Abstract
AbstractMarine migratory species require collaborative decision‐making because individuals move across jurisdictional boundaries within and between countries. However, governance of these species is not always harmonized or truly collaborative. We analyzed the Recovery Plan for Marine Turtles in Australia 2017 (the Plan) and three of its subsidiary plans for evidence of collaborative governance using a two‐part gap analysis and interviews with environmental managers, scientists, and other stakeholders involved in the development of the Plan and in managing marine migratory species in Australia more generally. We applied existing adaptive and collaborative governance frameworks, which focused mainly on the social components of collaborative governance, and identified a need for a new, interdisciplinary framework for the collaborative governance of marine turtles in Australia. We applied our new framework to the Plan and identified that while the biological components of the Plan were well‐developed, stakeholder analysis and engagement details were largely missing. We recognize that recovery plans are inevitably silent about certain issues but suggest that plans would benefit from including better guidance on stakeholder engagement and analysis. Our framework is directly relevant to harmonizing the management of marine turtles across jurisdictions in Australia but it could also be applied to managing threats towards other migratory species that inhabit large marine jurisdictions.
Highlights
Effective natural resource management typically requires collaboration across jurisdictions, adaptability, and the ability to incorporate the latest scientific information for developing and improving indicators for evaluating and adjusting management strategies (e.g., Failing, Gregory, & Higgins, 2013; Olsson, Folke, &Berkes, 2004; Scarlett, 2013), while responding to the societal drivers of resource decline
Collaborative adaptive management represents a movement from centralized environmental governance towards hybridized forms of adaptive governance in dynamic systems (Lemos & Agrawal, 2006; Plummer, Armitage, & de Loë, 2013) and is a component of an overarching collaborative governance system that lends itself to more adaptive means of managing natural resources across governance levels
We focused on three genetically distinct stocks of marine turtles, all of which are protected in Australia: the south-west Pacific stock of loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta), the Northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) stock of green turtles (Chelonia mydas), and the North Queensland (Qld) stock of hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata)
Summary
Effective natural resource management typically requires collaboration across jurisdictions (within and between countries), adaptability, and the ability to incorporate the latest scientific information for developing and improving indicators for evaluating and adjusting management strategies (e.g., Failing, Gregory, & Higgins, 2013; Olsson, Folke, &Berkes, 2004; Scarlett, 2013), while responding to the societal drivers of resource decline. Effective natural resource management typically requires collaboration across jurisdictions (within and between countries), adaptability, and the ability to incorporate the latest scientific information for developing and improving indicators for evaluating and adjusting management strategies Collaborative governance—that is, the processes and arrangements of public decision-making and management across multiple levels of government, public agencies, and the private sector (Emerson, Nabatchi, & Balogh, 2012)—is critical to effectively managing natural resources with large geographical ranges, such as marine fisheries or migratory. The flexible nature of adaptive management allows for the uptake of the latest scientific information to develop appropriate indicators for the evaluation of management strategies and helps promote structured decision-making (Failing et al, 2013; Olsson et al, 2004). Adaptation within a polycentric, collaborative governance system is important when managing large-scale environmental problems, such as marine migratory species that face varying threats across their range
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