Integrating R&D into Decision-Making for Natural Resource Management at a Regional Scale

The operational reality behind the rhetoric of integrated natural resource management poses significant challenges for resource managers, resource use planners and research scientists. A variety of frameworks for integrated resource planning and use have been espoused. These tend to reflect the bias of the discipline or stakeholder group fostering the approach and may therefore be unpalatable to, and ignored by, other groups. In this paper, we are concerned with improved integration of research outcomes into decision making. Rather than propose a framework, we take a pragmatic view of the roles of managers, planners and scientists. In doing so, we draw principally on practical experience derived from a series of initiatives in a rural catchment in tropical Australia. On this basis, we argue for a particular and emerging role for a 'decision support systematist' in designing approaches to adaptive decision support that provide real opportunities for integrating research outcomes into decision-making.