Natural Resource Management In Australia Research Articles

What’s Trust Got to do With it? Lessons From Cross-Sectoral Research on Natural Resource Management in Australia and the U.S.

Natural resource management (NRM) is conducted within a complex context. This is particularly true at the interface of public and private interests where policy and management actions are often closely scrutinized by stakeholders. In these settings, natural resource managers often seek to achieve multiple objectives including ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and the provision of recreation opportunities. While some objectives may be complementary, in many cases they involve tradeoffs that are contested by stakeholders. Substantial prior work has identified concepts related to trust as critical to the success of natural resource management particularly in cases of high complexity and uncertainty with high stakes for those involved. However, although regularly identified as a central variable of influence, trust appears to be conceptualized differently or entangled with related constructs across this prior research. Moreover, much of the research in NRM considers trust as an independent variable and considers the influence of trust on other variables of interest (e.g., acceptance of a particular management practices, willingness to adopt a best management practice). In this paper, we develop a conceptualization of trust drawing on different literature areas and consider how trust is related to constructs such as trustworthiness and confidence. We then consider trust in the context of natural resource management drawing on examples from the U.S. and Australia. We then consider implications of these findings for building trust in natural resource management.

The divergence of traditional Aboriginal and contemporary fire management practices on Wik traditional lands, Cape York Peninsula, Northern Australia

SummaryFire has been a critical component of Aboriginal culture and natural resource management in Australia for millennia. Aboriginal fire management in Northern Australia is widespread and, in some more remote areas, has continued relatively undisrupted despite widespread changes in tenure and land use. For the Wik people of Western Cape York, there has been a continued connection to their culture and traditional lands. Recently, Wik traditional owners have formed a ranger program which has secured funding to manage contemporary land management issues. This includes the landscape‐scale management of fire for biodiversity conservation and greenhouse gas abatement. Because the work is being conducted by Aboriginal people, with consent from traditional owners and on their traditional lands, there is an assumption that the activities are compatible with historical traditional land management and cultural practices. In this study, we use participatory action research to compare contemporary fire management with the current understanding of traditional Aboriginal fire management to assess objectively the compatibility of these two paradigms. We do this by combining the experience and understanding of traditional owners with anthropological and ecological perspectives. We find that contemporary fire management is applied across traditional cultural boundaries using methods such as aerial incendiaries. Financial incentives and contractual obligations associated with fire management are externally driven or include modern considerations such as the protection of infrastructure. In contrast, traditional fire management was the prerogative of traditional owners and was applied at fine scales for specific outcomes. Fire management was governed by rules that determined how people moved across the landscape and how resources were partitioned and shared. Supporting the implementation of Aboriginal burning alongside current fire management practices could lead to significant community engagement in such activities and is likely to have much better biodiversity and social outcomes.

Mapping Farmer Identity: why, how, and what does it tell us?

ABSTRACTRural areas in developed economies are becoming increasingly multi-functional in that their character is being shaped by a mix of production, consumption and conservation values. Agriculture may remain the dominant land use, but many landholders do not see themselves as farmers by occupation. Researchers have demonstrated that occupational identity influences land use and management. However, efforts to explore the influence of occupational identity often rely on surrogate measures and have largely ignored identity theory. We build on research demonstrating that collective identity theory can be used to develop a valid and reliable measure of farmer identity and to then classify rural landholders across a natural resource management (NRM) region. The contribution of this paper is to explain how that measure of farmer identity can be mapped and then demonstrate the relevance of doing so for regional NRM in Australia. As expected, farmer identity varied across the case study region with distance from urban centres, and across different environmental assets. Those findings should lead to a more targeted approach to landholder engagement in NRM. We suggest that farmer identity (i.e. farmer-collective occupational identity construct; F-COIC) might provide a next step for responding to the challenges of interpreting and mapping multi-functionality.

Stakeholder perspectives for coastal ecosystem services and influences on value integration in policy

Environmental and natural resource management in Australia occurs at a regional scale with many initiatives underpinned by an ecosystem services framework that aims to integrate economic, social and ecological values in decision-making. This research examines potential influences on value integration by identifying stakeholder perspectives for coastal ecosystem services using mangroves in south-east Queensland as a case study. The study site is one of Australia's fastest growing regions and exhibits a “hotbed of issues” with institutional complexity in coastal areas where urban development is concentrated. Q-methodology was used to systematically study stakeholder perspectives on coastal ecosystem services and identify natural groupings between stakeholders with shared values. A total of 43 respondents representing nine stakeholder categories were interviewed. Factor analysis identified four perspectives that were labelled: (1) Green Infrastructure; (2) Recreational Opportunity and Well-being; (3) Sustaining Regional Industries and Communities; and (4) Coastal Living. The concept of ecosystem ‘bundles’ was conducive to analysing the range of services valued by different perspectives and highlighted stakeholder priorities that underpin demand for coastal ecosystem services. Stakeholder perspectives show potential to influence coastal policy according to the ecosystem service categories that are prioritised in decision-making and the saliency of the services to the stakeholder group. This research contributes to the field of coastal management where a lack of progress on “well-documented problems” partly stems from governance failure to capture and consider pluralistic values in decision-making and exacerbates conflict between contested views.

Monitoring to Learn, Learning to Monitor: A Critical Analysis of Opportunities for Indigenous Community‐Based Monitoring of Environmental Change in Australian Rangelands

AbstractIndigenous community‐based monitoring has been a central feature in many international attempts to improve monitoring of and local adaptation to environmental change. Despite offering much promise, Indigenous community‐based monitoring has been underutilised in natural resource management in Australia, particularly within the remote, semi‐arid rangelands. This paper discusses contextual social and environmental factors that may help to explain this apparent deficiency, before critically analysing key stakeholder perceptions of the roles for, and challenges of monitoring in the Alinytjara Wilurara Natural Resources Management region in the north‐west of South Australia. The analysis guides a discussion of responses to better integrate monitoring in general, and Indigenous community‐based monitoring in particular, into regional environmental management approaches. We argue that community‐based monitoring offers a range of benefits, including: better coordination between stakeholders; a heightened ability to detect and respond to climatic trends and impacts; the effective utilisation of Indigenous knowledge; employment opportunities for managing and monitoring natural resources; and improved learning and understanding of rangeland socio‐ecological systems. Identified opportunities for spatial and temporal community monitoring designed for the Alinytjara Wilurara region could be of value to other remote rangeland and Indigenous institutions charged with the difficult task of monitoring, learning from, and responding to environmental change.

Consensus Building or Constructive Conflict? Aboriginal Discursive Strategies to Enhance Participation in Natural Resource Management in Australia and Canada

This article analyzes the strategies used by the Girringun Aboriginal Corporation from the Wet Tropics, Australia, and the Innu Nation of Labrador, Canada, in their efforts to participate in natural resource management within their traditional lands. Comparative research highlights that both Aboriginal groups engage in strategies of consensus building and constructive conflict, matching their choice to the dynamic institutional settings that govern natural resource management in their respective territories. Both groups build consensus for more equitable participation in natural resource management institutions while engaging, when necessary, in forms of constructive conflict that will bring about more expedient institutional change needed to fully reflect the full suite of Aboriginal interests and values. The result is a mix of Aboriginal strategies that are used to instigate planning reforms on their traditional estates.

Measured hillslope erosion rates in the wet-dry tropics of Cape York, northern Australia Part 1: A low cost sediment trap for measuring hillslope erosion in remote areas — Trap design and evaluation

Sediment budget modeling has become a widely used management tool for setting priorities for natural resource management in Australia and globally. Two of the most widely used models in Australia, SedNet, and its more recent successor Source Catchments, rely on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) to predict sediment production from hillslope erosion. In Australia, however, very little empirical data exists with which to test the hillslope sediment yields predicted by the RUSLE, particularly in the more remote savannah woodlands of northern Australia that are used by the cattle grazing industry. These savannah woodland landscapes comprise the vast majority of the catchment area draining into key ecological assets such as the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. In this paper we present the design and evaluation of a simple, low cost hillslope sediment trap (HST) that requires little to no maintenance across an entire wet season. It can consequently be deployed in remote, inaccessible areas to collect sediment generated through hillslope erosion processes as a means of testing predictions of erosion. Using these traps, it is possible to develop locally calibrated hillslope erosion models that will provide far more realistic predictions of erosion than have previously been employed. Laboratory flume evaluations of the HSTs also show that the traps will accurately sample the full particle size distribution of sediment mobilized on a given hillslope, with a suspended sediment (<63μm) trapping efficiency conservatively estimated to be 50%.

The quality of resource condition targets in regional natural resource management in Australia

Natural resource management organisations in Australia routinely establish resource condition targets in their regional plans and catchment strategies. We reviewed biodiversity, water and community resource condition targets set by Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) over planning cycles since 1997 against criteria of being specific, measurable and time-bound (SMT). The overall quality of targets is poor, with less than 30 per cent of targets meeting the three criteria. Disturbingly, there are no SMT targets in the most recent NSW CMA catchment strategies. We identify three major reasons for poor target setting: a lack of appropriate standards and guidelines from governments to enable high quality target setting; a lack of realism about the budgetary and technical feasibility of ambitious environmental targets amongst those involved in natural resource management; and a lack of adequate focus on outcomes by both CMAs and governments. Improvements to target setting can be achieved through stronger signals and commitment by governments, including by rewarding performance of regional bodies practising outcome-focused accountability.

Social science and socialising: adopting causal layered analysis to reveal multi-stakeholder perceptions of natural resource management in Australia

The social context of Natural Resource Management (NRM) in Australia is now considered to be a major contributing factor behind the success or failure of landscape improvement programmes. This paper investigates NRM social issues via an alternative interpretative method, Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). CLA was utilised in nine focus groups, comprising landholders and staff from NRM regional bodies in central west New South Wales. A multitude of stakeholder concerns emerged, particularly regarding the concept of sustainability and confusion over roles and responsibilities. We propose that continued use of CLA by those in the local catchment community can help overcome complexity in the social landscape and lead to more engaged and empowered communities.

Healthier land, healthier farmers: Considering the potential of natural resource management as a place-focused farmer health intervention

Farmers have particular wellbeing-related vulnerabilities that conventional health interventions struggle to address. We consider the potential of natural resource management (NRM) programs, which reach large numbers of farmers, as non-conventional place-focused wellbeing interventions. Although designed to address environmental degradation, NRM can influence the wellbeing of farmers. We used qualitative meta-synthesis to reanalyse studies examining social dimensions of NRM in Australia and generate a theoretical framework identifying potential pathways between NRM and wellbeing, intended to inform subsequent empirical work. Our results suggest NRM programs influence several important determinants of farmer wellbeing, in particular social capital, self-efficacy, social identity, material wellbeing, and health itself. The pathways by which NRM influences these determinants are mediated by distal factors such as changes in land conditions, farmer skills and knowledge and resources accessible to farmers. These, in turn, are moderated by the design and delivery of NRM programs, suggesting potential to enhance the health benefits of NRM through specific attention to program design.

Reflections on the Effectiveness of Market-Based Instruments to Secure Long-Term Environmental Gains in Southeast Australia: Understanding Landholders’ Experiences

Payments to rural landholders for provision of environmental services are accepted as part of the policy “toolbox” for improving natural resource management in Australia. However, there remains uncertainty about how best to deliver payments for environmental services, including whether the recently implemented market-based instruments (MBI) deliver better outcomes than traditional approaches. Our findings reveal a considerable difference in opinion about the effectiveness of MBIs for engaging rural landholders in environmental programs. We found that programs tend to focus on “purchasing” short-term changes in behavior without sufficient regard as to whether landholders would continue with recommended environmental practices in the long-term, especially when programs cease. We conclude that with increased understanding of the social dimension of voluntary programs, some key issues can be addressed so that programs engender a long-term commitment by landholders to improved environmental management.

Caring as Country: Towards an ontology of co‐becoming in natural resource management

AbstractThis collaboratively written paper takes the reader on a journey to Bawaka, in North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia, to explore how a Yolŋu ontology of co‐becoming can inform natural resource management (NRM) theory and practice. By focusing on the process of gathering and sharing miyapunu mapu (turtle eggs) and the foundational Yolŋu concept of wetj, we challenge NRM to take seriously Indigenous ways of knowing and becoming, and to attend to the vibrant, more‐than‐human relationality of our world. We discuss this relational cosmology, highlighting the importance of being aware and attentive, as well as the underlying ethical imperative of responsibility and obligation. We argue that as important as the concept of Caring for Country has been for NRM in Australia, it is critical that the human imperative to care for Country is balanced with a multi‐directional and beyond‐human understanding of the human–Country relationship. This requires engagement with the ways Country also cares and acknowledgement that humans are part of Country and not separate from it. We therefore propose a reframing, that we not only Care for Country but Care as Country. This has implications for understanding the ways that humans can and should relate to the environment as they exist together through co‐becoming.

Beyond threat- and asset-based approaches to natural resource management in Australia

Natural resource management (NRM) in Australia began as a series of campaigns against specific threats to agricultural and pastoral production, with war progressively declared on soil erosion, introduced pests and dryland salinity. Critiques of NRM programs in the 1990s coincided with a shift towards an asset-based approach. This approach emphasises the need for public investment to be focused on those parts of the landscape of high value, rather than defending large areas against broad-scale threats. The asset-based approach is more strategic, but runs the risk of sacrificing effectiveness for efficiency by overlooking the large-scale biophysical and social processes that underpin the viability of discrete assets. Further, the asset-based approach fails to sufficiently acknowledge the importance of engaging and building the human, social and cultural capital required to underpin longterm environmental management. A condition-based approach to NRM is proposed that builds on the best of the threat-based and asset-based approaches by setting targets based on environmental processes rather than perceptions of ideal states; borrowing systematic approaches to assessing value and condition from conservation planning; and investing in the social, economic, human and cultural capital required to support lasting change.

Government support for Indigenous cultural and natural resource management in Australia: The role of the Working on Country program

In Australia national concerns about climate change, biodiversity loss, water quantity and quality and land degradation have high priority on the government's environment agenda. With this comes the opportunity to strategically integrate Indigenous land and sea management into plans for tackling these challenges, not least because the Indigenous estate—which includes some of the most biodiverse lands in Australia—continues to increase as a result of successful land and native title claims and the declaration of more Indigenous Protected Areas. This paper explores government support for Indigenous land and sea management focusing on the Commonwealth government's Working on Country program. The paper outlines the development of formalised Indigenous cultural and natural resource management, and the emergence of the Working on Country program is discussed in the past and current policy context. The opportunities and challenges for the future of the program, and formalised Indigenous land and sea management in Australia more broadly, are outlined. To finish, a note of cautious optimism: while an expanded Working on Country program underpinned by community‐led priorities and aspirations has the potential to simultaneously ameliorate Indigenous poverty and ensure natural resource management occurs, this will require targeted investment and a more holistic and less sectoral approach from government.

Natural Resource Management at Four Social Scales: Psychological Type Matters

Understanding organisation at different social scales is crucial to learning how social processes play a role in sustainable natural resource management. Research has neglected the potential role that individual personality plays in decision making in natural resource management. In the past two decades natural resource management across rural Australia has increasingly come under the direct influence of voluntary participatory groups, such as Catchment Management Authorities. The greater complexity of relationships among all stakeholders is a serious management challenge when attempting to align their differing aspirations and values at four social institutional scales-local, regional, state and national. This is an exploratory study on the psychological composition of groups of stakeholders at the four social scales in natural resource management in Australia. This article uses the theory of temperaments and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to investigate the distribution of personality types. The distribution of personality types in decision-making roles in natural resource management was markedly different from the Australian Archive sample. Trends in personality were found across social scales with Stabilizer temperament more common at the local scale and Theorist temperament more common at the national scale. Greater similarity was found at the state and national scales. Two temperaments comprised between 76 and 90% of participants at the local and regional scales, the common temperament type was Stabilizer. The dissimilarity was Improviser (40%) at the local scale and Theorist (29%) at the regional scale. Implications for increasing participation and bridging the gap between community and government are discussed.

Cooperative Research: An Example from the Wet Tropics of Queensland

AbstractIn recent years there has been wider recognition of the important role that Indigenous knowledge can play in developing and implementing natural resource management (NRM) strategies. The biophysical surroundings of many Indigenous peoples are of symbolic significance to them, hence their perception and values of natural resources may be vastly different to those of scientists or managers. We discuss a research approach that explicitly embraces the co-production of knowledge to facilitate NRM in Australia. We demonstrate that if particular methodologies are used and specific criteria met, cooperative research can represent one pathway for the integration of Indigenous and scientific knowledge. We suggest an important step for genuine knowledge and systems integration is in research direction-setting. Our approach practices multi-directional learning and mutual benefit, promoting cross transfer of skills by the cooperative generation and documentation of information. Indigenous knowledge and associated systems are strengthened and the value of Indigenous knowledge and systems is recognised alongside accepted scientific knowledge and methods. Essential to the methodology used is the creation of partnerships based on trust between co-researchers and the generation of genuine action research outcomes.

Natural resources governance for the drylands of the Murray–Darling Basin

Critiques of governance arrangements for natural resource management in Australia have expanded rapidly in recent years. Meanwhile, arguments have strengthened internationally that drylands share characteristics that justify a specific ‘drylands syndrome’ understanding of their management. These issues converge in the drylands of the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB). We explore in this paper the insights that this convergence offers for designing governance arrangements for the natural resources of the MDB. We argue that the characteristics of the MDB drylands justify transformation of these arrangements to those of adaptive governance; and more specifically that this model of governance should be founded on the related concepts of polycentricity and subsidiarity. We explain how three aspects of polycentric governance contribute to the robustness of social-ecological systems and identify the particular relevance of each to the MDB drylands. Even so, transformation to polycentric governance would face formidable obstacles from vested interests and mental models that have adapted to the status quo. Acknowledging the reality that hurdling such obstacles requires strategic preparation to exploit windows of opportunity, we propose several pragmatic steps to be followed in strategically pre-adapting the MDB drylands for this transformation. Although transforming to adaptive governance is not without risk, we argue that the risks of inaction for the MDB drylands are greater.

Climate change and land clearing: a short note

The article offers information on climate change as a multi-dimensional issue where forces affect climate system. It states that the modification and conversions of terrestrial ecosystems through human land use is acknowledged as second order that force behind climate changes. Modelling studies have significant implications for native vegetation and Natural Resource Management in Australia.

Climate change impact on water and salt balances: an assessment of the impact of climate change on catchment salt and water balances in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

Climate change has potentially significant implications for hydrology and the quantity and quality of water resources. This study investigated the impacts of climate change and revegetation on water and salt balance, and stream salt concentration for catchments within the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. The Biophysical Capacity to Change model was used with climate change scenarios obtained using the CSIRO DARLAM 125 (125 km resolution) and Cubic Conformal (50 km resolution) regional climate models. These models predicted up to 25% reduction in mean annual rainfall and a similar magnitude of increase in potential evapotranspiration by 2070. Relatively modest changes in rainfall and temperature can lead to significant reductions in mean annual runoff and salt yield and increases in stream salt concentrations within the Basin. The modelled reductions in mean annual runoff were up to 45% in the wetter/cooler southern catchments and up to 64% in the drier/hotter western and northern catchments. The maximum reductions in salt yield were estimated to be up to 34% in the southern catchments and up to 49% in the northern and western catchments. These changes are associated with average catchment rainfall decreases of 13 to 21%. The results suggest that percentage changes in rainfall will be amplified in runoff. This study demonstrates that climate change poses significant challenges to natural resource management in Australia.

Decision-making by regional bodies for natural resource management in Australia: current processes and capacity gaps

In Australia, major government programmes for management of the environment and natural resources rely on planning and prioritisation by regional natural resource management bodies. The task faced by these organisations is complex. In this study, we qualitatively analysed phone interviews with a sample of regional bodies to identify areas where the use of information in decision-making could be improved. The type of information used was largely biophysical, with relatively poor consideration of economic and social information. Even for the biophysical information, there was very little assessment regarding the quality of the information. Regional bodies face particular challenges in relation to integration and interpretation of information, and evaluation of their own investments. Results of this study highlight the need for these bodies to become more systematic users of information, with stronger processes to integrate knowledge from a range of disciplines and from regional stakeholders.