Pathways to good practice in regional NRM governance

  A Land and Water Australia funded project, supported by Department of Sustainability &
Environment (Vic) and Department of Natural Resources (NSW)

BULLETIN NO. 1                                                              12^th June 2006

This is the first of a series of news bulletins that we propose to issue over the two-year term of the project. The main purpose of the bulletins is to update our partners, collaborating colleagues and stakeholders on progress and key developments.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss and water quality decline, is a major problem facing Australia. Regional delivery of natural resource management (NRM) is the main mechanism for addressing such issues. Yet we lack fundamental understandings about the effectiveness and optimal design for regional NRM governance. Governance involves consideration of issues such as representation, authority, and consultation; and is a key determinant of the capacity of regional NRM institutions to make effective decisions and integrate across ‘triple bottom line’ concerns. This interdisciplinary and collaborative project will assess the effectiveness of regional NRM governance; identify correlations between particular governance arrangements and sustainability; and develop guidelines for good-practice NRM governance. The work will focus on nine regions across Tasmania (Cradle Coast, South), Victoria (Corangamite, North Central, Goulburn-Broken) and NSW (Central West, Murray, Lachlan, Northern Rivers). There are seven main phases involved in the work:

• Phase 1: Identify principles for good regional NRM governance
• Phase 2: Identify indicators for regional sustainability, and document the status of our nine case study regions in relation to these indicators
• Phase 3: Identify the expected benefits and current concerns with regional NRM governance
• Phase 4: Document the current state of NRM governance in our nine regions
• Phase 5: Integrate the sustainability findings (Phase 3) with the governance findings (Phase 4) to identify any relationships between governance and sustainability outcomes
• Phase 6: Develop good practice guidelines for NRM governance
• Phase 7: Develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for NRM governance.