The Health of the Governance System for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef 2050 Plan: A First Benchmark

The Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan (Reef 2050 Plan) aims to protect and manage the resilience of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (the Reef). The Plan explicitly recognises that strengthening governance is key to achieving its targeted outcomes. To date, a lack of evaluation of the complex system of polices, programs, plans and other arrangements under the Plan has hindered its adaptive governance. This paper presents a first benchmark of the health of the Reef 2050 Plan governance system. A novel framework was built to do this. The framework was built and populated through multiple lines of evidence, including global theory and evaluation practice, case studies and primary data from 1:1 interviews with key Traditional Owners (n=6) experts across government, in-dustry, and non-government organisations (n=48) and five focal workshops involving 32 governance systems experts. The benchmark found the Reef 2050 Plan governance system to be emergent to maturing, and that it was strong by global standards. Strengths include robust global engagement, the integrative nature of the Reef 2050 Plan itself, crisis response systems and Marine Park management. Weaknesses include the need for: (i) more genuine power sharing with Traditional Owners; (ii) rebuilding governmental trust with the farming and fishing sectors; (iii) more contemporary spatial planning for Reef resilience; and (iv) building greater subsidiarity to deliver government programs. Regular benchmarking of Reef governance arrangements would mature the system toward better outcomes.