Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

187 fire event). While drought generates sympathy in urban communities, its longer duration can result in media fatigue and waning public interest [24]. It was clear from workshops that community workers believed that government social assistance for extreme events is withdrawn well before many members of the community recover. The combined duration of Recover, Prevent and Prepare phases is equivalent to the interval between single events. This interval varies with the type of event and, for some events, is also influenced by natural resource function. For example the incidence of major bushfires is dependent on weather conditions and fuel load. Fuel load is removed by fire (either an event or a hazard reduction burn) providing a period of respite between events while vegetation recovers. Droughts often occur as clusters of dry spells following ocean temperature cycles (measured by the Southern Oscillation Index) punctuated with periods of wetter conditions [25]. Storm events, which can lead to flooding, however, could occur in close succession. There is also the increasing potential for multiple events to occur consecutively: drought leading to higher incidence of bushfires followed by intense rain and flooding, which further blurs the phases of the EM cycle. The concept of “normalization” to climate change and extreme events to build community resilience and self-reliance is becoming central to government disaster planning [26]. Extreme events often accelerate autonomous adjustment processes that are ongoing in regional areas. However, long term or catastrophic events can overwhelm a community’s coping ability leaving it unable to recover without external assistance. Various alternative models of government support under drought have been proposed (e.g., [27,28]). Landholders that participated in the drought workshops understood and accepted short-term dry periods (1–2 years) as part of the agricultural production environment. They generally agreed that land managers should be expected to plan for such regular events. However, their ability to set aside sufficient reserves to manage for severe droughts (such as the Millennium Drought from 2002 to 2007 [29]) appears beyond their capability. There is evidence in the high incidence of rural family breakdown, farmer suicides and rapid demographic/land-use change in rural Australia that coping strategies are being already overwhelmed. The wisdom of a government policy stance for extreme events in rural and regional communities that relies heavily on building and maintaining local community resilience is questionable in the knowledge community coping will be exceeded in the future. It may be necessary to facilitate local transformation in order to preserve regional resilience [30,31,32]. Rates of recovery also depend on the re-establishment of ecosystem service provision particularly for natural resource dependent livelihoods (such as agriculture and tourism). For the SE Region, grazing enterprises, which are the dominant form of agricultural production, are particularly hard hit because recovery depends not only on plant growth rates (pasture availability) but also on having sufficient stock numbers to harvest available pasture mass. Stock numbers depend in turn on breeding rates and or ability to purchase suitable animals (usually unavailable because of high prices following widespread drought). There is already considerable autonomous adaptation occurring in response to a range of drivers including variable rainfall. These adaptations include changed practices (drought feedlots, adaptivelymanaged stocking rates), changed land-use (both fragmentation of “unviable” farms and consolidation of agriculture on land of higher capability) and a shift to other livelihood options (reliance on off-farm employment, non-resident ownership) [30,31]. Further change along some of these pathways may be limited. For example amalgamation of properties to achieve economies of scale at low stocking rates is limited by labour availability. It is likely that socioeconomic tipping points will be exceeded with only small future changes to production environments (such as further declining terms-of-trade) coupled with increased intensity or frequency of extreme climate events [33]. In light of our discussions with a broad range of local communities we suggest that the uniform application of the PPRR cycle in all landscapes and for all types of extreme climate events often fails to account for the needs of the local communities it is intended to support. 3.3. In Practice, How Are Natural Resources Currently Considered in the Management of Extreme Climate Events? This research suggests that despite the intrinsic value of natural resources in supporting rural and regional communities, they are seldom explicitly considered in the management of extreme events. Actions to better protect the natural resource base are unlikely to occur during the response phase, where protection of lives and property will remain the priority and under the control of emergency management combat agencies, especially for large scale events. Instead, protection of natural resources from extreme events should focus more attention in the Prevent phase. Our greatest concern is that unlike infrastructure assets, which often incorporate adaptive improvements during rebuilding [34], natural assets are largely expected to recover autonomously. Where the frequency or severity of events does not allow time for recovery of ecosystem function before a succeeding event, ecosystems may decline, ultimately losing resilience and transforming into undesirable states [20] that fail to provide essential ecosystem services for natural resource dependent communities (Figure 3). 3.4. How Can Natural Resource Management be Improved to Ensure the Prosperity and Viability of Rural and Regional Communities for an Uncertain Future? In conclusion, we propose some changes to the hypothetical extreme event time line (Figure 2) to improve the management of natural resources. These following three changes are a synthesis of information from all of the workshops and do not relate specifically to one type of event or individual landscape: Increased activity by emergency management combat agencies to advise and support communities, particularly rural landholders, to