Resilience-Based Management - RBM is a climate change adaption measure to counter global reef decline. This management strategy uses knowledge of drivers (present and future) influencing ecosystem functions to prioritize, implement, and adapt actions that increase the ecosystem’s resilience. Such actions primarily include threat mitigation (i.e., reduce land-based runoff, land clearing and fishing) and actions that support ecosystem processes and build adaptive capacity. This study focuses on threat mitigation, which is the most viable and cost-effective action to increase resilience. Considering that policies and legislative instruments can strongly influence threat reduction – controlling activities, inducing behaviours, and offering guidance - my research aimed to understand what characteristics policies and legislative instruments might need to support RBM. Using the Great Barrier Reef as a case study and focusing on instruments from state and federal governments that address activities impacting the GBR, I developed an RBM Framework. This framework includes relevant elements that influence impact reduction and offers a holistic view of the context in which policies and legislation operate, enabling them to better mitigate impacts. Further I applied the RBM Framework to the GBR, which resulted in five recommendations for policies and legislation to support RBM.