Applying social resilience concepts and indicators to support climate adaptation in tropical North Queensland, Australia

Regional and remote communities in Tropical North Queensland (TNQ) are among Australia's most vulnerable in the face of climate change. They face sea-level rise, more intense dry spells, increasing temperatures, more extensive coral bleaching and the risk of more intense cyclones and floods. Consequently, sociologically and economically diverse subregions such as the Northern Gulf of Carpentaria, the Torres Strait, Cape York Peninsula and the Wet Tropics face an uncertain future. Together, these four subregions represent a social diversity typical across the tropics. With its cultural and social complexity, Queensland's tropics present an ideal case study for operationalising an indicators-based approach for building regional and subregional-scale resilience. The assessment of social resilience in the four TNQ subregions has reinforced the theoretical conclusion that a purist approach to measuring and monitoring social resilience, driven by defining and populating perfect sets of indicators, is neither practical nor feasible.