4. MARCO REFERENCIAL
4.2 MARCO REGULATORIO EN COLOMBIA
In addition to the interview data gathered for this thesis as a whole, Chapter 6 is
underpinned by a comprehensive review of statutory management plans for Tasmanian, Victorian and Commonwealth public protected areas.77 This section details the purpose of the management plan review and its contribution to answering the thesis research
questions. This section also sets out the method used to gather and analyse the
management plan data. The results of this analysis are described in detail in Chapter 6.
The management plan analysis covered every statutory protected area management plan available online for Tasmanian, Victorian and Commonwealth public protected areas, as at 1 April 2016.78 The review was designed to demonstrate how protected area legislation is operationalised at the site-specific scale in public protected areas, and to investigate the extent of climate adaptation planning for those public protected areas. Management plans for public protected areas were selected as the focus for the review because the majority of land in the National Reserve System is government or community-owned and managed;79
the legal framework for protected area management primarily targets public land; and
75 Burnard et al, above n 66, 429-432.
76 Elo S and H Kyngäs, ‘The qualitative content analysis process’ (2008) 62(1) J Adv Nurs 107; Schutt RK,
Investigating the social world: the process and practice of research (Pine Forge Press, 2006) 77; Blackstone, above n 72.
77 ‘Public protected areas’ include government, joint management and community protected areas, Australian
Department of the Environment and Energy, ‘Ownership of protected areas’
<http://www.environment.gov.au/land/nrs/about-nrs/ownership> (‘NRS Ownership’).
78 Statutory management plans were identified as plans required under legislation for managing protected
areas; including under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth), National Parks and Reserves Management Act 2002 (Tas), National Parks Act 1975 (Vic), the Crown Land (Reserves) Act 1978 (Vic), and Wildlife Act1975 (Vic); see Chapter 6.
79 As at 2016, ownership of the National Reserve System (‘NRS’) was, as follows: government 44.39%,
because few private protected area plans are available online.80 The results of this management plan review provide valuable insights into the extent of climate adaptation planning in Tasmanian, Victorian and Commonwealth protected area management. The review also illustrates broader trends in climate adaptation planning in public protected areas in Australia, and lessons for the kinds of legal reforms that may be needed to guide adaptation-oriented management planning in Australia and elsewhere.
(a) Climate change
The management plan review sought to identify whether and how statutory protected area management plans refer to climate change81 and a selection of other key concepts for biodiversity adaptation. One hundred and forty-three statutory management plans were analysed in the qualitative data analysis software, NVivo.82 The review was designed to provide a preliminary overview of adaptation planning in this context, so this content analysis relied exclusively on deductive coding. The first stage of analysis was to identify all references to the concept of climate change using the Boolean search terms: ‘climat*’ – to identify occurrences of the words climate, climatic and climates – ‘global warming’ and ‘sea level rise’. The results of the Boolean search were reviewed to exclude references to historical climatic changes, including past ice ages, to ensure that the remaining results illustrated whether anthropogenic climate change is being recognised as a future challenge to statutory management planning and conserving protected areas over the long term.
Management plans that referred to the concept of climate change were then searched for references to, and management prescriptions about refugia and adaptive management.83
The remainder of this section details the definitions used and the significance of these concepts for the current research.
80 With the exception of management plans prepared by the Tasmanian Land Conservancy, most of which are
available at: <http://tasland.org.au/reserves/>, a full list of the plans reviewed for this analysis is set out in Appendix 4.
81 Because without acknowledging the concept of climate change, management plans cannot establish climate
adaptation-oriented approaches to management.
82 For deductive analysis and NVivo software, see Section 2.4.5.
83 Searches included synonyms and derivatives such as ‘refuge’, ‘refugium’ and ‘adaptable management’; the
(b) Refugia
Protecting or enhancing refugia in Australia’s protected areas has been identified as a critical focus for climate adaptation in managing the National Reserve System.84 Refugia are defined as “habitats that components of biodiversity retreat to, persist in, and can potentially expand from under changing climatic conditions”.85 This is a particularly
important concept in Australia where independent dispersal to track shifting climate conditions will be restricted by factors including a relatively flat and inhospitable
landscape, and significant human and environmental barriers including deserts, cities and the ocean.86 Identifying, protecting and managing refugia is a conservation strategy that may present the best chance that many Australian species have to persist as rapid climate change triggers increasing numbers of species to become threatened and face extinction, placing additional pressure on already limited conservation budgets.
(c) Adaptive management
Adaptive management is a management approach that promotes ‘learning while doing’ and has been described as ‘pivotal’ in climate change adaptation law.87 There is ‘virtual
consensus’ about its utility in developing adaptation-oriented law for conservation and environmental management.88 Demonstrating that an area will be managed according to
adaptive management principles is also one of the standards required for including an area in the NRS, and is referenced heavily in protected area management literature.89 This
analysis focused on the following key components of adaptive management in practice:
84 Dunlop, Michael et al, Implications for policymakers: climate change, biodiversity conservation and the
National Reserve System (CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, 2012).
85 Reside, above n 42.
86 Ibid; Donatiu, Paul, The impact of climate change on rare flora: identifying and protecting climate refugia,
a Churchill Fellowship report (The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust of Australia, 2009).
87 Fischman, Robert L and Jillian R Rountree, ‘Adaptive management’ in Michael B Gerrard and Katrina
Fischer Kuh (eds) The law of adaptation to climate change: U.S. and international aspects (American Bar Association, 2012) 19, 29-30.
88 Ibid 19; Chapter 4, Section 4.3, Principle 3.
89 Dudley, Nigel (ed) IUCN guidelines for applying protected area management categories: best practice
guidance on recognising protected areas and assigning management categories and governance types (International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 2008) 12; and eg Moore, CT et al, ‘Adaptive management in the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System: science-management partnerships for conservation delivery’ (2011) 92(5) J Environ Manage 1395; Williams BK and ED Brown, ‘Adaptive management: from more talk to real action’ (2014) 53(2) Environ Manage 465.
monitoring, linking monitoring results to management action, and identifying qualitative or quantitative triggers or thresholds for taking action.90
(d) Connectivity
Connectivity is commonly considered to be a crucial strategy for promoting biodiversity adaptation under climate change.91 However, connectivity was not used as a key search term in this content analysis because preliminary searches – for Boolean search terms including ‘connec!’, ‘neighbouring’, and ‘adjoining’ – returned results in almost every management plan. Many statutory management plans included standard, often pro forma, provisions for ‘neighbour programs’ and engaging with bordering landholders and, in Victoria in particular, provisions about riparian connectivity in compliance with the
Heritage Rivers Act 1992 (Vic).92 These references typically did not relate to connectivity for climate adaptation, and an analysis of the large volume of data returned in that search was beyond the scope of the analysis for Chapter 6. Examples of pro forma connectivity provisions from statutory management plans are extracted in Chapter 6, as the basis for recommendations about engaging across protected area boundaries, to implement the connectivity strategy for biodiversity adaptation.
Statutory management plans tend to be dominated by lengthy descriptions of the planning area to which they apply, including its geological and ecological history, native species and ecological communities, and existing threats to management values such as biodiversity. Discussion of the results of this analysis in Chapter 6 do not focus on those descriptions but on the way that the concepts defined above are used in management prescriptions, that is, in each plan’s explicit goals, objectives and implementation strategies directing
management to particular actions or outcomes.
90 Drawing on Meretsky, VJ and R Fischman, ‘Learning from conservation planning for the U.S. National
Wildlife Refuges’ (2014) 28(5) Conservation Biology 1415.
91 Chapter 3, Section 3.3.2.
92 A brief review of these results suggested that these provisions do not reflect the kind of dynamic and
integrated bioregional or landscape-scale management that is contemplated by the connectivity for climate adaptation literature, eg Worboys, Graeme L, Wendy L Francis and Michael Lockwood (eds) Connectivity conservation management: a global guide (Earthscan, 2010).