The future of biodiversity conservation in farming landscapes in south-eastern Australia
Final Report Abstract
The project sought to identify opportunities to harmonise profitable farming and successful biodiversity conservation in a farming landscape in south-eastern Australia. We drew on Q-methodology and conducted 94 interviews with farmers and other stakeholders involved in the topic of conservation in farming. We identified four different discourses that were shared among people in the communities of our study area. They represent archetypal viewpoints on the relationship between farming and biodiversity. Our findings not only highlight an underlying polarity between more pro-biodiversity and production-focused perspectives but provide a nuanced perspective on how viewpoints differ. Due to the context-specific nature of biodiversity loss and the diversity of biodiversity understandings and values, understanding such local discourses is very insightful to tackle biodiversity loss in farming landscapes. We show the limitations of market-based policy instruments and the influence of the broader policy and governance environment on local discourses. Such an empirically grounded understanding of local viewpoints helps to gain an in-depth understanding of debates around biodiversity conservation in farming that go beyond land sparing vs. land sharing debates in academia. Our findings add to calls to include plural biodiversity values and show how biodiversity policies can be better designed to improve conservation outcomes in farming landscapes of south-eastern Australia. These findings make the key assumptions and opinions about biodiversity in farming landscapes explicit and they can be useful for local or regional organisations, who aim to improve biodiversity conservation. We also conducted two community workshops to explore opportunities for systems change towards positive futures. We used the Three Horizons Framework, a participatory tool that allows engaging with a range of perspectives, in combination with a storytelling approach. We sought to understand the utility of this approach for conservation research. There are increasing calls to engage with inspirational and positive futures in sustainability science. We showed how our approach helped participants discuss key issues, envision positive futures and explore pathways towards those futures in a creative process. We also highlight how our approach elicited a range of opportunities for conservation in farming. The six pathways of change that participants narrated will likely speak to different audiences and our workshop outcomes created actionable knowledge that the farming community can build on. We thus contribute empirical insight from the Three Horizons approach to the debate on futures approaches in conservation research. The main surprises and changes to the project progress related to the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted not only in delays but also changes to how the research was conducted. With regard to the findings, the main surprise were the six pathways that resulted from the two community workshops. As Three Horizons is a highly participatory futures tool, the number and nature of the pathways of change was unclear. Moreover, prior to the workshops we were also not sure how many groups would emerge and on which topics they would decide to work. The resulting pathways reflected a broad range of topics and issues that go beyond the four extreme future imaginations often found in scenario planning. Findings from the project were synthesised in a 76 pages project summary booklet, which was widely distributed to people in the study area and others interested in the topic. Additionally, local and regional newspapers in Australia, including The Land, The Cootamundra Herald and Gundagai Independent wrote articles prior to the community workshops and again prior to the booklet launch event in August 2022. In preparation for the booklet launch, Ms. Schaal did a radio interview with ABC news.
Publications
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‘You can’t be green if you’re in the red’: Local discourses on the production-biodiversity intersection in a mixed farming area in south-eastern Australia. Land Use Policy, 121, 106306.
Schaal, Tamara; Jacobs, Annie; Leventon, Julia; Scheele, Ben C.; Lindenmayer, David & Hanspach, Jan
