Adaptation to climate change in regional Australia : a decision-making framework for modelling policy for rural production

A decision-making framework was developed and applied in regional Australia to identify adaptation issues arising in agricultural systems and rural production as a consequence of climate change. Australian agriculture is very susceptible to the adverse impacts of climate change, with major shifts in temperature and rainfall projected. An advantage of the framework is that it provides a suite of tools to aid in the formulation of strategies for sustainable regional development and adaptation. The decision-making framework uses a participatory approach that integrates land suitability analysis with uncertainty analysis and spatial optimisation to determine optimal agricultural land use (at a regional scale) for current and possible future climatic conditions. It thus provides a robust analytic approach to (i) recognise regions under threat of productivity declines, (ii) identify alternative cropping systems better adapted to likely future climatic conditions and (iii) investigate policy actions to improve the sub-optimal situations created by climate change. The decision-making framework and its methods were applied in a case study of the South West Region of Victoria.