2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – Management Effectiveness – Climate and system variability and climate change

Brief description

The Marine chapter of the 2021 State of the Environment (SoE) report incorporates multiple expert templates developed from streams of marine data. This metadata record describes the Expert Assessment "Management Effectiveness of Climate and system variability and climate change".
***A PDF of the full Expert Assessment, including figures and tables (where provided) is downloadable in the "On-line Resources" section of this record as "EXPERT ASSESSMENT 2021 - Climate and system variability and climate change"***

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BACKGROUND
Climate variability, extremes and change affect Australia’s oceans, ecosystems and users of marine ecosystem services, with impacts that include changes in species distribution and abundance, disease outbreaks (e.g. corals, shellfish), and shifts in community composition. Managers of these marine ecosystem services variously respond to short and long-term impacts on a range of temporal and spatial scales. This assessment reports on the effectiveness of regional and local management responses to short-term climate variability, including extreme events, and long-term anthropogenic climate change impacts in Australia’s oceans.
Increasing frequency and/or intensity of extreme events (e.g. cyclones and storm surge, marine heatwaves (flood plumes covered in Coasts chapter)), and long-term change in winds, ocean temperatures and pH (sea level is covered in Coasts chapter), can only be directly managed by global-scale emission reduction, carbon sequestration, and other climate system manipulations (geoengineering). The effectiveness of management of these manipulations is not covered in this assessment (e.g. Brent et al 2018, McDonald et al. 2019; McDonald et al. 2020; Gattuso et al 2021 for more information).

DESCRIPTION OF THE APPROACH TO MANAGING THE PRESSURE
Reactive and proactive management in response to climate pressures is influenced by the “agility” and risk appetite of the particular marine sector (Hodgkinson et al. 2014). Agility in both extractive (e.g. fishing, aquaculture, energy) and non-extractive (e.g. biodiversity, tourism) marine sectors is influenced by a range of factors related to innovation capacity (Figure 1). These are (1) degree to which system manipulation is possible (e.g. aquaculture vs wild fisheries), which can be related to the life cycle of the biological components (e.g. short-lived) or accessibility for manipulation (e.g. Alderman and Hobday 2017) and any associated infrastructure (moveable, restricted, flexible), (2) the regulatory environment (e.g. how flexible are management rules (Marshall et al. 2013)), (3) market forces (e.g. tourism season, consumer preference, competition),
(4) value/profitability and relative size of marine industries, (5), leadership and key influencer attitudes, including political power and influence, (6) social expectations (e.g. expected to manage coral reefs, world heritage areas), and (7) visibility of impacts from extreme events or long term change (e.g. De’ath et al. 2012; Babcock et al. 2019).
Currently most management responses are reactive (after an event) or implemented in real-time based on in situ or synoptic information. Proactive management, defined as forward planning ahead of an impact, can be informed by short-term forecasts and/or long-term climate projections (e.g. IPCC reports). Short-term forecasting approaches include using climatological patterns (i.e. manage conservatively using long term averages), analogue approaches (e.g. manage based on recent experience of an event), or dynamical forecasts (e.g. Hobday et al. 2018). Advance warnings at a range of time scales allows marine managers to implement strategies to minimise impacts of change.

DATA STREAM(S) USED IN EXPERT ASSESSMENT
Published papers and reports on climate variability.

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2021 SOE ASSESSMENT SUMMARY [see attached Expert Assessment for full details]

• Approach •
Assessment grade: Partially effective
Assessment trend: Improving
Confidence grade: Adequate
Confidence trend: Adequate
Comparability with 2016: N/A
• Outputs •
Assessment grade: Partially effective
Assessment trend: Improving
Confidence grade: Limited
Confidence trend: Adequate
Comparability with 2016: N/A
• Outcomes •
Assessment grade: Partially effective
Assessment trend: Improving
Confidence grade: Limited
Confidence trend: Adequate
Comparability with 2016: N/A

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CHANGES SINCE 2016 SOE ASSESSMENT
The assessed state and trend of this pressure has increased from low/stable in 2016 to high/increasing for 2021 based on research documenting a trend for overall higher extremes of impacts associated with climate variability over the reporting period that is expected to continue.

Lineage

Statement: QUALITY OF DATA USED IN THE ASSESSMENT
Publications have been peer reviewed.

Notes

Credit
Peer reviews of this assessment were provided by: David Wachenfeld (GBRMPA) Kylie Scales (USC) Ian Butler (ABARES)