E Stratford

Governance Principles for Natural Resource Management

Sustainable natural resource use and management make novel demands on governance arrangements, the design of which requires normative guidance. Although governance principles have been developed for diverse contexts, their availability for sustainable natural resource governance is so far limited. In response, we present a suite of governance principles for natural resource governance that, while developed in an Australian multilevel context, has general applicability and significance at local, subnational, and national scales. The principles can be used to direct the design of governance institutions that are legitimate, transparent, accountable, inclusive, and fair and that also exhibit functional and structural integration, capability, and adaptability. Together, they can also serve as a platform for developing governance monitoring and evaluation instruments, crucial for both self-assessment and external audit purposes.

Multi-level Environmental Governance: lessons from Australian natural resource management

Abstract The region has become a significant scale of governance for the implementation of public policy, including natural resource management (NRM). A community-based regional NRM governance model has been adopted by the Australian government in partnership with Australian state and territory governments. There have been persuasive advocates of this approach both within community organisations and government. Proponents point to advantages such as the capacity to integrate across social, environmental and economic issues; improved investment efficiency; ability to establish appropriate power-sharing and partnership arrangements; better conversion of planning products into on-ground outcomes; and community learning and capacity building. However, concerns have also been raised in the academic literature regarding insufficient devolution of power, lack of downward accountability, exclusion of some stakeholders from decision making, and inadequate vertical and horizontal integration. We interviewed representatives from each of the governance levels (national, state, regional) to examine these concerns, and in doing so identify the strengths and challenges of the Australian experiment with devolved NRM governance. We synthesise the interview data with insights from the literature and make observations on the current state of Australian NRM governance. From this analysis, we identify lessons from the Australian experience to inform the development of multi-level environmental governance systems.

Belonging as a resource: the case of Ralphs Bay, Tasmania, and the local politics of place

This paper seeks to contribute to the theorization of belonging as a resource on which people draw in the local politics of place—especially in contestations over ecological space and decisions about land use that resonate at many scales and across many domains. The task is advanced with reference to a controversial development proposal to build a marina and residential subdivision on estuarine mudflats near a seaside dormitory suburb in the capital city of Hobart on the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Particular attention is paid to story lines generated in three discourse coalitions which have formed around the controversy over the proposal: a multimillion dollar mainland company known as the Walker Corporation, the Tasmanian state government, and a community action group known as Save Ralphs Bay Inc. Techniques of narrative and discourse analysis are used to read these story lines for evidence of belonging. In this analysis of ‘text, talk, and practice’, opportunities arise to consider the wider salience of the case to geographers, among them connection and attachment to place, and counterpoints of belonging such as social and ecological dispossession and displacement.

Flows and boundaries: small island discourses and the challenge of sustainability, community and local environments

Islands (also islets, isles)—paradoxical spaces: absolute entities surrounded by water but not large enough to be a continent, territories, territorial; relational spaces—archipelagos, (inter)dependent, identifiable; relative spaces—bounded but porous; isolated, connected, colonized, postcolonial; redolent of the performative imaginary; vulnerable to linguistic, cultural, environmental change; robust and able to absorb and modify; placed in regions, (part of) nation states and global life; paradisiacal, utopian and dystopian, tourist meccas, ecological refugia; frames within which interdisciplinary scholarship and dialogue can be constituted and deployed...

Insights and principles for supporting social engagement in rural older people

ABSTRACT Staying socially engaged is known to improve health and longevity in older people. As the population ages, maintaining levels of social engagement among older people becomes increasingly important. Nevertheless, advancing age brings with it many challenges to social engagement, especially in rural areas. A three-year Australian Research Council Linkage Project sought to improve understandings of age-related triggers to social disengagement in six Tasmanian communities that are representative of rural Australian experience, and thus of wider salience. A collaboration between academics and health and social professionals, the project investigated design solutions for service frameworks that may be useful before ageing individuals become isolated and dependent, and that may support those individuals to actively contribute to and benefit from social life. The purpose of this paper is to report on perspectives about diminishing levels of social engagement held by older rural participants and service providers, and to advance a number of key insights on ways in which to nurture social engagement and improve the experience of ageing.

Partnerships for Local Sustainability and Local Governance in a Tasmanian Settlement

This research is concerned with effects and actions at the local level, where it is argued that local governing processes are key to developing sustainable communities. The roles of the citizen and of formal government are changing such that the implementation of sustainability praxis at the local level requires that citizens and governments reconsider both the meaning and techniques of governance. Indeed, how we are governed, participate in governing processes and internalise and accept the need for change will affect how local communities make constant and lasting a dynamic praxis of sustainability. Actors in local governments and communities may be crucial in this task—especially as facilitators, enablers, leaders and partners. In this paper we focus on the Huon Valley Council and some members of one of its communities. We examine how they are experimenting with partnerships as a form of governance to unify, control, mobilise and regulate the conduct of various actors, and how such partnerships may foster sustainability praxis in the Valleys diverse communities of place and interest.

Feral travel and the transport field: Some observations on the politics of regulating skating in Tasmania

Abstract This paper summarises skating regulation around Australia, focusing on Tasmania. Such analysis is timely; the Australian Road Rules adopted in December 1999 expand skating from recreation to a mode of transport whose legitimacy assumes access to roads and footpaths, and deploys complex politics of identity and space, citizenship and access, and mobility.

Isolation as disability and resource: Considering sub-national island status in the constitution of the ‘New Tasmania’

Abstract The peoples and governments of island nation-states appear to use isolation as a jurisdictional resource to address the challenges of economic globalization. This tactic is pronounced in relation to tourism and property developments, which have the potential to be especially internally divisive. But what of sub-national island jurisdictions? Australias foundation is, in part, indebted to British colonial ideas about a commonwealth of increase: its creation as a symmetrical federation (albeit with pronounced asymmetries) reflecting a desire to modulate the effects of central and peripheral economic activity. In this federation isolation is used in particular in the distribution of national funds to six states and two territories—referred to here as sub-national jurisdictions. For example, the island state of Tasmania is perhaps the most marginal of all such sub-national jurisdictions; insular in many ways, remote, detached. Evidence suggests that Tasmanians use isolation in different ways to both stabilize and unsettle the direction of development there. With reference to official attempts to create a ‘New Tasmania’, typified by an ability to attract substantial investment dollars in tourism and coastal subdivisions, I highlight the effects of conflicts that may arise when isolation and ‘islandness’ are deployed as tools for economic ‘progress’ and as characteristics to aid resistance against globalizations homogenizing tendencies to render ‘everywhere the same’.

In pursuit of sustainability? Challenges for deliberative democracy in a Tasmanian local government

Sustainability may be viewed as a principled form of conduct. Among its effects is a growing emphasis on civil society and local governance through which the members of communities are encouraged to rethink democratic ideas and practices, and reconfigure how to live. Although normative, sustainability cannot properly be conceived as prescriptive; such a characteristic would undermine central elements of it, such as participation and equity. In this sense, requiring both mechanisms for community participation in decisionmaking and planning, and an ethic of engagement based on trust, reciprocity, and an acceptance of the rights of noncitizens and nonhuman nature, sustainability might also be construed as a deliberative form of democratic governance. Perhaps problematically, in the last decade this governmental aspect of sustainability has come to be associated with the procedures of communicative rationality. Supported by research conducted over three years in a local government in Tasmania, Australia, we argue that a deliberative and democratic praxis of sustainability may be effective only if and when underpinned by substantive changes to the exercise of power and leadership, and to the ways in which deliberative decisionmaking and planning are pursued. Communicative rationality alone is unlikely to achieve these ends.

Young islanders, the meteorological imagination, and the art of geopolitical engagement

There is scant literature analysing how young islanders regard climate change, particularly in terms of resilience, agency and a geopolitical aesthetic. To address that gap, this paper offers a theoretical framework and empirical example responding to such issues. The works theoretical foci are upon the role of the artist as interlocutor; the importance of arts practices in encouraging children to participate in climate change debates and actions; and the potential of what anthropologist Tim Ingold has called the meteorological imagination. These three matters inform a two-year praxis project – A Map of a Dream of the Future – involving methods from the geohumanities and engagement with young islanders, academics, artists and writers, community cultural development workers, and educators. Together, we worked on various activities to draw out our individual and collective ideas about islands, arts, climate change, and geopolitics. In the process were created an education kit, childrens workshops and exhibitions, and a professional art installation at a major national arts festival. At the same time, new insights have been gained about how the meteorological imagination may be a significant resource by which to work with children as they come to terms with a future whose climate has changed.