Under Pressure – A Story of Engagement and Innovation that Resulted in Greater Protection of the International Icon, the Great Barrier Reef

Jago B¹*, Day J¹, Fernandes L¹, Chadwick¹, Tanzer J¹ and Thompson L¹

1. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville, Queensland, Australia

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) is the principal adviser to the Australian Government on the care and development of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The Marine Park covers a huge area (about the size of Japan), and sustains a wide range of social and economic activities supporting coastal communities and regional economies. These activities rely on a healthy productive and resilient ecosystem, which in turn will help maintain the outstanding World Heritage values.

Between 1999 and 2004, the GBRMPA undertook a complex planning and consultative program to develop new zoning for the Marine Park to better protect the range of biodiversity across the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem. This required an enormous amount of community involvement, and is recognised as the most comprehensive process of community involvement and participatory planning for any environmental issue in Australia’s history.

The primary aim of the Representative Areas Program (known as RAP), was to increase the extent of no-take areas, ensuring they included ‘representative’ examples of all the different habitat types, whilst minimising the impacts on the existing users of the Marine Park. Before embarking on this program, the GBRMPA needed to spend time with communities to raise awareness and understanding of the issues, and why changes needed to happen.

The primary target audience and key stakeholders for the new zoning changes were many and varied. They included commercial and recreational fishermen, tourism operators, visitors to the Reef, recreational users, traditional owners and Indigenous communities that have rights and interests in the Marine Park, conservation groups, local communities that rely on a healthy reef system, the general public, local councils, numerous government agencies and all levels of Government including State and Federal politicians. The differing interests in various aspects of the RAP meant that the means of delivering communication messages needed to be appropriately tailored for each different stakeholder group.

A combination of scientific input and collaboration, community involvement and technological innovation in planning achieved the aim, but not before four years of engagement, over two years of intense community consultation, 31 500 public submissions, more than 600 meetings in 90 locations, and thousands of personal interactions occurred. Whilst this primarily involved engaging users and communities adjacent to the Marine Park, it also generated comments from all over Australia and the world.

The outcome of the RAP is that one-third of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is now in highly protected ‘no-take’ zones totalling 114,530 km2 (an area about half the size of Victoria). Various important lessons were learnt, though those that were central to the success of the review of zoning was not necessarily recognised at the time they occurred. This paper looks at the community engagement practices that were used, the lessons learnt, and their possible application to a range of other planning projects, nationally and globally.