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Scientific Frontline: Extended "At a Glance" Summary: Evaluative Governance in Climate Risk
The Core Concept: Evaluative governance is a systemic framework that integrates objective scientific data with social values to determine acceptable climate limits and drive actionable policy.
Key Distinction/Mechanism: Unlike traditional models that merely catalogue ecological threats—such as biological toxicity levels and species decline—evaluative governance formally defines societal tolerability thresholds and embeds transparent trade-offs directly into executive decision-making.
Major Frameworks/Components:
- Establishment of a science-informed evidence base tracking precise ecosystem conditions and drivers.
- Consultation with stakeholders and Traditional Owners to define biological and social tolerability thresholds.
- Alignment of executive decision-making with environmental legislation, political objectives, and resourcing.
- Ongoing assessment of effectiveness and equity to actively recalibrate policies based on new evidence.
Branch of Science: Environmental Science, Marine and Freshwater Biology, Ecology, Climatology, and Social Sciences.
Future Application: Refining national frameworks, such as National Adaptation Plans, to transition from reactive emergency management to proactive, long-term ecosystem and public health protections.
Why It Matters: It prevents climate risk assessments from stalling as theoretical lists, ensuring that complex ecological crises are met with decisive, scientifically precise, and socially informed governmental interventions.
Identifying and analyzing climate risks is a necessary function of governments, but researchers at Adelaide University’s Environment Institute argue such processes will not lead to effective action without taking additional steps to understand which risks are considered unacceptable by the community and prioritizing responses accordingly.
"Australia is getting better at identifying climate risks, but we are far worse at deciding which risks we are willing to accept and who should bear them," said Associate Professor Ania Kotarba-Morley, from Adelaide University’s Environment Institute and School of Humanities.
"Without clearer rules for evaluating climate risk, it is possible that national assessments could just become a list of problems rather than drivers of real action."
In a study published in Nature Sustainability, Associate Professor Kotarba-Morley and her co-authors outline that introducing evaluative governance would help shift climate risk assessments toward longer-term thinking.
"We rely on ways of thinking that have dominated for a long time—responding to risk with insurance or making minor adjustments in our systems—rather than implementing changes that grapple with the profound, systemic, and deeply uncertain risk society is facing," said co-author Associate Professor Douglas Bardsley, from Adelaide University’s Environment Institute and School of Society and Culture.
The paper’s authors argue that integrating evaluative governance into climate risk assessments would follow four sequential steps:
Establish evidence bases through the science-informed assessment of system condition, drivers, consequences, and likelihoods.
Consult with stakeholders, including Traditional Owners, to define what matters, balance values, consider trade-offs and competing interests transparently, and define tolerability thresholds and non-negotiables.
Align executive decision-making with political objectives, programs, legislation, and resourcing.
Assess effectiveness, equity, and unintended consequences, and recalibrate policy in light of new evidence and conditions.
"In practice, most climate frameworks—including Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment and National Adaptation Plan—complete the first step, rarely achieve the second step, gesture toward the third step, and rarely embed the fourth step," said lead author Associate Professor Kotarba-Morley.
Co-author Professor Seth Westra, from the Environment Institute and One Basin CRC, noted that the governmental response to South Australia’s harmful algal bloom (HAB) highlights where this framework could lead to improvements.
"The HAB experience shows that while science catalogs risks—measuring toxicity, species decline, and exposure pathways—it cannot, on its own, dictate which risks are socially tolerable, or how competing public values should be weighed," he said.
"While scientists and authorities can monitor ecological danger, governments still struggle to decide when stronger intervention is required and what trade-offs are acceptable."
Associate Professor Kotarba-Morley highlighted that decisions about the acceptability of risks and responses require consideration beyond scientific evidence.
"Decisions about protecting ecosystems, cultural heritage, public health, or livelihoods should be informed by social values and political choices, as well as the science," she said.
"Without a new governance framework that takes this into account, responsibility and action for responding will default to individuals and emergency responses, and only encourage short-term fixes to long-term problems."
Published in journal: Nature Sustainability
Title: Evaluative governance for climate action in Australia
Authors: Anna M. Kotarba-Morley, Seth Westra, Gregory Andrews, Douglas Bardsley, Fran Baum, Peng Bi, Sean D. Connell, Christopher B. Daniels, Marina Delpin, Jared R. Dmello, Georgina Drew, Antony Eagle, Damien A. Fordham, Toby Freeman, Scott Hanson-Easey, Scott Hawken, Ariella Helfgott, Alice R. Jones, Sarah Keenihan, Mark Kohler, K. Mark Lawrence, Holger R. Maier, Dominic McAfee, Phillipa C. McCormack, Melissa J. Nursey-Bray, Patrick O’Connor, Stephanie Sheintul, Veronica Soebarto, Jared Thomas, Carmel Williams, Christopher Wilson, and Andrew J. Lowe
Source/Credit: Adelaide University
Reference Number: env051226_01
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