The Reef 2050 Plan is Australia's overarching strategy for managing the Great Barrier Reef. Informed by this strategy, many types of actions happen across a range of scales, places and contexts – yet we have lacked a systematic way to monitor and understand the social dimensions of this work.
From 2022 to 2026, the UQ PROTECT team and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation worked with community partners through the Reef Trust Partnership to develop and pilot the first standardised Toolkit for Measuring and Monitoring Reef Stewardship, generating insights into the collective impact of stewardship programs on people's actions and the enabling conditions that support them. To date, the toolkit has captured over 800 responses from program participants.
In this presentation we will demonstrate that stewardship monitoring, informed by social science, is a critical part of the policy and program cycle. We will share findings from the pilot program and case studies showing how insights can meet multiple objectives for on-ground partners, managers, policy-makers and funders. We will discuss how practical, relevant social monitoring tools can inform future policy and program design, and strengthen connections between strategic frameworks across multiple scales.