The NESP encourages a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach to environmental and climate science research. Key to the success of the Hub will be the capacity to foster partnerships across Hubs and with a wide range of relevant research stakeholders.

The NESP TWQ Hub Administrator has an established track record of working collaboratively with other research programs and centres to maximise science output value. Negotiations are underway to ensure future collaboration of the NESP TWQ Hub research with the Northern Australia Environmental Resources, Marine Biodiversity, Threatened Species Recovery, Earth Systems and Climate Change and Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hubs. Research priorities that cut across these hubs and the TWQ Hub will be addressed through collaborative partnerships between hubs to maximise value from cross-hub capacity. These joint priorities will be further addressed in future versions of the Research Plan.

The NESP TWQ Hub partners have collaborated for nearly two decades, and have established an extensive network of research end-users across government, industry, NGO’s, Indigenous groups and other community groups. The creation of credible biophysical, social and economic information to policy makers, natural resource managers, industry, community and other scientists has been, and will be, one of the key success elements for the NESP TWQ Hub.
 
Using the operational strategies below, the Hub will ensure outputs are useful to, and adopted by, end-users through processes that:

  • Develop research projects through an iterative process that identifies and addresses end-user issues; designed to encourage additional end-user co-investment.
  • Conduct annual syntheses of current issues, knowledge gaps and possible solutions.
  • Commission a series of industry dialogues on key issues in the form of end-user products.
  • Each project will have an end-user partner involved through all stages of the project from conception to final delivery.

 
The NESP TWQ Hub and the NESP Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub have discussed developing a shared approach and potential formal collaborations in joint thematic areas, which may include:

  • Indigenous co-management of natural systems including IPA and ILUA management, integration of traditional ecological knowledge and capacity building of Indigenous rangers in rainforest land and sea country.
  • Catchment and coastal planning and governance including in rainforest areas (Northern land-use planning for sustainability).
  • River connectivity, the source, transport and processing of sediments and nutrients in a changing system.
  • Sustainability indicators for rainforest, catchment and reef resources.

 
Other potential cross-Hub linkages will be further investigated with the Marine Biodiversity Hub, Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub, Threatened Species Hub, and the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub and will be identified including, but not limited to:

  • Effective on-ground responses to reduce threats and promote recovery of threatened species (Threatened Species Hub).
  • Maximising the efficacy of managing Australia’s marine environment (Marine Biodiversity Hub).
  • Improving our understanding of pressures on the marine environment (Marine Biodiversity Hub).
  • Improving our understanding of the marine environment including biophysical, economic and social aspects (Marine Biodiversity Hub).
  • Quantifying the benefits of urban greening for humans and other species in cities to inform Australian Government policy and programmes, and management actions by all levels of government, the community and industry (Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub).
  • Specific threatened species and water quality integrated projects to optimise planning and investment to benefit multiple threatened species as well as maximise water quality outcomes.
  • Specific water quality and climate change related projects.
  • Marine monitoring related projects.
  • Decision support research and tools related to management of key threats across Australia’s marine estate (Marine Biodiversity Hub, Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub, Threatened Species Recovery Hub).

 
The NESP TWQ Hub will also promote relevant joint PhD projects and scholarships with other Hubs.

The Hub intends to link knowledge brokering and communications activities with other Hubs, particularly the Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub, enabling synergies between engagement frameworks and critical analysis of contrasting approaches for continuous improvement.
 
The six partner institutions of the NESP TWQ Hub are:

Click on any of the above institutions to find out more about them.