Environmental Management (2018) 62:70–81 DOI 10.1007/s00267-017-0932-2 Avoiding Implementation Failure in Catchment Landscapes: A Case Study in Governance of the Great Barrier Reef Allan P. Dale 1 ● Karen Vella 2 ● Margaret Gooch 1 ● Ruth Potts 2 ● Robert L. Pressey 3 ● Jon Brodie 4 ● Rachel Eberhard 2 Received: 30 August 2016 / Accepted: 12 August 2017 / Published online: 4 October 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract Water quality outcomes affecting Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) are governed by multi-level and multi-party decision-making that influences forested and agricultural landscapes. With international concern about the GBR’s declining ecological health, this paper identifies and focuses on implementation failure (primarily at catch- ment scale) as a systemic risk within the overall GBR governance system. There has been limited integrated ana- lysis of the full suite of governance subdomains that often envelop defined policies, programs and delivery activities that influence water quality in the GBR. We consider how the implementation of separate purpose-specific policies and programs at catchment scale operate against well- known, robust design concepts for integrated catchment governance. We find design concerns within ten important governance subdomains that operate within GBR catch- ments. At a whole-of-GBR scale, we find a weak policy focus on strengthening these delivery-oriented subdomains and on effort integration across these subdomains within catchments. These governance problems when combined may contribute to failure in the implementation of major national, state and local government policies focused on improving water quality in the GBR, a lesson relevant to landscapes globally. Keywords Governance systems ● Catchment management ● Water quality ● Implementation failure Introduction The need to better reconcile socio-economic development with environmental management has led to escalating sup- port for landscape-scale approaches to resolve competing demands on land and water use (Brussaard et al. 2010). The international literature, however, increasingly recognizes that landscape-wide and cross-realm natural resource gov- ernance is a complex, multi-level venture (Hooghe and Marks 2001; Peters and Pierre 2001; Jessop 2004; Bier- mann 2007; Ostrom 2010). It is well understood that water catchments tend to lie at the heart of these complex gov- ernance systems, particularly when policies and plans are seeking to achieve water quality outcomes to improve the resilience of fragile marine environments (Smith and Porter 2009; Benson et al. 2012). Catchments (or watersheds) represent “functional geographical areas that integrate a variety of environmental processes and human impacts on landscapes” (Aspinall and Pearson 2000), a definition that enables consideration of their receiving marine environ- ments. At catchment scale, the implementation of national, state and local government policies, plans and programs related to water quality begins to have practical meaning. There is often a challenge, however, in translating policy goals (e.g. water quality targets) into tangible outcomes (e.g., the health of coral reefs or seagrass affected by * Allan P. Dale allan.dale@jcu.edu.au 1 The Cairns Institute, James Cook University (JCU), PO Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia 2 School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Science and Engineering Faculty, QUT, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia 3 Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, JCU, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia 4 Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research, JCU, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia