Community-Derived Indicator Domains for Social Resilience to Water Quality Decline in a Great Barrier Reef Catchment, Australia

Abstract

Catchment-derived pollution of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, is instigating the development of novel policy, including community assessments and monitoring of their own resilience to water quality decline. This article explores community perspectives of social resilience to changing water quality in local waterways, and potential indicator domains for framing community-derived indicators. In a regional case study in northern Australia, we interviewed knowledgeable individuals with a specific interest in water quality management to elicit their understandings of social resilience in relation to water quality change. From their responses we identified 18 domains for the future development of indicators to be applied in the catchment. These included large social networks, numbers of stewardship volunteers, and cross-scale government–community partnerships. We discuss the utility of our results for targeting investment by policymakers to promote community adaptive capacity to water quality decline in the Townsville catchment.

Keywords:

• adaptive capacity
• adaptive co-management
• Great Barrier Reef
• indicators
• social resilience
• water quality

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Australian Government's Marine and Tropical Science Research Facility for funding, and Townsville City Council, particularly Greg Bruce, for supporting this work. We thank all of the participants who generously agreed to be involved in this study, and for being so enthusiastic about the work that we are doing. We particularly thank Jon Brodie (Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research) and Professor Richard Pearson (James Cook University) for their help and expertise in guiding the study. We also acknowledge the help and support of our JCU colleagues, especially other team members. Finally, we thank Dr. Allan Dale and members of our MTSRF project team from CSIRO and the University of Queensland, for helping to shape this research.

At the time of this research Margaret Gooch was affiliated with the School of Education at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. She is currently with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.