Co-operation on a long timescale
In times of drastic change, cooperation becomes crucial (Roch and Samuelson 1997; Cardenas et al. 2004). The spectrum of consequences expected from climate change will require legitimate, transparent, and honest cooperation among scientists, industry, society, politicians, and indigenous knowledge holders (Actions 20, 27). Inclusion of indigenous and traditional knowledge and perspectives, for example, allow different viewpoints to be incorporated into decision-making. This also has the potential to improve policy responsiveness as traditional landowners notice some effects of climate change earlier, due to traditional practices and interactions with the oceans (Green and Raygorodetsky 2010). The effects of climate change will not be addressed through short-term policies politics (Slawinski et al. 2017). Whilst flexibility is key to addressing unplanned change, there is a requirement for an imminent strong overarching climate change focused policy and agreements that go beyond typical political timeframes and include whole-of-government responses (Actions 8, 22). Examples of such policy at international levels are the Paris Climate Agreement or the EU Water Framework Directive. However, enduring climate change policy on national agendas is lacking (for example, Carbon Pricing in Australia (Crowley 2017)). Governments need to address policy gaps and propose flexible policies that are appealing to increasingly dominant sections of the electorate (Jordan et al. 2015; Burch et al. 2019).