Philip Wallis
Monash University
Dr Philip Wallis is a Research Fellow with the Systemic Governance Research Program in the Monash Sustainability Institute at Monash University. His current research focuses on the governance of social-ecological systems, particularly in the areas of water resources, Australia's Murray-Darling Basin, climate change adaptation, catchment management and water sensitive cities. This research is mainly transdisciplinary in nature, drawing on social, political and technical inquiry into complex situations. His previous PhD research was in green chemistry, looking at the role of modified clay minerals as catalysts for organic synthesis and as models of soil carbon sequestration. He is a 2010 Fellow of the Peter Cullen Trust.
It is well-established that the abundance, diversity and pervasiveness of institutional arrangements constrain effective NRM governance (Morrison, 2006; Lane and Robinson, 2009; Wallis and Ison, 2011). Understood in the sense... [ view full abstract ]
It is well-established that the abundance, diversity and pervasiveness of institutional arrangements constrain effective NRM governance (Morrison, 2006; Lane and Robinson, 2009; Wallis and Ison, 2011). Understood in the sense of arrangements that shape social change (North, 1990), such as organisations, programs, laws and policies, institutions both enable and constrain climate change adaptation. In the Australian NRM context, institutional complexity arises, among other factors, from the multi-level governance context (federal, state, regional and local), a history of governance experimentation and change, the rise of market-based instruments, and the diversity of social-ecological contexts in which governance has fragmented. It has been argued that collaboration and systemic inquiry-based approaches are required to overcome the inertia created by such complexity (Mackay et al., 2014). This paper reports on an Australian initiative to plan for climate change among a collaboration of nine regional NRM agencies, four research organisations and a range of state agencies from Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales from 2013-2016. The adoption of a collaborative co-inquiry approach has revealed the implications of institutional complexity for a governance tipping point from mainly linear ‘plan and implement’ models to approaches able to deal with evolving climatic conditions and uncertainty (e.g. adaptation pathways).
References
Lane, M.B., Robinson, C.J. (2009) Institutional complexity and environmental management: the challenge of integration and the promise of large-scale collaboration. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management 16, 16–24.
Mackay, M., Allan, C., Colliver, R., Howard, J. (2014) Systems Approaches Enable Improved Collaboration in Two Regional Australian Natural Resource Governance Situations. International Journal of Systems and Society 1, 1–21.
Morrison, T.H. (2006) Pursuing Rural Sustainability at the Regional Level: Key Lessons from the Literature on Institutions, Integration, and the Environment. Journal of Planning Literature 21, 143–152.
North, D.C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press.
Wallis, P.J., Ison, R.L. (2011) Appreciating Institutional Complexity in Water Governance Dynamics: A Case from the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Water Resources Management 25, 4081–4097.
