Session Description
Coral reefs provide vital ecosystem services and support over one billion people worldwide and are in rapid decline due to the combined impacts of climate change and multiple anthropogenic pressures. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a UNESCO World Heritage Area, has experienced six mass bleaching events since 2016 and is projected to suffer substantial coral loss by 2050 under all emissions scenarios. Management of pressures in the GBR remains fragmented, with individual stressors addressed through separate regulatory and zoning frameworks. At the same time, significant investment is being directed towards novel interventions, including marine cloud brightening and other climate adaptation technologies. The interaction of multiple stressors and emerging interventions creates governance challenges beyond existing regulatory regimes. These challenges, together with the need for scalable adaptation responses, highlight the importance of integrated approaches to assessment, planning, policy, and management. Scenario planning, particularly scenarios-at-scale approaches that integrate governance, socioeconomic and cumulative-effects considerations, offers a pathway to more proactive, adaptive, and coordinated action. This Solutions Room will examine how scenario planning in diverse marine and terrestrial systems can inform scalable, subsidiarity-based governance for the GBR. By bringing together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and community stakeholders, the session will foster collaborative problem-solving, shared learning, and knowledge exchange. Insights will inform governance across diverse social-ecological systems.
Session Summary
How can scenario planning support scalable governance in complex social-ecological systems? Using the Great Barrier Reef as a case study, this Solutions Room explores lessons from marine and terrestrial contexts to identify adaptive approaches to regional cumulative-effects assessment, governance and management.
Session Chair
Karen Vella
Queensland University of Technology
Australia