Rural areas in Australia are facing the daunting task of adapting to the impacts of climate change and accompanying land-use planning challenges. This is further complicated by global trends related to trust in government and increased social polarisation, leading to fragmented consensus around shared values. Local councils, therefore, must better understand the diverse worldviews on socio-ecological issues held by their constituents, to effectively drive decision-making and reduce conflict. In this paper, we explore the divergent and convergent discourses on climate change risk perspectives and landscape values in the Huon Valley region of Tasmania and their implications for rural resilience.
We examined the assigned spatial positioning of values and risks, the socio-psychological influences underpinning both concepts, and the intricate (and often weird) socio-ecological worldviews held across the region, using the mixed method approach of Q+PPGIS. This method combines public participation GIS and Q-method. Our results indicate that there is a diversity of discourses on both climate risks and landscape values, which may strongly influence how community members support or oppose adaptation and mitigation actions as well as land-use planning decisions taken by the local council. By understanding these discourses and values, we can gain valuable insights to foster rural resilience in the face of climate change and other place-based threats.
Our study offers an important perspective of a type of rural landscape, the coastalscape, which are expansive regions spanning from seas to alpines that are demarcated by their own vitalism. Moreover, our findings demonstrate to rural councils, grappling with the combined issues of limited resources and community resistance, new approaches in understanding how climate change and coastalscapes are interrelated. By exploring the divergent and convergent discourses on climate risks and landscape values, this paper offers insights that can help councils promote rural resilience, communicate climate action, and develop community support