Some form of risk assessment is used to make all management decisions. This includes what needs to be managed and how much effort should be focused towards achieving adequate performance and avoiding undesirable events.
Initiatives, such as ESD, have increased the requirement to use more formal techniques to complete these assessments due to the large number of potential issues and the impossibility of gaining a perfect understanding for any of these. Added to this is the increased public scrutiny over the decisions made by natural resource managers. Consequently, the ESD Framework includes a qualitative risk assessment process (based on the Australian and New Zealand standard methodology) to ensure that additional management actions and monitoring systems are only implemented where necessary, and only to an appropriate level.
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