Not Learning from the Past: Adaptive Governance Challenges for Australian Natural Resource Management

Australia's governance arrangements for natural resource management (NRM) have evolved considerably over the last 30 years. The impact of changes in governance on NRM planning and delivery requires assessment. We undertake a multi‐method programme evaluation using adaptive governance principles as an analytical frame and apply this to Queensland to assess the impacts of governance change on NRM planning and governance outcomes. Data to inform our analysis includes: (1) a systematic review of 16 audits/evaluations of Australian NRM over a 15‐year period; (2) a review of Queensland's first‐generation NRM plans; and (3) outputs from a Queensland workshop on NRM planning. NRM has progressed from a bottom‐up grassroots movement into a collaborative regional NRM model that has been centralised by the Australian government. We found that while some adaptive governance challenges have been addressed, others remained unresolved. Results show that collaboration and elements of multi‐level governance under the regional model were positive moves, but also that NRM arrangements contained structural deficiencies across multiple governance levels in relation to public involvement in decision‐making and knowledge production for problem responsiveness. These problems for adaptive governance have been exacerbated since 2008. We conclude that the adaptive governance framework for NRM needs urgent attention so that important environmental management problems can be addressed.     

Understanding ethnic differences in perceptions,attitudes, and behaviours: a study of domestic water use in Sydney

There is growing realisation among environmental and social studies researchers that people's decision‐making about water use conforms to their internal norms and beliefs, which are developed in social and cultural contexts. Little research, however, has addressed the possible impacts that ethnic and cultural diversity may have on domestic water use and management. This paper presents the results of a study conducted in Sydney, with specific reference to questionnaire findings. Among respondents from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, significant differences were observed in terms of perceptions, specific knowledge, attitudes, and self‐reported behaviours in relation to water use and conservation. The disparities identified were not masking socio‐demographic and economic characteristics but were the result of a series of constructs closely tied to ethnicity, including cultural value, environmental experience, language preference, and information access. As a factor explaining variation in the engagement of pro‐conservation behaviour, ethnic status was found to be more useful than some socio‐economic factors. The study highlights the importance of including ethnicity and cultural sensitivity issues in the decision‐making process of environmental management.     

Lost in the Mail: the Inherent Errors of Mapping Australia Post Postcodes to ABS Derived Postal Areas

It is now common practice, by users of geographic information, to link data held at the postcode level to that obtained from the national census. This paper examines the relationship between Australia Post (AP) postcodes and Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) derived postal areas — which are an approximation of the former based on aggregated census collection districts (CDs). A group of adjacent ABS postal areas in northwest Melbourne was compared with the true AP postcode areas they purported to represent and the discrepancies were investigated. Firstly, shape mismatches were studied and their potential impacts upon resource allocation decisions were assessed. Next, comparisons of areas were undertaken. It was found that, in established inner city urban areas, the two sets of boundaries were highly correlated. However, outer suburban neighborhoods were identified as being particularly prone to major areal discrepancies. The implications of mismatches between these two key boundary data sources may be severe, given that management decisions and the allocation of public and private resources are often based on spatial statistical analyses which use these data sets. The authors acknowledge ABS efforts in providing information at the levels of aggregation that society demands. The introduction of ABS postal areas data has undoubtedly facilitated the use of demographic data in many sectors; it has, however, also caused some problems, for instance, when users assume that ABS postal areas are identical to AP postcodes. These issues could easily be avoided with the inclusion of more comprehensive metadata documentation accompanying ABS data. Research is continuing to develop a method by which agencies may derive common boundaries for their administrative units, yet still meet their own individual data and sampling requirements.     

Justice in River Management: Community Perceptions from the Hunter Valley,New South Wales,Australia

Dealing with differing and sometimes conflicting criteria for priority‐setting is an essential part of sustainable natural resource management. However, all too often, these ethical and political considerations are neglected within a planning regime based upon apparently ‘objective’ biophysical assessment techniques. Input into associated decision‐making processes is also frequently restricted to a narrow range of ‘stakes’ based upon historical and geographic circumstances. This paper reports on the findings of interviews and discussion groups in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, which aimed to canvass the diversity of perceptions of distributive and procedural justice in river rehabilitation. A range of biophysical and social criteria for setting priorities in rehabilitation work was identified. Participants also had differing ideas on the composition of decision‐making bodies and on decision‐making processes. The key implications of these findings are that sustainable river management policy needs to openly address differing conceptions of justice and that rehabilitation practice should be holistic, transdisciplinary and concerned with both outcome and process.     

Regional Planning in Queensland's Rangelands: Challenges and Prospects for Biodiversity Conservation

In Australia, the Commonwealth and State governments are increasingly devolving natural resource management (NRM) responsibilities to regional bodies. This move has led to the development of regional NRM plans. Native vegetation and biodiversity conservation, along with soil, pasture and water resources, are key components of the regional NRM plans in Queensland's extensive rangelands. This paper outlines and applies a set of criteria for evaluating the native vegetation and biodiversity content of accredited regional NRM plans for Queensland's rangelands. The evaluation showed considerable variation in the comprehensiveness of the information and knowledge base and management action targets among plans, including the poor articulation of impacts of excessive grazing pressure on biodiversity. The NRM plans lacked effective integration of natural resource, native vegetation and biodiversity conservation targets and actions. Several regions had too many biodiversity targets, many of which were poorly integrated. This is symptomatic of a limited understanding of rangelands as ecological systems and the lack of an integrated planning framework. We conclude regional NRM planning is not a ‘silver bullet’ for biodiversity conservation in the rangelands, but rather, it is the beginning of a long road to address complex, multi‐scale problems at a regional level.     

“Whiteness” and natural resource management: let's talk about race baby,let's talk about sovereignty!

Issues of race and sovereignty are embedded in every cross‐cultural collaboration in natural resource management (NRM). This article aims to bring these issues to the forefront by incorporating the term whiteness. Whiteness enables a critique of the privileging of Western sovereignty and the so‐called objective and universal value of Western science. By reversing the gaze away from the colonised Other and onto systems descended from colonial authority and its inheritors, whiteness identifies how race privilege works. A critical whiteness lens provides an analytical and practical tool for decolonising NRM. We provide a case study of the South Australian Department of Environment and Water to consider how NRM professionals reproduce and deconstruct whiteness in nuanced ways, where (a) participants are defeated by Western sovereignty when whiteness is seen as normal or as the only way; (b) the privilege of Western sovereignty begins to be unsettled; and (c) the gaze is reversed. Thus,Western sovereignty is problematized, and solutions to persistent problems are found in collaboration. We argue that reversing the gaze is a process that opens spaces to co‐develop context specific solutions with Indigenous nations that decolonise cross‐cultural engagement in NRM and respect Indigenous sovereignty.     

Wired Communities in the City: Sydney,Australia

Questions relating to the ability of particular groups in society to access information and communications technologies (ICTs) have become a growing part of the academic and policy literature. The issues raised in this literature have revolved around a number of themes, many of which can be subsumed under concerns about a growing digital divide whereby society is being divided into information rich and information poor sectors. This differentiation can be between particular social groups irrespective of place, or between people in particular places be these large regional areas (e.g. metropolitan versus non‐metropolitan) or localities and communities within an urban area. This paper focuses on the existence of a ‘digital divide’ across the Sydney metropolitan area. Using ABS 2001 census data the paper presents an analysis of computer and internet access and use for clusters of local communities and focuses on how usage differs across communities as differentiated by socio‐economic status, household and family status and ethnic background.     

Typologies of Advantage and Disadvantage: Socio‐economic Outcomes in Australian Metropolitan Cities

Australia's metropolitan cities have undergone significant social, economic and demographic change over the past several decades. In terms of socio‐economic advantage and disadvantage these changes, which are often associated with globalisation, wider economic and technological restructuring, the changing demographics of the population and shifts in public policy are not evenly dispersed across cities, but represent a range of often contrasting outcomes. The current paper develops a typology of socio‐economic advantage and disadvantage for locations across Australian metropolitan cities. More specifically, the paper takes a range of Australian Bureau of Statistics data and uses a model‐based approach with clustering of data represented by a parameterised Gaussian mixture model and discriminant analysis utilised to consider the differences between the clusters. These clusters form the basis of a typology representing the range of socio‐economic and demographic outcomes at the local community level.     

Unequal Knowledges in Jharkhand,India: De‐Romanticizing Women’s Agroecological Expertise

Taking the Jharkhand region of India as a case study, this article uses empirical data to intervene in ‘women, environment and development’ and ecofeminist debates regarding women’s environmental knowledge. The article first outlines the adoption of gender/environmental issues into development planning and considers the dangers of overestimating women’s agroecological knowledges and assuming that they can easily participate in development projects. It then highlights the local complexities of environmental knowledge possession and control with reference to gender and other variations in agricultural participation, decision‐making and knowledge transfers between villagers’ natal and marital places. Particular emphasis is placed on the economic, socio‐cultural and ‘actor’ related factors that supplement gender as an influence on task allocation, decision‐making, knowledge distribution and knowledge articulation. The article concludes that given the socio‐cultural constraints women face in accumulating and vocalizing environmental knowledge, simplistic participatory approaches are unlikely to empower them. Instead, more flexible, site‐specific development initiatives (coupled with wider structural change) are required if opportunities are to be created for women to develop and use their agroecological knowledges.     

From the Guerra Del Agua to the Guerra Del Gas: Resource Governance,Neoliberalism and Popular Protest in Bolivia

Recent resource protests in Bolivia have crystallized broad sets of claims involving livelihood rights, political participation, regional autonomy, and the meanings of citizenship and the nation. In both the 2000 “Water War”, and the 2003 “Gas War”, protestors objected to the restructuring and re‐scaling of resource governance that has taken place under recent waves of neoliberal reforms in Bolivia. In both cases, protestors demanded greater participation in decision‐making regarding resource management, more equitable distribution of the economic benefits derived from resource exploitation, and a more socially oriented alternative to Bolivia's neoliberal model of economic development. In spite of these similarities, however, these struggles were characterized by markedly uneven geographies of popular protest. The water and gas wars had different spatial dynamics, stemming in part from the biophysical differences between water and natural gas, and the ways these resources enter into social life. Moreover, the protests had very uneven social effects, and in some respects excluded the most marginalized sectors of Bolivia's poor.     

Applying a Systematic Review to Land Use Land Cover Change in Northern Upland Vietnam: The Missing Case of the Borderlands

As Vietnam embraces the market economy, and a number of state policies promote reforestation and rural market integration, land use and land cover (LULC) changes are occurring in the country's northern uplands in increasingly complex and fragmented ways. Yet understandings of the degree and consequences of LULC changes in this diverse agro‐ecological region are incomplete. We conduct a systematic literature review of research reported in academic articles tracing and analysing LULC change in Vietnam's northern regions. We find that these studies have tended to take place away from the most mountainous, northern borderlands. The studies nonetheless highlight a diversity of land use land cover changes caused by numerous causes, making the distinction of overall trends difficult. To complement and extend this body of research, we introduce recent LULC change research we have completed in the mountainous border districts of Lào Cai province, on the Sino‐Vietnamese border. The heterogeneity of causes of LULC change in both the review articles and our case study points to the importance of adapting land use policies to local agro‐ecological and socio‐economic conditions and ethnic diversity, taking into account state–farmer relations, household livelihood decision‐making, and policy implementation at the commune and district levels.     

Prospects for the Rural‐Urban Fringe in Australia: Observations from a Brief History of the Landscapes around Sydney and Adelaide

Despite being a major site of recent population growth and, arguably, a key arena for sustainability concerns, the rural‐urban fringe has received relatively little attention in the literature concerning Australian cities and urban policy. To address this shortcoming the authors review post‐World War II efforts to plan the rural‐urban fringes of Sydney and Adelaide and find a number of issues for contemporary policy‐makers. First, the fringe is becoming increasingly complex due to multi‐faceted demographic change, a broadening economic base and demands for better environmental management, all within the context of an evolving understanding of sustainability. Second, water resource management, partly under the auspices of integrated natural resource management, is assuming a much higher priority than in early fringe planning endeavours, which emphasised urban containment, agricultural land protection and landscape conservation. Third, and partly as a consequence of this shift of priorities, there is also evidence of changes to the nature and focus of policy tools used in the fringe, with land management concerns now cutting across traditional land use planning. Finally, and fundamentally, these observations raise questions about how future governance of the fringe should be organised. Together these four themes pose an enthralling series of challenges for policy‐makers for which much more research and discussion are needed.     

Working Towards Regional Agreements: Recent Developments in Co‐operative Resource Management in Canada's British Columbia

Canada's experience with ‘regional agreements’ has attracted considerable attention in Australia as a means by which Indigenous people can secure their native title rights to land and sea and ensure they can participate in the development and management of their homeland territories. However, regional agreements implemented in Canada thus far have often taken years to negotiate. To provide a degree of certainty for resource management and decision‐making while the native title claims process is underway, Canadian governments have proceeded to establish interim resource use and management agreements with Indigenous communities. While both governments and Indigenous people stress that interim arrangements do not replace or limit the scope for future claim settlements, it is recognised that the development of such co‐operative relationships will make long‐lasting formal agreements easier to achieve. This paper draws on several recent examples of interim agreements that have been negotiated for the salmon fishery resource in the Skeena River catchment, and considers how these local experiences offer useful approaches for resource management and native title issues in Australia. These examples demonstrate the importance of building shared understandings of resource values and management approaches prior to cementing co‐management partnerships in formal settlements. They also show some of the problems and prospects facing Indigenous peoples in their efforts to benefit from such co‐management agreements.     

Fighting over the Forests: Environmental Conflict and Decision‐making Capacity in Forest Planning Processes

This paper tells a story of environmental conflict and the attempted political resolution of issues of planning for native forests in Western Australia. It refers to the Western Australian Regional Forest Agreement and Draft Forest Management Plan processes to demonstrate how a range of actors utilise vari‐ous discourses and network relations in attempts to influence governmental decision‐making capacity. Adapting elements of a model of capacity‐building for environmental decision‐making, the paper indicates how traditional exclusionary decision networks serve to inhibit decision capacity, whilst more inclusive processes may be more likely to cope with challenges of reconciling multiple values and decision‐making for managing the forests in the interests of society as a whole.     

NRM Regions in Australia: the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have Nots’

This paper identifies external factors affecting the capacity of Australia's now‐formalised 56 regional natural resource management (NRM) bodies and their community‐based Boards to meet planning and management responsibilities. It demonstrates that little is known about the basic capacity‐related characteristics of NRM regions, despite the lengthy and elaborate process of regionalism that Australia has embarked upon, with its associated and substantial devolution of responsibilities and resources. A suite of indicators is used to develop an ‘exploratory’ capacity typology of NRM regions. The ten regional ‘types’ identified are found to attract varying budget allocations under the Natural Heritage Trust Extension and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. There are indications that State and regional interests within and outside NRM can significantly influence the distribution of resources. An examination of resources allocated to capacity‐building activities shows significant differences between regions in the scale of resources allocated (0–96% of total budget). The paper argues the case for intervention to reduce the gap between ‘have’ and ‘have not’ regions, and for further exploration of disparities in the allocation of resources to capacity‐building activities. Clarification is needed of the extent to which capacity‐building activities adequately target regional NRM bodies and their Boards.     

Communities in Catchments: Implications for Natural Resource Management

Economic and social considerations in natural resource management include the need for community participation and a greater appreciation of social and economic processes in understanding environmental problems. It is anticipated that new frameworks will guide these inclusions and redirect planning and management activities to achieve environmental sustainability. This paper examines issues of participation and the nature of ‘community’ through an analysis of relevant natural resource management policy documents and a case study of a public drinking water supply catchment in Western Australia. The findings indicate that if NRM strategies are to be successful, then a much wider and more inclusive view of community is needed, one that fully captures the different stakeholder groups beyond farmers, such as town residents, indigenous people, and those involved in other land uses. We need strategies that can accommodate differences within and between communities.     

Spatially Disaggregated Modelling of Voting Outcomes and Socio‐Economic Characteristics at the 2001 Australian Federal Election

This study uses GIS and spatial modelling to relate voting outcomes at the 2001 federal election for polling booths across Australia with the socio‐economic characteristics of polling booth catchment areas. The data and analysis used are more detailed and comprehensive than previous studies. It is conducted at a fine level of spatial disaggregation across the whole nation to examine voting outcomes for both major and minor political parties. Because the aim of the paper is to distinguish voting outcomes between political parties rather than to predict voting outcomes for particular political parties, a discriminant analysis is used rather than regression analysis. The statistical discriminant analysis identifies two main socio‐economic dimensions that are able to predict polling booth outcomes with a relatively high degree of accuracy. That analysis shows how, at the 2001 federal election, the middle ground, in terms of socio‐economic characteristics, was being claimed by the Liberal Party, Country Liberal Party, The Greens, and, to a lesser extent, by the Australian Labor Party. However, the Australian Democrats, National Party and One Nation had more distinctive constituencies, with the National Party and One Nation Party competing for areas with similar socio‐economic characteristics. Using GIS mapping tools, examples of actual and predicted polling booth voting outcomes are given, along with selected socio‐economic characteristics of booth catchments.     

Land Use in Western Australia: the Need for Change

The need for changes in land use has become more evident from analysis of continued declining trends in land and water resource quality. Land use change in this sense refers to changing existing resource management techniques towards ecologically sustainable development. For example, planting cleared areas towards natural water balance, creating better microclimates and improving soil stability. This paper examines existing land and water legislation and the role and scope of government and the community in achieving changes to traditional resource management including reference to economic and biophysical aspects.     

Investigating Private Motorised Travel and Vehicle Fleet Efficiency: Using New Data and Methods to Reveal Socio‐Spatial Patterns in Brisbane,Australia

Australian cities have seen continued long‐term growth in private motor vehicle travel that has imposed increasing vehicle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper investigates the spatial patterns of vehicle energy consumption on urban areas through an analysis of vehicle travel and of vehicle fleet efficiency in Brisbane, Australia. This is achieved by combining motor vehicle registration records and Australian government's ‘Green Vehicle Guide’ of vehicle fuel efficiency database. The results of a spatial analysis of the private vehicle trip distances derived from journey to work data and fuel energy consumption associated with the private‐owned vehicles decomposed to local areas show that private vehicle energy use tends to increase with increasing distance from the city centre (e.g. central business district). This analysis demonstrates that differences in vehicle trip distances and lower proportions of high‐efficiency vehicles in the outer suburbs aggravate vehicle energy consumption in those locations. The paper further compares vehicle energy use results for Brisbane against spatial patterns of suburban socio‐economic disadvantage. The paper demonstrates that access to vehicle fleet technology may compound other forms of socio‐economic disadvantage and vulnerability.     

Smells like politics: planning and the inconvenient politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture

Intensive farming is an increasing part of Australian agriculture, including in the multi‐functional landscapes at the edges of Australian cities. The example of intensive “broiler” poultry production reveals the tensions that arise when sites of hyper‐productivity conflict with social change in rural areas. Planning processes for intensive farming in the Australian state of Victoria are predicated on stability and consensus: on assumed static and uncontroversial ideas of agriculture, its place, and the primacy of agricultural productivity. Yet concerns about the industrialisation of agriculture are live political issues at the local level, especially in dynamic peri‐urban locations. This paper explores the emergence of a politics of place outside the bounds of planning consensus through an analysis of planning appeals and associated media relating to planning permits for intensive poultry developments in Victoria over 2011–2016. We highlight tensions that exist in relation to technical planning assessments and categorisations used to assert farming as the orthodox use of rural land, especially when new forms of farming look and feel demonstrably different. Using Mouffe's problematising of the negation of antagonism and Rancière's notion of the risks of a false consensus democracy, we argue that planning processes for intensive farming illustrate critical issues in participatory planning. While ostensibly post‐political decision‐making narrows the politics of place and food systems to decisions about policing the boundaries and buffer distances placed around intensive poultry developments, alternative representations of rural life persist. The certainty offered by code‐based planning does not negate the ongoing (if inconvenient) politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture.