El Nemo - Northern Tropical Australia Program
The Northern Tropical Australia Program aims to guide work to inform fisheries management arrangements and members operating in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors to facilitate positive adaptation to future changes. This is vital for meeting the challenges and capturing opportunities ahead.
The program will provide information to help the various fishery and aquaculture sector groups and government manage the challenges and opportunities presented by a changing climate. The program aims to improve understanding of the biophysical, social and economic implications of climate change as it relates to fisheries and aquaculture. It also aims to ensure that fisheries management frameworks are adaptive to the changes in fish resources and ecosystems that are expected to result from climate change.
The aim of this program, like the South-Eastern and Western Australia programs, will be to provide information to help the various fisheries and aquaculture sectors and governments manage risk. The NTA Program aims to improve understanding of the biophysical, social and economic implications of climate change and to facilitate the preparation and adaptation of the sectors and fisheries management arrangements to these future changes.
The program will focus on the northern tropical Australia region, and will be a key component of a national adaptation approach to clim
ate change by the fisheries and aquaculture sectors.
The program will inform and contribute to the delivery of national and regional planning outcomes, including the National Climate Change Action Plan for Fisheries and Aquaculture.
The program will provide information to help the various fishery and aquaculture sector groups and government manage the challenges and opportunities presented by a changing climate. This is not a strategy or a plan, but a program to coordinate projects to answer priority questions, and coordinate work across disciplines and jurisdictions.
The document has been based on the extensive work undertaken by the partners in the South-Eastern Australia Program (the SE Program). The SE Program contextualised the climate change issues facing the fishing and aquaculture sectors and management agencies and provides a program logic suitable for adoption on a national basis.
As such, and with the permission of partners in the SE Program, the Northern Tropical Australia (NTA) Program intends to use this work as the basis for the development of its future directions in climate change adaptation. The intention is also that by being closely aligned to the SE Program, a consistent national approach to climate change adaptation will evolve. The information provided below has been extracted directly from the SE Program and modified, where appropriate to reflect tropical issues relating to the close relationship between northern rivers and the coastal environs, lower population density and greater Indigenous representation in the community.
