94 results
Environment

Capability and Capacity: Navigating leadership pathways in fishing and aquaculture

Project number: 2023-132
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $87,000.00
Principal Investigator: Nicole McDonald
Organisation: CQUniversity (CQU) Rockhampton
Project start/end date: 29 May 2024 - 31 Jul 2025
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Leadership
Capacity Building

Need

In a 2019 review of FRDC’s investment in people development, it was noted that significant variability exists across the industry in terms of leadership capability and capacity with most of FRDC investment focused on mid to higher levels of leadership (Lovett). While this past review is comprehensive, it is now 5 years old and pre-dates the ‘black swan’ event of COVID-19 that saw widespread disruptions to the economy, supply chains, and workforce, and has had consequences for leadership capacity and capability needs.

This project will review the current leadership development ecosystem, mapping relevant leadership programs, and identify potential opportunities for a diverse range of industry participants who will benefit from developing leadership capability and skills. Furthermore, acknowledging that leadership capability is not necessarily tied to formal positions of leadership, this project aims to identify different entry points for individual leadership development to ensure accessibility of opportunities. Any potential gaps in accessibility and potential new pathways will be identified. It is imperative that a lack of knowledge of learning and training opportunities to develop non-technical skills or low confidence levels to engage due to unclear entry pathways is not a barrier to any willing participant seeking to enhance their strengths and pursue an interest in making greater contributions that align with industry leadership capacity needs.

Our project combines a review of modern leadership definitions, theories, frameworks and practices, and through stakeholder engagement seeks to identify how these meet the context specific leadership challenges for the wild catch and aquaculture industries. Qualitative and quantitative research will be used to map and evaluate the current leadership development ecosystem for the wild catch and aquaculture sectors, identifying current pathways, recruitment processes, target outcomes, and the value and variety of alumni. Gaps in leadership capacity and capability will be identified and areas for potential changes investigated. Recommendations for improving return on investment in the existing leadership ecosystem will be made, including continuing development or improved integration of post program leaders into the industry. The current project has been designed to provide the breadth and depth of information that leads to practical implications for further industry engagement in leadership capacity and capability development.

Objectives

1. Provide a detailed understanding of the leadership capacity and capability competencies, and development opportunities within fishing and aquaculture
2. Develop a fisheries and aquaculture leadership ecosystem map, including entry points to a variety of programs for individuals to chart leadership development pathways
3. Identify gaps in leadership capacity and capability development activities and potential programs/resources to address these
4. Explore and identify across fisheries and aquaculture how leadership capability relates to roles, organisations and sectors
Environment
Industry
Environment
Environment
Environment

Capability & Capacity: 2024 Electric & Hybrid Marine Expo North America and Conference

Project number: 2023-102
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $59,443.73
Principal Investigator: Clayton M. Nelson
Organisation: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC)
Project start/end date: 31 Jan 2024 - 21 Dec 2024
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Innovation
Climate Resilience
Capacity Building

Need

Providing opportunities for fishing and aquaculture stakeholders to engage with the latest global information and technology, learn and network from leaders, innovators and practitioners in the electric and hybrid marine space is key to enabling innovation and adoption. Participants will experience and engage with technology, approaches and people via the expo and conference program.

Through attending, participants will build their capabilities and share knowledge with peers/stakeholders to inform, enable and drive change in Australia. The project intends to maintain momentum through this investment, empowering stakeholders to communicate and extend their experiences to contextualise opportunities for Australia and encourage future participation and attendance at similar events.

Objectives

1. Support up to 10 people to attend 2024 Electric & Hybrid Marine Expo North America Exhibition and Conference
2. Enable global, local, connection and collaboration across traditional and emerging sectors

Final report

Author: Clayton Nelson
Final Report • 2024-05-01 • 371.38 KB
2023-102-DLD.pdf

Summary

I believe the value that bursary recipients received from attending the Electric and Hybrid Expo was valuable in a number of ways. The networking opportunity for the younger members was valuable as they all shared experiences and were a little removed from what was happening on a global stage for alternative sources of propulsion and energy. The balance of a couple of older heads like Mike and myself balanced out  "what needs to be done / what can be done” across various industry applications.
I note that the US Expo was of a much smaller size than the European Expo and did not have the displays and working models available to interact with. There is no doubt that a visit to the European Expo for Seafood industry participants would be very valuable. This should be targeted at those parts of industry than could not attend the US forum due to season dates ( ie Trawl).
The participation of Dr Jennifer Marshall gave those attending a link into the FRDC executive and the relationship will be further strengthen by her attendance and interaction with the team.
Clayton Nelson
Austral Fisheries Pty Ltd.
 
 

Sea Change: co-developing pathways to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate for fisheries and aquaculture in Australia

Project number: 2023-011
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $1,628,586.00
Principal Investigator: Gretta T. Pecl
Organisation: University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Project start/end date: 31 Oct 2023 - 30 Apr 2027
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Climate Resilience
Climate Mitigation
Climate Change
Adaptation

Need

There is a need to increase effective engagement between fishing and aquaculture stakeholders and climate science and scientists in an ongoing strategic way, and not ‘just’ for single-project outcomes.

Improved engagement will help increase understanding of the likely implications of a changing climate in relevant contexts, and lay foundations for a shared exploration of available options for reducing risk exposure. We have worked with stakeholders and the FRDC Extension Officer Network to design a strategy that will engage fishing and aquaculture stakeholders on existing knowledge regarding risks and opportunities associated with a changing climate, to enable resource managers and researchers to better understand the ways in which many sectors are already adapting autonomously and to identify the barriers to further adaptation, and to co-design solutions that are relevant at local- and industry-levels to help build climate-ready communities and to stimulate economic resilience.

In many cases (but not all), extensive information regarding marine climate change - including key risks to fisheries and aquaculture producers (at a high level) - is already available, along with information on how to develop adaptation plans. However, despite this, progress and uptake within most sectors in terms of planned adaptation responses has been very slow – although many individual operators are already making ‘autonomous’ changes to their day-to-day operations in response to climate change drivers. If these changes are being made without access to best available knowledge, then it is very likely that substantial portions of these responses are maladaptive in the longer term, or may be countervailing to planned government adaptations (see Pecl et al 2019, Ambio, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-019-01186-x). This is a pattern evident within many different industries around Australia and across the rest of the world. ‘What’ needs to happen has thus been outlined in general terms in many cases, but such information is not co-developed or provided in consultation with end-users in ways that resonate or are useful to them. This project will address this need for relevance and usefulness.

The project aims to develop reflexive, ongoing, and two-way knowledge exchange between industry representatives, operators and manager, and the marine climate change impacts and adaptation research sector, so that solutions are co-designed, usable, and adoptable.

Objectives

1. Work with seafood industry leaders to establish two-way climate conversations that can strengthen and underpin Australian fishing and aquaculture’s resilience to a changing climate. This approach will facilitate co-design of pathways to increase agility and build capacity for climate change adaptation with a select number of fisheries and aquaculture operations. This process will also create a model that can be applicable to other RDC’s.
2. Create a climate conversations platform to facilitate knowledge exchange (including identifying ‘gaps’ and shared issues), and thus capture, disseminate, and showcase:a. How fishing and aquaculture sectors are already adapting and responding to recent changesb. What has facilitated these changes made, and what the barriers are to further adaptationc. The story of fishing and aquaculture’s efforts towards achieving climate resilience - using a dynamic ‘story map’ approach, and other multi-media, communicate progress to target audiences.
3. Identify a) key factors influencing the agility of fisheries and aquaculture to adapt to climate change, and b) which factors (e.g. opportunities) are most important for adaptation capacity-building for different types of operations - building on work underway across multiple domestic and international projects and working groups.
4. Co-develop pathways, with a select number of fisheries and aquaculture operations, to increase their agility and build sector capacity for climate change adaptation and resilience.
5. Support the development of communities of practice for groups of fisheries and/or aquaculture operations that have similar opportunities and pathways – to support increased agility and capacity building for climate change adaptation (determined in objective 3).
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