Socio-economic

The Natural Heritage Ministerial Board tasked the National Land & Water Resources Audit (the Audit) with coordinating the collation of data to support reporting on natural resource condition, required under the National NRM Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (National M&E Framework).

One of the three requirements for monitoring natural resource condition includes developing a set of indicators for monitoring community and social processes relevant to, or affected by, NRM programs, as well as measures of the adoption of sustainable development and production techniques.

National Indicators

National indicator activity is strategically focused on identifying indicators capable of informing national and state level policy decisions.

In 2006, based upon the social and economic national coordination committee (SENCC) recommendations, the Audit Advisory Council endorsed a national set of indicators and protocols to assist in assessing the impact of NRM programs. These indicators relate to:

• the capacity of land managers to change and adopt sustainable management practices
• the capacity of regional groups to make decisions on NRM, including the impact of institutional change/responsiveness.

The SENCC indicators are driven by the premise that the achievement of intermediate term outcomes (e.g. capable people, organisations and institutions) are critical to the attainment of longer term biophysical outcomes. SENCC has recommended the following indicators:

Matter for target: Socio-economic

Indicator heading: Socio-economic

Indicators:

• Land managers’ capacity to change and adopt sustainable management practices
• Capacity of regional organisations and social and institutional foundations of natural resource management

Indicator Headings (pdf - 79KB)

A third and final set of indicators which examine the link between community vitality, viability and health and NRM program delivery and outcomes have been scoped, with the final report of the scoping study and literature review have been considered by SENCC.

URS 15 The relationship between community vitality, viability and health, and natural resources and their management - final report (pdf - 292KB)

URS 15 The relationship between community, vitality, viability and health, and natural resources and their management -literature review (pdf - 742KB)

The following paper provides a summary of the role of the Audit, the SENCC indicators and relevant publications.
Social and economic indicators and projects (pdf - 138KB)

Trial Regions

Trials of the SENCC indicators have occurred in the following locations:

 1. Land managers’ capacity to change
Vic—Glenelg Hopkins, Wimmera
NSW—Lachlan
Qld—Queensland Murray-Darling, Burnett Mary
SA—Yorke and Northern
Tas—South
WA—South west

2. Regional groups’ capacity to make decisions on NRM, including the impact of institutional change/ responsiveness
Vic—Corangamite CMA
WA—Avon catchment council
Qld—FNQ NRM Ltd, Burnett Mary regional group, Condamine alliance, Fitzroy Basin association, Queensland Murray-Darling committee, South East Queensland catchments, Burdekin dry tropics NRM

Under the auspices of SENCC the Audit also conducted a series of workshops to consult with state agencies and regional NRM bodies with an interest in social and economic indicators and information for NRM. The purpose of the workshops was to obtain:

• an overview of the Audit’s current socio-economic work under the National Resource Management Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (National M&E Framework)
• an overview of state and regional activities
• identification of opportunities for collaboration
• advice on the implementation of upcoming Audit projects.

Workshops have been held in:

• WA, Perth - 6 November 2006
• NSW, Sydney - 27 November 2006
• Tasmania - 30 November 2006
• South Australia 24 January 2007
• NSW, Sydney 26 February 2007
• Qld, Brisbane 26-27 March 2007
• WA, Perth 3-4 April 2007

National Coordination Committee & Sponsor Agency

The role of the Social and Economic National Coordination Committee (SENCC) is to advise on the development and implementation of national socio-economic indicators for the National M&E Framework.
SENCC terms of reference (pdf - 44KB)

SENCC is sponsored by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and includes representatives from the Australian Government and state jurisdictions and observers from major national socio-economic data providers or research institutions.

National Databases

Nationally consistent, ongoing sources of socio-economic data capable of supporting Australian Government natural resource management programs include the:

• ABS Census of Population and Housing
• ABS Natural Resource Management surveys
• ABS Agricultural Census and surveys
• ABARE Farm Survey
• ABARE Natural Resource Management surveys.

While there is a standard classification of industries and a substantial number of attributes of farm families/managers commonly collected, the information does not necessarily link type of enterprise, characteristics of land managers and the farm household, and changes in resource condition. The problem is increased by the unavailability of point source socio-economic information. Progress in this area will be achieved through current ABS activities to:

• make available confidential unit record files (CURF) for the agricultural census
• institute mesh blocks as a basic unit of output
• establish linkages between the population and housing census and the agricultural census at the mesh block level.

While there is a body of available data describing the characteristics of farm family households that adopt sustainable farming and business management practices there is a marked deficiency of information on:

• what the industry, government and regional priorities are with respect to currently recommended management practices
• the level of adoption of currently recommended management practices
• the attributes of these practices and their ease of adoption
• land managers’ views on whether the practices are consistent with their goals and aspirations.

Progress in this area will be achieved through the Signposts for Australian Agriculture project and the Nationally Coordinated Industry Survey (NCIS).

The Audit engaged the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) and the Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS) to identify principles and priorities for future collections relating to NRM programs.
ABA13 Socioeconomic data (2006) (pdf - 1247KB)

The following paper underpins discussions of the feasibility of using major national data collections to provide ongoing assessments of the adaptive capacity of land managers - a cornerstone of natural resource management (NRM) and structural adjustment policy in Australia. The paper uses the rural livelihoods analysis to assess the suitability of existing ABS national datasets to create practical measures of the adaptive capacity of Australian land managers.

The paper builds upon previous work commissioned by the Audit, which:

• synthesised existing conceptual frameworks of land managers’ adaptive capacity with practical insights into the information needs of Australian Government NRM policy makers
• identified and gained multi-jurisdictional agreement to a set of indicators and protocols for assessing land managers’ capacity to change and the adoption of sustainable management practices.

CSE 49 Adaptive capacity of land managers using ABS data (2007) (pdf - 596KB)

The Audit has commissioned a data trawl to identify major state and regional datasets relevant to the SENCC indicators. This includes an assessment of data sources: availability, accessibility and quality. Key deliverables/outputs for this project will be:

• a web based database identifying state and regional data sources relevant to the SENCC indicators
• communication products to assist with pre and post-implementation of the trawl
• a report on regional/state data gaps.

The project will complement a report commissioned by the Audit
to prepare a national overview of social and economic data sources for NRM.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ report identifies sources, geography and frequency of collections and provides information on nationally available data on human capital, social capital, produced economic capital, participation in natural resource management programs and landholders’ attitudes and behaviours.

ABS Socio-economic data sources (2004) (pdf - 495KB)

Audit Related Publications