Dr Helen Allison

Room: EnvSc/3.052A

Qualifications:

MSc James Cook, PhD Murd.

Research Interests:

Application of resilience theory to complex adaptive social-ecological systems, Natural resource management and policy.

Publications:

Recent

Bio:

My research interests are in the area of complex systems and finding new ways to help bridge the gap between the old ways of thinking, understanding and managing ecosystems and the new ways that complexity science is offering to help understand and manage linked social-ecological systems.

My current post-doctoral research involves strategic analysis of NRM using alternative paradigms which includes the concepts of resilience, complex adaptive systems and the adaptive cycle in the agricultural landscape in Australia. I am also interested in investigating the distribution of psychological type in people involved with NRM and what influences our cognitive ability to understand the new requirements of complexity science. This is because the way one chooses to conceptualise a problem stems from mental models, beliefs and assumptions, which in turn influence the choice and selection of tools appropriate for understanding the world and/or finding answers to 'the problem'.

My PhD investigated the science-policy interface that influenced natural resource management in the Western Australian agricultural region. Using some of the new theories and constructs from complexity science, I developed a novel conceptual model of the region which helped to explain the trends in some of the key variables in the social and ecological systems. My dissertation has been published by Cambridge University Press.

I have a Masters of Science Degree in Marine Biology from James Cook University investigating the uptake and loss of nickel and cadmium in oysters; and an Honours Degree in Zoology from Aberdeen University on the population dynamics of damselflies. I gained research experience as a Scientific Officer with the Office of the Supervising Scientist investigating the effects of uranium mining on the environment at Jabiru in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia, on the use of a freshwater mussel as a monitor for changes in the aquatic environment, ecotoxicology and biological survey.

I have a broad range of expertise in natural resource management and policy. Prior to taking up my Ph.D. research, I held positions in research, policy and strategic development in the Western Australian state departments of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM), Agriculture Western Australia (AWA) and the Office of the Minister for the Environment.

Projects:

New paradigms to find solutions to intractable NRM problems

When natural resource management (NRM) policy and practice do not address the root causes of the problems they target, they fail, and the resource gets degraded. Hence, with long-standing NRM problems, such as dryland salinity, soil erosion, and habitat degradation, a decrease in the rate of decline often seems to be the best we can do. Some (Martin and Verbeek, 2002) now conclude that the challenge of such problems is beyond the current resource management paradigm. We believe that the crux of such problems is in a structural mismatch between ecosystem behaviour, and the mechanisms through which humans interact with ecosystems. This mismatch degrades the ecosystem (stocks) and depletes the services (flows) that they provide.

Present and past policy and practice have conceptually erred in two key respects: scale and timing. Nature operates through interaction of scales. Insistence on the management of natural resources through the development of local, regional, state and/or national strategies focuses management on the one scale only, with little reference to the impacts of cross-scale effects, potentially exacerbating the problems. Complex systems work in rhythms which, at the onset of the cycle, maximise production and accumulation, but these are followed by crises and reorganisation. Our governance and institutions are designed to perform in the former predictable phase. It is now proposed that the longer the system is "locked-in" to the first phase the greater its vulnerability and the bigger and more dramatic its collapse will be. These ideas will be explored using the Western Australian (WA) agricultural region as a case study.

The emphasis on the necessity to achieve sustainable outcomes in natural resource management has driven scientists to develop new ways of understanding, conceptualising and investigating complex systems. This results from the fact that frequently the causes of failure are not found in the detail of the management tool (instrument), but in the basics of behaviour and the institutional frameworks within which the instrument has been applied. For example, transferring rights to resources also transfers the location of economic activity and who reaps the wealth benefits of that resource (typically from individual farmers to corporate investors). Breaking the link between land ownership and resource entitlement (as with, for example, tradable water entitlements) makes this a likely outcome for disadvantaged regions. The hollowing out of rural communities and the impoverishment of resource dependent activities is a major issue for Australia. If we are to cope with the challenges of sustainability, coupled with the challenges of social equity and economic performance, we must face up to these issues as important in their own right.

Although there have been recommendations to use systemic approaches to achieve sustainable use of natural resources there has been limited uptake. We present a set of propositions on which our argument and research is based, and pose a number of research questions for investigation for the successful development and implementation of policy for sustainable use of natural resources.

Propositions

1. Complex problems require a significant change in the way in which problems are perceived, defined and understood.
2. Scientists' mental models cause tension between reductionist predictive models and those used to illustrate the basic dynamic tendencies of complex systems, which may result in misinterpretation of systems models.
3. In general, stakeholder understanding of systems principles and behaviour is limited.
4. Social-ecological systems are linked systems of people and nature. They sometimes can comprise distinct ecological and social domains, but the social and ecological dimensions cannot easily be separated.
5. The dynamics of systems are determined by a few controlling variables (often slowly changing variables) some of which have threshold levels, which when exceeded result in changed system feedbacks, leading to changes in function and structure.
6. The dynamics of complex systems are often counterintuitive and require new ways of thinking to understand the root causes of unsustainable behaviour in complex systems.

Project Objectives

1. To identify the underlying mental models, beliefs, and assumptions of key scientists, policy makers, funders and the public about the dynamics of complex systems.
2. To understand stakeholder acceptance and resistance to policy options and address the root cause of problems and set forth strategies in a way that can gain acceptance.
3. To improve our understanding of the complex dynamics that result from interactions between the social, ecological and economics systems operating in agricultural systems in Australia
4. To test the limits of the conceptual model through a rigorous quantitative modelling process;
5. To inform policy based on current understanding of critical feedback processes in complex adaptive systems and resilience building for social-ecological systems;
6. To develop adaptive institution and policy design principles that can improve natural resource outcomes;
7. To inform policy on appropriate interventions to increase the resilience of agricultural regions.