Connectivity, flow & change: Social perspectives on the Great Barrier Reef

The theme for the symposium is:

Connectivity, flow and change: Social perspectives on the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms. It is a system emergent in connections between biological life, ocean currents, geological structures, and countless other flows, forces and things, including people.

The symposium inspiration is social perspectives on maintaining and enhancing connections and flows that link and replenish, essential for the diversity and resilience of the Reef. The symposium seeks to explore connectivity in many ways. This includes the exchange or connection of ideas, benefits, knowledge, information and data, including by, for, and with the First Nation’s people of the Great Barrier Reef; people and place; tele-connected and cross-scalar movements; social-ecological systems; connections between research and practice; and intra/inter/multidisciplinary and other relationships.

The broad themes of the symposium are:

• Human connection and relationships with the Reef
• Development of social innovations towards shifting attitudes and behaviours including stewardship
• Contemporary spatial understanding of use within the Great Barrier Reef region (Reef and catchment), change over time and drivers of change
• Research application for practice and management
• Systems approaches to Reef sustainability
• Organisational, institutional and governance systems for the Great Barrier Reef region

The symposium is being hosted by the Social Science Community for the Reef, an initiative of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Office of the Great Barrier Reef (Department of Environment and Science, Queensland), James Cook University: Cairns Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Queensland University of Technology, and University of Queensland.

The group brings together social science practitioners and academics working in the Great Barrier Reef Region. The purpose of the group is to collaborate, share knowledge and provide a platform for improving understanding of social science for the Reef, both research and applied.