Indicator 6.5c: Resilience of forest-dependent communities to changing social and economic conditions (2024) - Supporting information

Data for this Indicator were drawn from the 2021 Census of Population and Housing (ABS 2021a) and 2016 Census of Population and Housing (ABS 2016).

Forest and wood products industries are defined here using the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) 2021 categories for forestry industries and wood products industries: 030 Forestry and Logging; 051 Forestry Support Services; 140 Wood Product Manufacturing, not further defined; 141 Log Sawmilling and Timber Dressing; 149 Other Wood Product Manufacturing; 150 Pulp, Paper and Converted Paper Product Manufacturing, not further defined; 151 Pulp, Paper and Paperboard Manufacturing; 152 Converted Paper Product Manufacturing.

The economic dependence on forests resulting from other forest users such as apiarists, graziers, and ecotourism operators is difficult to determine, and thus these activities are not considered in this Indicator. Other indirect business activities connected with forest and wood products industries, such as input suppliers, training providers, transport contractors and timber wholesale businesses, are also not considered.

The concept of resilience is defined, conceptualised and measured in a number of ways when understanding how individuals and communities deal with challenging circumstances. Social scientists often use the term when understanding particular socio-economic contexts, and to discern differences at the individual and community levels.

At the individual and community levels, various scholars define resilience as the ability to bounce back after a traumatic event or successfully adapt in the face of disturbance, stress, or adversity (Norris et al. 2008; Lowe et al. 2015; Patel et al. 2017; Sou 2019; Chen et al. 2020). Other scholars describe it to occur in three different ways: as recovery, as stability and as transformation (Maguire and Cartwright 2008).

Understanding resilience at individual and community levels can be derived from an understanding of adaptive capacity, and measures of individual and community adaptive capacity can be used as a proxy for individual and community resilience (Folke et al. 2010; see also Berkes and Ross 2013; Folke 2016; Jones 2019). Adaptive capacity is defined in this Indicator as the preconditions necessary to enable adaptation to take place, and is a latent characteristic that must be activated to effect adaptation (Brown and Westaway 2011).

Community adaptive capacity is represented by a combination of the economic diversity of industries that provide employment within the community, and the social capital and human capital resources available in the community.

Economic diversity is the variety of employment sectors in a local economy relative to the Australian economy. High economic diversity provides multiple income streams to a local economy and alternative employment for displaced workers, thereby potentially increasing community resilience to changes in any particular industry. An Economic Diversity Index (Hachmann Index; for details see Stenekes et al. 2012) utilises employment data from the 2021 Census of Population and Housing to generate scores that show diversity of employment across sectors within a location, relative to that for Australia.

Human capital comprises factors that influence the productivity of labour, including education, skills and health. Human capital was calculated (Stenekes et al. 2012) from the 2021 Census of Population and Housing data for age of residents, employment rates, level of education and qualifications, financial position, household structure (such as the proportion of one-person households) and population mobility.

Social capital describes relationships, networks and connections between people, and hence the degree of support people can draw on in the face of challenges. Methods for measuring social capital are less established than those used to measure human capital. The index used here (Stenekes et al. 2012) includes the proportion of adults undertaking voluntary work, and the proportion of the female workforce in non-routine occupations. Several other factors can increase social capital, such as business funding, facilitation of community initiatives, and people’s attitudes and values, which shape how changes are perceived and decisions are made. These factors cannot be measured using readily available data sources and are not included in the index.

Factors that influence the individual resilience of workers can include their age, level of education and qualifications, skills and financial position.

Older workers may face greater difficulty in adapting to change. They may find it more difficult to find alternative employment, and lack the mobility to take advantage of opportunities in other geographic locations.

Measures of educational attainment and ability to meet living costs have been positively correlated with subjective wellbeing measures of life satisfaction and health in surveys of forest and wood products workers (Binks et al. 2014). A worker’s skill set will also influence their ability to secure alternative employment; unskilled workers may find fewer opportunities for employment.

Equivalised household income (income transformed to enable comparison between households of differing size and composition) is an indicator of financial position that enables comparison between different households. It is likely to be a better indicator of the overall ability of workers to meet living costs than individual income.

ABARES (2014). Australian forest and wood products statistics, September and December quarters 2013. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, Canberra, CC BY 3.0.

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2016). Census of Population and Housing, Census TableBuilder, accessed 15 December 2022. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2021a). Census of Population and Housing, Census TableBuilder, accessed 15 December 2022. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2021b). Census of Population and Housing, Customised report. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.

Berkes F, Ross H (2013). Community resilience: toward an integrated approach. Society & Natural Resources 26: 5-20.

Binks B, Schirmer J, Kancans R (2014). Regional socio-economic profiling of the forestry industry—Recommendations report. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, Canberra.

Brown K, Westaway E (2011). Agency, capacity, and resilience to environmental change: lessons from human development, well-being, and disasters. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 36: 321-342.

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Folke C (2016). Resilience (republished). Ecology and Society 21: 44

Jones L (2019). Resilience isn't the same for all: Comparing subjective and objective approaches to resilience measurement. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 10: e552.

Lowe SR, Sampson L, Gruebner O, Galea S (2015). Psychological resilience after Hurricane Sandy: the influence of individual-and community-level factors on mental health after a large-scale natural disaster. PloS One 10: e0125761.

Maguire B, Cartwright S (2008). Assessing a Community’s Capacity to Manage Change: A Resilience Approach to Social Assessment. Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.

Norris FH, Stevens SP, Pfefferbaum B, Wyche KF, Pfefferbaum RL (2008). Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness. American Journal of Community Psychology 41: 127-150.

Patel SS, Rogers MB, Amlôt R, Rubin GJ (2017). What do we mean by ‘community resilience'? A systematic literature review of how it is defined in the literature. PLoS Currents 9.

Sou G (2019). Sustainable resilience? Disaster recovery and the marginalization of sociocultural needs and concerns. Progress in Development Studies 19: 144-159.

Stenekes N, Reeve I, Kancans R, Stayner R, Randall L, Lawson K (2012). Revised indicators of community vulnerability and adaptive capacity across the Murray–Darling Basin: a focus on irrigation in agriculture. ABARES report to client prepared for the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Canberra, December.