Jacki Schirmer

Public participation in commercial environments: critical reflections on community engagement methods used in the Australian plantation forestry industry

Summary Social concerns surrounding commercial plantation forest management practices in Australia have resulted in calls for more participatory forms of forest management decision-making. Public participation (or community engagement, CE) processes provide opportunities for affected and interested community members to voice their concerns over proposed plantation management activities, share relevant information and influence decision-making processes. A large body of literature provides ample support for the adoption of more participatory forms of resource management. The literature, however, provides little guidance on implementing such processes within the commercial domain of plantation forest management. Based on a review of the public participation literature and key informant interviews, we highlight the gaps between CE in practice in Australian commercial plantation management, and the theoretical objectives of CE: trust, process flexibility, inclusivity and representation. These gaps stem from the need to implement CE techniques in a way that recognises the commercial and regulatory realities of plantation forest management. While participatory techniques currently used by plantation managers meet some of the ideal objectives of ‘good’ participation and there is room for improvement, this improvement can take place only if CE practitioners recognise and address the commercial realities of CE implementation within plantation management, and acknowledge the limited practical applicability of some theoretical objectives.

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.

Deliberative democracy and the Tasmanian forest peace process

ABSTRACT Decades of contention regarding Tasmanias forests have been accompanied by several attempts for peace. Most recently the ‘forest peace process’ culminated in the 2012 Tasmanian Forest Agreement (TFA). We evaluate the peace process that led to the TFA, and its subsequent dismantling, from the perspective of deliberative democracy, which promises to achieve democratically legitimate outcomes in the toughest conflicts. Using normative criteria to evaluate the deliberative democratic quality of the process, our analysis shows that trades-offs were needed, and not all normative criteria could be achieved equally and simultaneously. Despite its shortcomings, and short-lived life, the peace process illustrates the possibility of achieving meta-consensus in deep value conflicts, and the crucial role of this consensus for sustaining deliberation.

Perceived profitability and well‐being in Australian dryland farmers and irrigators

OBJECTIVE To describe the relationship between self-reported farm profitability and farmer well-being, and to explore potential implications for farmer assistance policy. DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis of farmers from Regional Wellbeing Survey data (wave 1, 2013) and comparison between groups. PARTICIPANTS Participants were 1172 dryland farmers (35% women) and 707 irrigators (24% women). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE The Personal Wellbeing Index and the Kessler 10-item measure of general psychological distress. RESULTS There is a consistent and significant relationship between higher profitability, greater well-being and less distress among dryland farmers and irrigators. CONCLUSIONS The relationship between farm profitability and the well-being of Australian dryland farmers and irrigators has the potential to inform farmer assistance policy. Assistance programs can be more effective if they explicitly incorporate a profitability assessment into their targeting and eligibility requirements and a well-being component into program design and delivery. SETTING Rural Australia. INTERVENTION Not applicable.

Exploring the use of economic evaluation in Australian wildland fire management decision-making

Wildland fire managers make daily decisions about ways to allocate scarce resources to meet policy objectives. Making these decisions has become more challenging as the frequency and size of fires increase, as does associated risk to assets and costs of management. There is growing interest in using economic evaluation to inform resource allocation decisions, but little work has examined the economic evaluation needs of wildland fire managers, their current use of economic information and the factors that aid or hinder use. This study examined these issues through a survey of Australian wildland fire managers in fire management and policy roles. We found that despite strong interest in economic evaluation, managers have limited familiarity with most evaluation methods or use of the information derived. Several actions can improve the use and usefulness of economic evaluation for wildland fire managers: first, building capacity of managers to both commission and use economic information; second, integrating analysis of market and non-market benefits and costs as part of economic evaluation and third, better integrating economic evaluation with the broader context of decision-making processes.

Social acceptability of fuel management in the Australian Capital Territory and surrounding region

Managing fuel to reduce wildland fire risk often creates substantial public debate. Although the acceptability of various fuel management strategies has been explored in some regions, particularly North America, the social acceptability of fuel management is less well understood in other countries. This paper begins to address this knowledge gap by exploring acceptability by residents living in and near the Australian Capital Territory, Australia of three fuel management strategies (prescribed burning, livestock grazing and mechanical thinning) used to reduce wildland fire risk to life and property. All three were considered acceptable by most survey respondents. Acceptability did not vary substantially between strategies or by the location in which the strategy was undertaken. Acceptability of fuel management was associated with trust in fire management agencies, having knowledge of fuel management, feeling vulnerable to wildland fire and respondent characteristics such as previous effects of wildland fires, location of residence, gender, age, income and employment status.

A framework to diagnose factors influencing proenvironmental behaviors in water-sensitive urban design

Significance Urban stormwater runoff contributes significantly to water-quality problems in freshwater systems worldwide. Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) typically addresses this through construction of ecologically sensitive infrastructure but rarely considers how encouraging change in human behaviors could contribute to improving water quality. The effectiveness of WSUD can be increased by encouraging adoption of proenvironmental behaviors that prevent water-quality deterioration at the source and improve the quality of water leaving stormwater systems, in turn reducing the investment needed in water-related infrastructure. The VAIL (values, awareness, identity, lifestyle) framework presented in this paper enables context-specific identification of factors that influence adoption of proenvironmental behaviors and can inform design of actions that seek to increase adoption of these behaviors. The ongoing challenge of maintaining and improving the quality of water that leaves urban stormwater systems is often addressed using technical rather than social solutions. The need for investment in often expensive water infrastructure can be reduced through better investing in promoting human behaviors that protect water quality as part of water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) initiatives. Successfully achieving this requires understanding factors that influence adoption of proenvironmental behaviors. We review past studies examining this topic and identify that factors influencing adoption of proenvironmental behaviors relevant to WSUD commonly fall into four domains: proenvironmental values and norms, awareness and knowledge of environmental problems and the actions that can address them, proximity and place-based identity, and life-stage and lifestyle factors. We propose the VAIL (values, awareness, identify, lifestyle) framework, based on these four domains and able to be contextualized to specific water-quality problems and individual communities, to assist in diagnosing factors influencing adoption of proenvironmental behaviors. We demonstrate the applicability of the framework in a case study examining adoption of gardening practices that support water quality in Canberra, Australia. We developed 22 locally relevant VAIL indicators and surveyed 3,334 residents to understand engagement in four water-friendly gardening behaviors that help improve water quality in local lakes. In regression modeling, the indicators explained a significant amount of variance in these behaviors and suggested avenues for supporting greater adoption of these behaviors. Predictor variables across all four VAIL domains were significant, highlighting the importance of a multidomain framework.

Drought and Distress in Southeastern Australia

Droughts may increase the risk of mental health problems, but evidence suggests a complex story with some groups being vulnerable while others are not. Previous studies from Australia have found associations with suicide, depression and distress that vary by age, gender and remoteness. Understanding the effects of drought on mental health is important because drought is predicted to be more intense in some areas in the future. We investigated the associations between drought and distress in a survey of rural Australians by age, gender and farming status. We collected distress data using a survey of 5312 people from across the state of Victoria, Australia, in 2015. Respondents completed the Kessler 10 (K10) Psychological Distress Index, and demographic and general health data were collected. We linked a climatic drought index to the locality of residence of respondents. Associations between distress and drought were analyzed using multivariable regression models with interactions by age, gender and farming occupation. Parts of Victoria were in drought in 2015. Drought duration was associated with higher distress in younger rural women (aged 40–54: odds ratio 1.18 per inter-quartile range increase in drought duration) but not older rural women or men. This pattern did not vary between farmers and non-farmers. Drought was associated with increased distress, but this differed between subgroups. Our results suggest that supporting younger women may be particularly important, and understanding ways older Australian rural women cope may enable us to build adaptive capacity and resilience.