Ecological Outcomes and Societal Transformation: Multiple Visions for Adaptation in the Great Barrier Reef

Fears regarding the future of coral reefs are reflected in a growing scientific effort, worldwide, to help corals survive and adapt to the impacts of climate change through new management strategies. To be viable, these strategies must not only be ecologically beneficial and technically feasible; they must be developed in partnership with Indigenous peoples and sensitive to the needs and aspirations of local communities, stakeholders and broader publics. This paper synthesizes insights from a comprehensive program of qualitative and quantitative social research, conducted through Australia’s Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, exploring local community and public perspectives on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and the prospect of assisted adaptation. While the results of this research indicate strong support for prospective interventions to help the GBR, they also demonstrate that local communities and the broader Australian public hold multiple visions for the GBR’s future and engage in careful processes to imagine and evaluate assisted adaptation. We discuss the implications of this complexity for the development of technically robust and socially responsible adaptation intervention in the GBR, emphasizing the opportunities it presents for robust and inclusive dialogue, knowledge building, and governance around these strategies. Community and public support, we conclude, is contingent on moving beyond the seemingly straightforward question of whether or not people support intervention and towards forms of engagement that allow space for social and cultural diversity and the co-creation of ethically grounded adaptation pathways.