Waltham NJ, Saunders MI, Morris R, Bell-James J, Bishop MJ, Bugnot AB, Connell S, Drew G, Fischer M, Glamore W, Jones A, McAfee D, McCormack PC, Mayer-Pinto M, Prahalad V, Shumway N, Swearer S, Wawryk A (2024). Identifying and overcoming barriers to marine and coastal habitat restoration and nature based solutions in Australia – Project summary. Report to the National Environmental Science Program. James Cook University.
Overview
In this project, we consulted widely with government, industry, Traditional Owners, community and NGOs to identify legal and policy barriers to restoration, barriers to Indigenous inclusion and co-design of restoration projects and greater adoption of NbS for coastal protection works. While restoration progress has been possible in many instances, there remains important opportunities to reform laws and policies to provide more explicit and streamlined pathways, reduce the costs and timeframes for projects, and increase access to available technical information and guidelines, which could reduce risk and uncertainty. We also found that an important element of restoration is communication and inclusion of interest actors not only in project design, but also through the lifecycle of restoration projects. There is also a clear need for more training and upskilling from engineers, construction workers, consulting services for monitoring and evaluation of projects, in addition to a live and curated access point for information and learnings from works undertaken to be stored and publicly available. For the journey ahead towards a more intact, functioning, productive and protected marine and coastal ecosystem network in Australia, there needs to be more focus, coordination and sharing access to data and information so that all stakeholders involved have access to latest research and development.
