Social benchmarking to improve river ecosystems John Cary and Anne Pisarski ABSTRACT To complement physical measures or indices of river health a social benchmarking instrument has been developed to measure community dispositions and behaviour regarding river health. This instrument seeks to achieve three outcomes. First, to provide a benchmark of the social condition of communities’ attitudes, values, understanding and behaviours in relation to river health; second, to provide information for developing management and educational priorities; and third, to provide an assessment of the long-term effectiveness of community education and engagement activities in achieving changes in attitudes, understanding and behaviours in relation to river health. In this paper the development of the social benchmarking instrument is described and results are presented from the first state-wide benchmark study in Victoria, Australia, in which the social dimensions of river health, community behaviours related to rivers, and community understanding of human impacts on rivers were assessed. John Cary (corresponding author) Institute for Sustainability and Innovation, Victoria University, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne, VIC 8001, Australia E-mail: john.cary@vu.edu.au Anne Pisarski School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Key words | ecosystems, human behaviour, river health, social benchmarking, stream condition INTRODUCTION Australian benchmarking of the environmental condition of waterways has been conducted in Victoria in 1999 and 2004 through an index of stream condition (ISC) which has been used to monitor the biophysical condition of rivers and waterways. A benchmark is simply a standard by which something can be measured or judged and change over time assessed. The ISC provides an assessment of the health of Victoria’s rivers by measuring change in five bio- physical sub-indices and there have been many other indices of river health developed elsewhere (Gordon et al. ). Elsewhere, European projects for integrated risk-based management of rivers and river basins have developed approaches such as RISKBASE, based on the premise that river basins are complex and dynamic social/ecological sys- tems where the central objective is the sustaining of ecosystem services rather than ecological status (van der Meulen & Brils ). The emphasis on broader con- ceptions of ecosystems services has developed since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Alcamo & Bennett ). Many researchers have investigated relationships associ- ated with community and human dispositions and behaviour towards natural resources (Parkins et al. ; Curtis & Byron ; Effendi ; Po et al. ). More recently, a social benchmarking instrument has been developed specifically to measure community dispositions and behaviour related to river health. Social dispositions and behaviour regarding rivers and waterways are important because of the major impact of humans on river health. Such dispositions towards rivers have not previously been measured in a formal way. The most satisfactory way to compare such social dispositions and behaviours over time is to describe them in terms of a scale that allows for com- parative measurement (Rossi & Gilmartin ). Being able to assess such trends supports the role of these ‘indi- cators’ as warning signals for unsustainable resource use (Azar et al. ). The social benchmarking instrument was developed to provide a tool to achieve three outcomes for managers of rivers and waterways. First, to provide an understanding of community expectations, attitudes and behaviours towards waterway management specifically, and water resource management more broadly; second, to provide waterway managers with critical information for developing priorities (both social and environmental) for action and for guiding the evaluation of community engagement activities; and third, to evaluate the longer-term effectiveness of river health community education and engagement activities. There were two foci of interest for establishing social benchmarks: the dispositions and general waterway health 1148 © IWA Publishing 2011 Water Science & Technology | 64.5 | 2011 doi: 10.2166/wst.2011.044 Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/wst/article-pdf/64/5/1148/444530/1148.pdf by guest on 31 May 2020