Revisiting the multifunctional transition in Australia’s wet Tropics: The climate change crisis

Over recent decades, environmental management has progressed from a tenure-based process, where each tenure is established for a single purpose, to one that considers multiple, often conflicting, uses across multiple tenures at the landscape scale. Stork et al. (2014) considered the history of management, contestation and conservation of humid forested landscapes of Australia’s Wet Tropics and investigated the unfolding expression of new and diverse values attached to the region. Their analysis supported the theory of Nested Adaptive Policy Cycles that change in response to exogenous factors (Gunderson, 1995). They concluded that twenty-first century environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss will lead to further major social transformations and the path generation to increasing complexity will continue.