Through analysis of leadership barriers and enablers, this work aims to understand how leaders in the Great Barrier Reef can work towards achieving better system environmental outcomes.
For positive system-wide environmental outcomes to be achieved in the Great Barrier Reef, values that favour nature-positive and sustainable development outcomes need to remain consistent over time (Lewis et al. 2017 and Schreyer et al. 2020). Decision making in a complex system such as the GBR, however, is often bounded within public sector frameworks that are constrained by short-term policy cycles, competing actors and administrative limitations (Lipsky 1980 and Forester 1982). To alleviate the tension between public sector accountabilities, sustainable development and long-term biodiversity conservation, work is needed to build stronger institutional leadership within these governance systems for more effective knowledge exchange between scientists, affected communities and decision-makers. In the absence of sound capacity building work like leadership, it will be difficult to reverse current rates of environmental degradation on the GBR.
For this scenario exercise the goal is to determine the leadership behaviours and actions that are most suitable at different planning phases (i.e. the planning, implementation, evaluation, monitoring and reporting phases) in a hypothetical development project impacting the GBR catchment. It is understood that planning phases are a construct and as such can be artificial. However, as a diagnostic framework planning phases can help to understand the types of leadership action that needs to be achieved within complex governance systems.
Mark Ford-Learner is an early career researcher who with a diverse background in conservation ecology and sociology. He is currently undertaking his PhD at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).