Quantifying strategic regional priorities for managing natural capital: Compositional exploration of MCA-derived weights

Demand for natural resource management (NRM) exceeds supply. In Australia, under Commonwealth policy, the responsibility for investment of substantial amounts of public money falls largely to the 56 regional agencies. A ubiquitous problem for these agencies is to set strategic priorities for management amongst a myriad of complex, competing, and urgent issues. What types of environmental assets, values, and threats should regional agencies devote scarce management resources to? Regional agencies need to quantify strategic priorities for management. However, this is often difficult due to the complexity of environmental processes and the diversity of opinions amongst decision makers. In this study we quantify the strategic management priorities for the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin Natural Resources Management Board (the Board). We use a natural capital framework to present regional environmental decision-makers with a range of potential issues for strategic consideration. The Board defined Water, Land, Biota, and Atmosphere as natural capital assets of interest and these formed the basis of a goal hierarchy for Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA). This goal hierarchy was modified after 56 qualitative ethnographic interviews revealed that people also cared about built and social capital assets in the context of environmental management. MCA offers a potential tool for quantifying relative management priorities of a diverse range of natural capital assets. Five decision conferences were held with the Board and its four regionally-based, consultative NRM Groups. Decision conferences were held across the study area and included a total of 40 people. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process from the field of MCA the relative management priorities of natural capital assets were quantified as weights. The unit-sum constraint (i.e. weights sum to 1 for each participant) renders the data compositional. As such, at least on negative correlation must exist (if one weight increases, other must decrease to maintain the unit-sum). This renders the data unfit for classical statistical analysis. Rather, a range of compositional analysis techniques were used to explore the management priorities for natural capital assets in the study area. Compositional measures of central tendency and variance were calculated to describe management priorities for natural capital assets. Compositional weights were then transformed using a centred log ratio approach and analysed using classical statistical methods. ANOVA with Dunnett's T3 post hoc test was used to test for between-variable differences in the management priorities of natural capital assets. Similarly, Dunnett's T3 was also used to test for between-group differences in the management priority of each capital asset between the Board and the four NRM Groups. Substantial variation in management priority occurred between decision makers. Decision makers identified water, followed by land and biota as the highest priority natural capital assets for management but they also considered that the impact on both built and financial capital, and social capital was important in making environmental management decisions. Despite the variation in management priorities of decision makers, water was of significantly higher priority than all other assets except land. Likewise, management of land was of significantly higher management priority than all other assets except water and biota, and biota was significantly higher than family and community. There was no significant difference in management priority between any other assets. Very few significant differences in management priority of capital assets were found between the Board and NRM Groups. The variance in the priorities of decision makers implies that investment analyses should be based on the distribution of weights in MCA rather than single measures of central tendency. The results can provide a basis for the design of programs and projects that address the natural capital assets of highest priority in strategic planning for regional NRM.