The power of the narrative

Australian and many other landscapes have been expertly examined not only by scientists but – and more broadly – by creative artists. Thus, Judith Wright, Ken Taylor, John Olsen, Peter Sculthorpe and many others have contributed substantially to appreciation of our natural environment – at both national and international levels in literature, the visual arts, music and dance. Francis Ratcliffe (1938) tackled a broad canvas of the outback with his Flying Fox and Drifting Sand – a book routinely set as prescribed reading for Queensland schoolchildren. Banfield’s Confessions of a Beachcomber ([1908] 1974) is a more localised account that achieved worldwide renown for both E. J. Banfield and Dunk Island, subsequently conserved as a national park.

Salcombe Harbour (Kingsbridge Estuary), a long-gazetted Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Devon, UK, has its genesis in Lord Tennyson’s nineteenth century poem ‘Crossing the Bar’. Du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek ([1941] 2015) cemented in the public mind the treasured Helford Passage, made an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (and Special Area of Conservation and Special Site of Scientific Interest) in Cornwall.

In the USA, the now-iconic Yellowstone National Park is reported to have been inspired by Lewis and Clark’s journal writings (in 1805) about the region. Reservation of the French Camargue as a World Heritage Centre was reinforced by Christopher Parsons’ A Bull Called Marius (1971) and so on. Through writing and other arts, the future of such areas becomes embedded in national psyches. The arts can capture public imagination, awareness and engagement in a way that regulatory approaches to environmental management cannot. So, can an ‘environmental narrative’ – with a suite of alternative management tools – be developed into a supplementary instrument to environmental legislation to achieve sustainable land management outcomes?

Given the persistent concerns about multiple issues in environmental management, we need widespread public engagement to create political suasion for effective action. Authoritative predictions about the future of our natural environment are discouraging, at all levels. For Australia, a review of Ecologically Sustainable Development in this journal summarises Macintosh (2015): ‘While ESD is commonly referenced in much contemporary legislation, … such provisions provide policy makers and regulators with little practical guidance and therefore can do little to protect the interests of future generations’ (Curran and Hollander 2015, 5).

To deliver long-term results, the current reliance on government – and in turn on its almost sole management instrument (legislation) – is inadequate (Fisher 2010). Regulations are failing to provide examples of sustainable development and, furthermore, are now fostering non-compliance, revocations of environmental laws and sometimes contrary court interpretations of the law. Other limitations of legislation include the impracticality of effective imposition over a vast and sparsely populated countryside of diverse ecosystems. Thus, while legislation is necessary, we need to go beyond regulatory tools to gain widespread public interest and support and offer more positive management incentive.

Jenkins (2016) has advocated a move from reactive management drive to ‘outcomes-based management’ by instruments that generate proactive strategies for environmental improvement. This is consistent with the editorials of this journal (Ross and Carter 2012; Jacobson et al. 2017) advocating the desirability of a more constructive management approach.

Augmenting environmental legislation with environmental narratives

Government facilitation of communication around important issues is far from new. In the USA, the Smith-Lever Act 1914 established a system of extension services connected with land-grant universities¹ with two explicit objectives: to require relevant field research to be undertaken by competent scientists and to have their results effectively passed on to those best positioned to implement them. One would not be funded without the other. In essence, sound solutions had to be communicated productively to the public, as stories with which people could empathise. When faced with the worst environmental disaster in the western world in modern times, the early 1930s ‘Dust Bowl Crisis’, then-US President Roosevelt dictated – in his post-Depression ‘New Deal’ – that the crisis would be tackled by funding only through the provisions of the Smith-Lever Act.

Given the persistent concerns about multiple issues in environmental management, we need widespread public engagement to create political suasion for effective action (Lavery 2014). How could an ‘environmental narrative’ be developed as an instrument, complementary to planning and management tools? An urban case study serves here to illustrate the potential of such a new ‘instrument’, in engaging the public towards support for particular environments.

Berrys Bay is a deep-water double inlet between McMahons Point and the Waverton Peninsula on the north shore of Sydney Harbour, in the heart of Australia’s busiest city. The land base, with re-afforested headlands at Balls Head and Berry Island, is a significant precinct, the largest area of reserved green space in the Sydney Harbour catchment. The natural biophysical environment has changed drastically during more than two centuries of intense industrial and other uses. The North Sydney community – the proposed project’s Wollstonecraft Ward social catchment – is well known for its interest in rehabilitating the area.

In the course of 12 months of deliberations by a statutory Community Reference Group² to assist government evaluate a major ‘Controlled Action’ (re)Development Application for the precinct, 77 concerns were voiced and solutions pursued. The majority of potential solutions (71) had a largely engineering or architectural form, readily addressed. However, six qualitative issues were crucial for sustaining the environment, for which solutions were unknown, unclear or unaffordable to those people with the responsibility to deliver long-term management. These were issues related to the broad scale of development, the amount of (and access to) private land, and long-term effects. Solutions involved having real influence on decision-making, attention to ecological design layout (including offsets), cumulative impacts (articulated in proposed regional landscape strategies) and follow-up monitoring including international benchmarking to appreciate consequences (such as on extent of naturalness³ and visual amenity). These proposals were documented in numerous reports.

The information considered by the Community Reference Group could be combined into the elements of a narrative, interpreted through history and the creative arts, to build a shared view, capture public imagination and secure an enduring sense of place. The elements as framework for such a narrative might be:

• Berrys Bay’s cultural heritage begins as part of the country of the Cammeraygal clan, members of the Eora people and archaeological sites remain.

• Berrys Bay is of historic importance primarily because of its cultural landscape – notably its scenic outlook over urbanized harbour and its legacy as ‘the place where old ships die’.

• The most noteworthy period of the Bay’s post-contact history has been that associated with the maritime and connected timber industries; boats and vantage points over them (including from on the bay waters) are central to its perennial amenity.

• A significant heritage item is the coffer dam built by Captain John Vine Hall in 1854 to repair the historic S.S. Croesus, considered a unique engineering feat. Further reference to ship ‘hulks’ (mostly sunken) acknowledges the role of Berrys Bay as ‘the graveyard of the seven seas’.

• Also important is the site’s role in the extraordinary exploitation of ’red gold’ (the native red cedar trees) from nearby Shoalhaven district, which made Dr Alexander Berry in his time one of Australia’s richest men. Timber (as raw wood, wharves, boats, buildings, etc.) is the historical ‘thread’ that defines the sense of place of Berrys Bay.

• Classic landscape art collections featuring Berrys Bay capture this legacy (Lavery 2017). Unique community value lies in maintaining the area’s record as the home of Australian impressionist art – a role that now prominently extends to both some surrounding vantage points and on to the Shoalhaven district.

• This legacy contributes unique value to the site, requiring sensitivity both to ecological values and appearance in rehabilitating the natural ecosystems remaining on Balls Head and Berrys Island, and restoring the feature structures.

Translating to environmental planning and management options, the realisable goal of redevelopment is to plan for a net environmental gain by designing to restore naturalness. Measures of management performance can be informed by those for selected coastal benchmark Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the United Kingdom (Helford Passage), in the Port of Camargue in relation to the adjacent Camargue Biosphere Reserve of France and (for promotional purposes) in the educational sense of place inspired by Monterey Bay Aquarium in USA. All of these have been sustained well over long periods.

As the source of Australian landscape art, Berrys Bay affords the path of ‘social memory’ (described as inking the passions of the time to ancient obsessions of nature) (Schama 1995). The narrative outline offered above suggests there is ample scope for the preparation and presentation of persuasive narratives delightfully peculiar to Australia, even for a long-disturbed location in highly urbanised Sydney. Yet no mention of the features of these narratives occurred in the voluminous mandatory reports available to the Community Reference Group.

A narrative approach to environmental planning and management, complementary to other instruments, could be framed around the following elements:

• a fundamental ecological design (see e.g. Forman 2008; Lavery 2013; Ndubisi 2008) as the on-going management framework;

• accurate ecosystem information, analyses and technologies over time;

• assessment of local character features, ideally with international uniqueness;

• historical analysis, incorporating both natural and cultural landscapes;

• a storyline of enduring public appeal;

• the opportunity to interpret the narrative in multiple forms of the arts; then

• a means of management affordability, ideally in perpetuity.

Such an environmental narrative, based on accurate science and crafted by artists, would have the capacity to positively engage investors, the public and government in visions, conservation and restoration goals. Proactive creative narratives, coupled with science, offer entirely different – and essentially more appealing and constructive – strategies to gain support for environmental management, than those derived by using regulatory compliance procedures. We argue the instrument of the environmental narrative has potential to offer a paradigm shift that is one way out of the current impasse created by over-reliance on legislation.

Perhaps no better example of the power of the narrative lies in the recent catastrophic fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, where record sales of Victor Hugo’s classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame (English translation 1833) have since accompanied gifts of over 1 billion euros towards its conservation (Brockell 2019).

Articles in this issue

The recent IPBES global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES 2019) draws attention to the accelerating rate of decline in the world’s species, and the criticality of maintaining biodiversity for planetary functions. From an environmental manager’s perspective, it is important to know or estimate what species are present in a given area, and how they tend to respond to processes such as climate change. A consistent nationwide approach is useful. Erin Graham, April Reside, Ian Atkinson, Daniel Baird, Lauren Hodgson, Cassandra James and Jeremy VanDerWal describe the scientific basis and modelling approach used in developing a set of publicly available downloadable maps to explore how individual species distributions and taxa richness in Australia are forecast to respond to climate change. These should be useful to regional, state and national environmental managers engaged in conservation planning and protecting biodiversity.

Government agencies, researchers and industry organisations may use sets of plant growth form groups (trees, shrubs, grasses, etc.) to assess richness and cover of vegetation types. Form groups can be useful to simplify ecological complexity or to assess biodiversity at particular sites. There are challenges in the consistency of classification, however. Ian Oliver, Megan McNellie, Greg Steenbeeke, Lachlan Copeland, Marianne Porteners and Julian Wall explain the expert-based process they developed under the Biodiversity Assessment Method and the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 (NSW).

Andrew Lawson follows with a conceptual framework developed to help assess the relationships between land managers, organisations that manage support programs and external stakeholders with an interest in stewardship on private lands. Lawson discusses voluntary stewardship programs according to the framework, asking questions such as ‘Does the voluntary stewardship program help landholders achieve environmental outcomes? Does it help them manage their impacts on the environment, develop their own standards or internalise stewardship norms? Importantly, does it facilitate an exchange of benefits between landholders and other stakeholders? Further, can it support landholders in demonstrating their achievement of outcomes and understand the other stakeholders’ perspectives and expectations?

Continuing the idea of reciprocity between land (and sea) managers and investing partners, Beau Austin, Cathy Robinson, Matalena Tofa and Stephen Garnett explore the interests of those who invest in Indigenous land and sea management. Indigenous aspirations are quite well documented: understanding those of their investors could strengthen partnerships between Indigenous peoples and their financial, logistical and moral supporters. They found that investors are not solely interested in biophysical outcomes such as biodiversity. Many are also willing to contribute towards social, economic and cultural benefits. These authors recommend that investors identify and clearly communicate their aspirations for entering partnerships and that Indigenous peoples be supported to develop clear protocols for investment in their land and sea management programs.

The management of dog interactions with wildlife requires effective approaches with owners. Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, Bo Pang, Kathy Knox, Patricia David, Joy Parkinson and Felix Hussenoeder explain the co-designed social marketing approach they developed with a South East Queensland council. They found that dog owners recommend a dog training program that is not specifically focused on koalas but informs them of useful practices and alerts them to koala presence. This contrasts with the ‘education and awareness’ approaches usually favoured by experts. Participants in the study gave insights into their responses to different forms of communication methods. The authors advise using audience-focused behaviour management strategies, which are more likely to promote effective community engagement and behaviour change to reduce dog–koala interactions.

Editors tip – advice for reviewers

In the March issue, we gave advice on how to respond to disappointing peer reviews of your work. Putting the shoe on the other foot, here is our professional advice for reviewers. This supplements the excellent advice for reviewers given by many journals and publishers, with some of our own observations as editors and authors.

First, thank you for being prepared to review. In doing so, you add useful points and help with communication of new knowledge. You keep the publishing system to a high standard, you pull your weight (especially if you are also an author) and often benefit by learning about emerging knowledge and trends.

In conducting a review, do not assume you know best. The author may be anyone from an honours student to one of the luminaries in their field, possibly more expert than you are. One of our co-authors, among the most highly regarded and cited authors in his field, laughed heartily a few years ago on receiving a review saying he should cite much more of … [his name]. We had fun writing that rejoinder, along the lines that he reserved the right to choose his extent of self-citation.

For the same reason, watch your tone. Your advice may (or may not) be excellent but stand in the shoes of the author receiving it. How will they feel about the way it is delivered? You want to help them and the journal improve the manuscript, and not crush them.

Make sure your advice is clear. The authors are expected to amend their manuscript on its basis.

Give reasonable guidance, without undue imposition on your own time. For instance, if you consider the literature review is insufficient, a few suggestions of authors to consider, or actual references, can be very helpful if you have rapid access to them. No one expects you to go out of your way to research a listing. On that point, be careful in suggesting literature. Do not solicit citations to your own work, unless it is absolutely seminal in the field and will genuinely help to improve the work. Soliciting citations is unreasonable, unethical and often leads to the author guessing your identity.

Concentrate on key aspects of quality: literature review, explanation of methods, a clear flow of logic throughout the manuscript and useful conclusions. While many authors welcome this, no one expects you to list every typo – it is sufficient to say the work needs a good proof read or to point out that certain sentences or sections are unclear. Line references can be very helpful if specific passages are unclear or need improvement.

Uncritical reviews are rare, but we do see them. Editors are not helped by a recommendation to ‘accept’ work that is clearly flawed. Editors and authors want to achieve and maintain high standards. Readers want access to reliable knowledge. And if you are acting as a reviewer today, surely you are a reader or an author on other days.

Notes on contributor

Dr Hugh Lavery, AM FEIANZ, is Australia’s Certified Environmental Practitioner Registration #001 and the inaugural Certified Environmental Practitioner of the Year (2007). He has been a professional environmental scientist since the 1950s, spanning three careers – as a founding director in the Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service; as the chief environmental adviser to Australia’s largest pastoral landholders; and most recently, as senior executive counsel to major coastal developers. His current professorial position is in the Institute for Future Environments at the Queensland University of Technology – from where he has spent some time chairing the Community Reference Groups for prominent Australian development proposals, including on Sydney Harbour.

Notes

1 Universities established under a USA Congressional Act in 1862, giving land to states to foster establishment of higher education in agriculture.

2 Chaired by the first author.

3 An ‘Index of Naturalness’ (IUCN WCPA Urban Specialist Group 2014) can be applied in such urban settings to guide rehabilitation along measurable steps of progress.