Workshop on Monitoring Socio-ecological systems

I was delighted to join a workshop hosted by Jonathan Rhodes at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED), based at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

The workshop focused on the monitoring of socio-ecological systems, and the value of information for environmental decision-making. CEED is renowned for its work on decision-making and management sciences in the environment sector, including to help monitoring outcomes and better allocate scarce resources for conservation. This was my my first time engaging with this approach, and I was excited to learn more about its contributions to and overlaps with my own environmental governance research.

This was also only my first visit to Australia, and a highlight was searching for the finger lime (Citrus australasica) with Duan Biggs. Endemic to the lowland subtropical rain and dry forest in coastal Queensland and New South Wales, the finger lime has recently become a novel ingredient in high end restaurants. I was delighted to taste it and learn more about it from pioneering finger lime farmer, Buck Buchanan. Buck showed us around his farm, and told us about how how he (re)discovered this fruit from his childhood and has led the way in its domestication and commercialisation--a great story of the value of agro-biodiversity.