Tropical science: Dispersal sends 'em troppo up north

Australia's tropical research science and innovation efforts are scattered over the continent's top end, from north-western WA to north-eastern Queensland.

And addressing the challenges created by that kind of dispersal have become a key priority for the chief scientists of Queensland and Western Australia, along with the Northern Territory's Bob Collins, in the wake of a recent forum in Darwin.

Queensland's chief scientist, Peter Andrews, led the Queensland delegation after premier Peter Beattie was unable to attend. Now he and his interstate colleagues must consider the issues raised and develop a set of targets for tropical researchers.

The ultimate goal, Andrews says, will be to create strategic advantage down the track in building knowledge-based industries and in bringing other economic benefits back to the tropical Australia.

The review by the chief scientists is one of the first concrete initiatives to come out of a recently signed cooperative framework between Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The cooperative framework between the three governments is designed to leverage four common areas of research strength, including tropical agriculture, tropical health and medicine, environmental management and tropical marine science, according to forum documents.

At the top of the agenda will be the question of how to maximise the limited resources available to exploit a land mass which, according to Andrews, is equivalent to about 40 per cent of the country but which is populated by only a million people.

Dispersal was one of the key issues confronting researchers and bureaucrats in their attempt to develop a framework for coordinating tropical research in a discussions paper published prior to the forum.

"While Australia's collective expertise in tropical science and knowledge innovation is impressive, it is widely scattered through different institutions and programs many of them relatively small by international standards," the paper points out.

By way of example, the authors note that the Australian Institute of Marine Science, one of the key local research centres in the region, has only about 150 research staff.

The paper does note, however, that tropical science and knowledge innovation garners a strong representation in several large institutes, among them the CSIRO, the Agency for Food and Fibre Science in Queensland and the Western Australian Departments of Agriculture and Conservation and Land Management.

"But even here, the effort is often distributed across many different research centres and locations or forms part of a broader agricultural, medical or environment program," the paper says.

Many tropical research activities are held away from major population centres, leading to another potential problem -- lack of awareness by the wider community of tropical research outcomes and issues. The conclusions drawn from these dilemmas are not initially encouraging.

The paper says the distribution of tropical research capacity across numerous programs and activities, its application across many triple bottom line activities and its integration into many mainstream programs restricts the tropical research sector's capacity to network and communicate common ideas.

"For tropical research institutions wishing to attract major funding, smallness of size, particularly in regional centres can present difficulties when competing under funding schemes that place strong emphasis on profile and critical mass," the paper says.

Despite the hurdles, Andrews says, he is enthused by the opportunity presented by tropical research.

"When you look around the globe there certainly aren't many places where you have a tropical geography combined with a really good R&D base, combined with stable government, combined with a strong industrial base," he argues. "In this case, that industrial base is largely primary -- pastoral and mining industries and so forth.

"That combination of things, to my way of thinking, gives us an enormous opportunity if we can get in there and grab it. That's also a generic statement for the opportunity of Australia's research base in general and our very poor efforts to commercialise that."

Nor is Andrews too concerned about tackling the problems of dispersal.

"If you look at an area like aquaculture, obviously it's spread all over the top end," he says. "It will be dispersed, but that is not to say that cooperation between the various players, for instance with a facility were they have joint research programs, won't eventually feed back to the benefit of all."

Whatever the type of research and wherever the facilities are placed, Andrews says that "with only a million people and relatively small amount of resources then you don't want to be duplicating [the research] -- you want to be sharing it. It doesn't seem to me to be a huge issue to place those resources in all three jurisdictions, as long as you do it in a cooperative way."

According to Andrews there are some good ideas already coming through.

"James Cook [University] has a proposal to develop a tropical science precinct covering quite a lot of areas, but focusing on marine science," he says. "They have a tremendous opportunity to be the best in the world in that patch.

"If you look at [research areas] like coral reefs and rainforest ecosystems, our science is equal best in the world, if not the best. We have the opportunity to do ourselves a service in looking after our own research and in gaining other economic benefits from sharing research around the world. "This is a big resource and a big opportunity."

Returning to a theme common throughout his discussions about the local biotech scene, Andrews says it is important that industry leaders and investors be brought in early. These two groups, he says, were not overly represented at the forum, and that needs to change.

The last significant Australian investigation into the potential of tropical research is now more than 10 years old. The 1993 ATSEC Report recommended that "greater attention be given to a number of areas, for example the scientific needs of arid, desert and dry savanna regions." And indeed, a government priorities paper on tropical research notes that this emphasis resulted in some concrete measures, such as the creation of the CRCs for Tropical Savannas and Desert Knowledge.

But stakeholders hope the latest initiative, driven from the top, will mark a real consolidation of Australia's tropical research strengths.