Conceptualising climate change adaption for native bush food production in arid Australia

Abstract

Climate projections indicate an average rise in temperature in the range of 3-7oC for central Australia by 2100 and a decline in thermal comfort. There is uncertainty in the future spatial and temporal occurrences of extreme events such as floods and droughts, though heat stress is predicted to become more frequent in central Australia. To a large extent, sustainable development in this region aims to create self-sufficient and vibrant remote desert-based communities. In this paper, we examine the prospects for sustaining native bush food production in central Australia under a changing climate. Harvesting of native plants for bush food has strong relevance in a central Australian context, where many bush foods have cultural significance to Aboriginal peoples. The native bush food industry is also important in central Australia as it provides employment for local people and sustains the knowledge and practice associated with culturally significant plants. However, the projections of climate change in the region suggest an increasing risk – to plant production, workers’ safety, and getting product to markets. A pathway of the potential steps needed for adaptation (i.e. adaptive pathway) is conceptualised in this paper as to how native bush food production can become a climateready and enduring industry in central Australia. Introduction More than 41,000 small to medium sized enterprises operate across Australia’s arid or desert region, of which 500 are Aboriginal-owned and around 100 are community controlled art centres (Race, 2015). The bush food industry is also one such emerging business activity which also involves Aboriginal people. Arid Australia is also home to numerous Aboriginal communities involved in the customary harvest of bush food resources and who have extensive knowledge regarding the harvesting and use of bush foods. The Australian bush food market system thus includes harvesting by Aboriginal communities within a customary law system that negotiates specific rights and responsibilities, and also harvesting by non-Aboriginal bush food enterprises working within the framework of Western laws and aim to maximise financial returns (see Merne Altyerre-ipenhe Reference Group, Douglas & Walsh, 2011). Learning Communities | Special Issue: Synthesis & Integration | Number 19 – April 2016 99 The Australian bush food industry is small compared to other agricultural pursuits, but it makes a valuable contribution, both financially and culturally, to people living in arid parts of Australia (see Figure 1 for arid and semiarid regions in Australia). There are no reliable estimates for the total value of the bush food industry in this part of the continent; however it would represent a considerable part of the $18.5M industry that employs 500-1,000 people. Moreover, this value is increased five-fold following processing, which most raw bush food products undergo (Clarke, 2012) before they reach their largely metropolitan markets. The bush food products derived primarily from remote arid regions include bush tomato (estimated annual farm gate value of $540K), Kakadu plum ($240K), desert lime ($225K), quandong ($180K) and wattle seed ($150K) (Clarke, 2012). The impact of climate change is no less an issue for the Australian native bush food industry than for other sectors of agricultural enterprise. However, as the industry is based on native plants that have evolved to suit the wide range of environments found throughout Australia, the native bush food industry presents some atypical situations and opportunities in regard to climate change adaptation. The aim of this paper is to conceptualise potential adaptation strategies for native bush food production under the changing climate of the arid region of central Australia. We refer to adaptation of the bush food industry with and without the involvement of Aboriginal communities here. Figure 1: Australian arid zone Source: L.S. Lee ©, CRC for Remote Economic Participation, 2015 Conceptualising climate change adaption for native bush food production in arid Australia | Supriya Mathew, L.S. Lee & Digby Race 100 Climate projections and bush food production in the Australian arid region In the arid region of central Australia, climate model outputs show high confidence in the projection of meteorological parameters such as temperature and extreme heat events. (CSIRO & Bureau of Meteorology, 2015a). However, the magnitude and direction in which rainfall may vary for central Australia is uncertain (CSIRO & Bureau of Meteorology, 2015a). In particular, potential changes to future summer rainfall remain unclear, though projections indicate a decline in winter rainfall in the southern parts of central Australia. Whereas in far north-western Australia, there has been a trend of increasing rainfall in the past century, in the south of the continent there has been a slight average decrease (CSIRO & Bureau of Meteorology, 2014) and the projection is this will continue, which necessitates contingencies for water management planning (Qureshi et al., 2013). There is high confidence in increases in the intensity of extreme rainfall events and medium confidence in the increase in the duration of droughts for the arid parts (CSIRO & Bureau of Meteorology, 2015a). Probably of greater impact on climatic conditions will be increasing temperatures. This has been significant over the last hundred years and is projected to continue, with the greatest increases being recorded in central Australia, central and western Queensland, and southwest of Western Australia (CSIRO & Bureau of Meteorology, 2014; Race, 2015). The climate projections provided by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) (2015a) for the remote regions of Australia indicate increasing average temperatures, more hot days, more warm spells and fewer frosts. The duration of warm spells and frequency of hot days will also increase. This also means locations such as Alice Springs, even for an intermediate emission scenario, daily temperatures above 35oC could occur for more than a third of the year by 2100. Locations within remote Australia will continue to be susceptible to frequent extreme precipitation (high confidence), extended droughts (medium confidence), increased average and maximum temperatures (high confidence) and increased evapotranspiration (high confidence) (CSIRO & Bureau of Meteorology, 2015a). The uncertain rainfall determines fuel availability for bushfires and hence fire projections are also uncertain. The locations in this region are at risk to the uncertainty associated with periods of water surplus and water deficits. Thus, successful adaptive strategies for the bush food industry also requires successful managing of such uncertainties. The greatest concern in recent times, as results of more detailed analysis emerge, is the increased variability in climate events and the greater unpredictability in forecasting (Anwar et al., 2013; Thornton et al., 2014). Numerous principles and strategies are being used to manage uncertainty and inform adaptation decisions. Managing climatic uncertainties: principles and strategies The climate change adaptation literature discusses a number of ways to manage uncertainty. Responses to climatic changes can be broadly considered to be incremental (adjustments made to meet current objectives under a changed environment where the change is gradual and happens at a certain degree of certainty) and transformational (fundamental changes to the objectives made to meet new or unanticipated abrupt changes) (Stafford Smith et al., 2011). Hallegatte (2009) discusses five principles to managing risk, which includes: i. ‘no‐regret’ strategies that deliver benefits even in the absence of the impacts of climate change (e.g. options with co-benefits such as local employment for vulnerable communities, see Mathew Trueck & Henderson-Sellers, 2012); ii. reversible and flexible options (e.g. options that can cater to new climatic information); Learning Communities | Special Issue: Synthesis & Integration | Number 19 – April 2016 101 iii. options with safety margins (e.g. high cost new constructions such as dams to be upgradable considering climatic projections); iv. soft adaptation options (e.g. community awareness programs; building social capital); and v. reducing decision time horizons (e.g. options with shorter lifetimes). These five principles support the adaptive management approach, where monitoring is followed by actions and decisions reviewed in light of new information. Actions that aim to reduce the risks posed by climatic changes whilst also having other additional social (e.g. improved health and well-being), economic (e.g. increased employment opportunities) and environmental (e.g. greenhouse gas reduction) benefits can be chosen using combinations of the above five principles. Adaptation plans must address contexts of change (e.g. change of societal values and requirements, technological advancements) and uncertainty (e.g. uncertainties in climate projections, uncertainty in local impacts) (see Bosomworth et al., 2015). Recent adaptation research broadly uses the adaptation pathways approach (and its alterations) to decisionmaking under uncertainty. The adaptation pathways approach presents a sequence of actions after a tipping point (usually defined based on different stakeholder/community values, world views, cultural perspectives) beyond which any of the current actions stop meeting the required objectives (see Moss & Martin, 2012; Haasnoot et al., 2012; Haasnoot et al., 2013; Wise et al., 2014). The adaptation pathways approach considers a diverse range of futures and examines the robustness (insensitivity to changing conditions) and flexibility (easily adaptable) of options across these futures (Bosomworth, 2015). Adaptation pathways assist in avoiding ‘lock ins’ (see Wilson, 2014) and support the adaptive management approach which includes an iterative decision-maki