1 SUBMISSION TO THE REVIEW OF CARING FOR OUR COUNTRY 1 Graham R. Marshall Institute for Rural Futures, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 17 May 2011 Introduction This submission focuses on the importance when reviewing the Australian Government’s Caring for our Country program (CfoC) of examining how the program might be changed in ways conducive to transition of arrangements for natural resources governance towards those of adaptive governance. Practical steps in preparation for this transition are presented as a basis for this examination. The contribution of authentic community-based arrangements to adaptive governance is also highlighted, with guidelines presented for how we might move towards arrangements of this kind. Although this submission refers mainly to research by myself and co-authors in this area, much other important research has been undertaken of great value for this review. Useful entry points to this wider body of research are Lane et al. (2009) and Robins et al. (in press). Resilience and adaptive capacity The Outcomes document 2008-2013 for CfoC stated that the program ‘aims to achieve an environment that is healthier, better protected, well managed, resilient, and provides essential ecosystem services in a changing climate’ (emphasis added). The CfoC Business Plan 2011-12 defines resilience as ‘the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. Resilience in social systems has the added capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future’. CfoC’s focus on resilience marks acceptance that many of Australia’s environmental problems have become those of complex adaptive (social-ecological) systems where uncertainty, shocks and surprises are the norm. This acceptance emphasises the importance of investing in the adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems so they can more readily adapt and transform as required to sustain their core functions (Marshall 2010). Indeed, considerable attention is currently being paid to bolstering the adaptive capacities of rural landholders and their communities in the face of climate change and other shocks including reallocation of water rights from the irrigation sector to ecosystems. 1 This document supersedes an earlier submission to this review dated 1 April 2011. This submission draws extensively from Marshall and Stafford Smith (2010), including from the contributions of Mark Stafford Smith to that article. However, the present author is entirely responsible for how material from the article has been used in this submission.