Saline politics: Local participation and neoliberalism in Australian rural environments

Abstract

Participatory approaches to sustainable development have become increasingly popular world‐wide. In Australia, participatory approaches such as landcare and regional catchment management form the basis of rural environmental policy and practice. At the same time, neoliberalist reforms such as market deregulation and withdrawal of state assistance from agriculture have been implemented. Various commentators have suggested that local participatory practices can enable neoliberal reforms by depoliticising rural environmental problems and fragmenting action. This paper explores the intersection of these participatory policy developments and neoliberal reforms through two case studies on the government of salinity in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. From this work, it is apparent that neoliberal reforms result in competition for resources within the state, the projectisation of environmental action, and a hesistance of the state to allocate resources for broader environmental monitoring. This work demonstrates how the contradictions in these developments can create a chaotic and irrational environmental politics that can result in a repoliticisation of rural environments and opportunities for a more rational and democratic sustainable development practice.