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Developing FRDC’s 2020-2025 RD&E Plan

Project number: 2018-197

Project Status:

Completed

Budget expenditure: $370,061.23

Principal Investigator: Matt Barwick

Organisation: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC)

Project start/end date: 19 Apr 2019 - 30 Dec 2020

Contact:

FRDC

Need

Section 19 of PIRD Act requires R&D corporations to prepare R&D Plans for each consecutive 5-year period. Each plan is to include (at a minimum):
· a statement of the Corporation’s objectives and priorities for the period to which the plan is expressed to relate; and
· an outline of the strategies that the Corporation intends to adopt in order to achieve those objectives.
Under section 10 of the Funding Agreement between FRDC and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR), FRDC is required to develop a consultation plan, which seeks to:
• explain the purpose and objectives of consultation to inform the 2020-2025 RD&E Plan;
• describe who will be consulted;
• outline methods proposed; and,
• explain how input provided will be used.

FRDC is to obtain DAWR approval for the consultation plan prior to commencement of activities.
In order to develop an RD&E Plan which accurately interprets and responds to RD&E needs for Australia’s fishing and aquaculture community it is important to understand the aspirations, pain points, risks and opportunities of each sector over the intended life of the plan through undertaking broad consultation. It is also important to understand the current situation of the fishing and aquaculture (F&A) community (including indigenous, wild catch, aquaculture and recreational, and post-harvest sectors). The situational analysis should provide an updated understanding of what fishing and aquaculture looks like in Australia today, who is involved, what drives them, how they are performing, how the product (if retained) is used, what are the main dominant risks and trends. An earlier situational analysis delivered as an output of FRDC Project 2014/503.20 provides a useful template.
Finally, it is for any RD&E plan to be informed by an understanding of likely future trends, risks and opportunities facing Australia’s F&A community in the future. This requires:
· compilation of evidence to enable consideration of likely future geopolitical, social, economic, environmental and/or technical changes likely to occur in the future, and drivers of those changes;
· generation of projections relating to supply and demand for seafood products as well as cultural and/or recreational time use

Objectives

1. Undertake consultative activities to inform development of the 2020-2025 RD&E Plan

2. Deliver a contemporary situational analysis for Australia’s fishing and aquaculture community to inform FRDC’s 2020-2025 RD&E Plan

3. Deliver a future-scan with a decadal time horizon (2030) to inform FRDC’s 2020-2025 RD&E Plan

4. Undertake activities necessary to enable launch of the 2020-2025 RD&E Plan by 30 June 2020.

Final report

Authors: Jeff Dambacher Alistair Hobday Fabio Boschetti Chris Moeseneder Linda Thomas

Final Report • 2020-05-28 • 2.57 MB

2018-197-DLD.pdf

Summary

This report covers the second of two CSIRO contributions to the project FRDC 2018-197. This project was reviewing FRDC research objectives through a process that developed alternative scenarios of possible futures relevant to Australian fisheries. Discussed here is the development of a quantitative model to explore future seafood scenarios developed elsewhere. The purpose of this modelling exercise was to support the project FRDC 2018-197. The development of these possible future scenarios was undertaken in a process
that ran in parallel to the CSIRO contribution. This process involved a series of stakeholder workshops and follow-up discussions, to which CSIRO staff were occasional observers.

The qualitative models developed to describe present day dynamics were then tested to see if they could account for previously observed shocks or perturbations the Australian aquaculture and fisheries system. This involved a face-to-face workshop and teleconference with representatives of the Stage 1 expert group.

Based on external input to management, employment and environmental variables, the qualitative models produced a set of predictions that were highly consistent with previously observed impacts in Australian fisheries and aquaculture.
The models were then tested to see how well they compared to the dynamics described in the future scenarios, and here model predictions were found to be highly consistent with the dynamics played out in the two future scenarios – that is, both worlds are likely.

With ongoing support from CSIRO, these models can now be used to explore alternative perturbations, identify the informative indicators, and to determine when these models of the future (World A and B) are no longer realistic representations of real situation. If insufficient information is being gather on these indicators, the efforts could be made to collect such data, or if the information is too expensive, the alternatives can also be investigated to determine how many alternative indicators provide the equivalent conformation

Final Report • 2020-05-28 • 2.57 MB

2018-197-DLD.pdf