Plans are useless, but planning is essential

Abstract

Development over the next decade in northern Australia will proceed along the unpredictable intersection of two complex adaptive systems: the anthropic (social, economic) and the bio-physical/geophysical. These two domains are tightly linked and profoundly indeterminate. If we are to improve our capacity to nudge the future towards consensual outcomes, we will need tools suited for that purpose, and a culture pattern that embraces the baked-in complexity of our human and non-human environments. Planning is a process-focussed form of social ritual and narrative construction that is especially suited to the challenges and opportunities of the north. The prevalent narratives that define our relationship with the land are both insufficient for enduring prosperity and captive to narrow ideologies. Development will happen on, around, and through the small communities and sparse landscapes of the north. This region is highly sensitive to the presence or absence of cooperation networks and is exposed, for better and worse, to powerful external forces. This paper argues for a new posture, a re-freshed commitment to the processes of civil society in order to find the best ways forward in the north. A revival of planning culture promises to expand the capacity for resilience at the scale of community, local economy, and watershed. Australia’s Regional Natural Resource Management network is presented as an appropriate structure in which the specific processes of planning can be effectively realised. I will show that Regional Natural Resource Management Plans are evidence of a remarkable social process that opens new understandings of ourselves and the land we are part of. A collection of guiding queries, the Seven Signs of Planning, is proposed as a method for consistently evaluating the depth and quality of planning processes. Regional Natural Resource Management and its technology of planning can provide a foundation on which to build a culture of profitable and consensual development in north Australia.