for disaster risk reduction
- Disaster risk reduction requires systemic change
- Passive information rarely enables coastal household adaptation
- Protection adaptation options are preferred by the public
- Community support for coastal adaptation measures
- Hazard speed does not change residents adaptation preferences
- Towards adaptive coastal management law: lessons from Australia and Brazil
- Broadening the solution space for coastal adaptation
- Adaptive critical infrastructure: what does it mean?
- The adaptive capacity of critical infrastructure providers
- Mobilising the adaptive capacity of critical infrastructure providers
- Next generation adaptive capacity assessment
- Misplaced optimism of required hope: Implications for coastal governance
- Governance innovations in the coastal zone