‘State of the Environment’ reports require integrated and holistic approaches – Lessons from Australia’s marine experience

Abstract

Regular assessments of the ‘state of the environment’ are common approaches implemented to track and guide sustainable management of marine social-ecological systems at scales ranging from local to global. In Australia, a regular national State of the Environment Report (SoE) is required as a legislative requirement and tabled in Parliament by the relevant Minister. Each SoE comprises a set of thematic reports, authored by independent domain experts on behalf of the government. For Australia’s most recent 2021 SoE report, several significant changes were introduced compared to previous reports. The most important of these was that the report presented Indigenous Knowledge and perspectives. Here we provide a brief synopsis of the structure and approach of the 2021 Marine thematic report and consider key needs and opportunities for further improvements – both for Australia’s SoE reporting and more generally for assessments of marine social-ecological systems. We suggest that integrated and holistic assessment and reporting approaches are required to properly understand the ‘big picture’ across sectors, identify and respond to problems arising from interactions among sectors, and to adequately understand, avoid and/or respond to system-level processes such as feedbacks and tipping points. Comprehensive representation of Indigenous science, led by Indigenous authors will be key to meeting the imperative of inclusive and respectful stewardship of country. We propose a set of six key principles to support such integrated and holistic state of the environment reporting: coordination, integration, transparency, responsiveness, inclusiveness, and system-orientation (“CITRIS” principles).