Liana J. Williams

Remotely engaged? Towards a framework for monitoring the success of stakeholder engagement in remote regions

The importance of stakeholder engagement for the success of natural resources management processes is widely acknowledged, yet evaluation frameworks employed by administrators of environmental programmes continue to provide limited recognition of or insistence upon engagement processes. This paper presents a framework for monitoring and evaluation of engagement that aims to better incorporate community engagement into mainstream environmental programmes, in particular in remote regions such as arid and desert regions of the world. It is argued that successful monitoring of engagement should not only comprise a generic set of indicators but rather, in addition to the principles of good monitoring practice, should take into account a variety of the stakeholder interests as well as key regional drivers, addressing them at right geographic, institutional and time scale.

Color Blind: Indigenous Peoples and Regional Environmental Management

The dominant approach to environmental management in Australia involves the decentralization of authority and resources to regionally organized citizen boards or statutory committees. The article examines Australian Indigenous participation in a national environmental management program— the Natural Heritage Trust. This program emphasizes regionally scaled implementation and community engagement and ownership. The management of Indigenous lands is of increasing importance in Australia because of the size of this estate, its environmental value, and its role in Indigenous community and economic development. Programmatic efforts to assist Indigenous landowners manage their lands have been largely unsuccessful. This research is concerned with understanding whether regionally scaled, civic approaches to environmental management enable improved levels of Indigenous participation. Results show that this regional environmental management program achieved poor levels of Indigenous participation. This finding, the authors suggest, has important implications for the optimistic claims made about regional environmental management.

The Natural Heritage Trust and Indigenous Lands: the trials and tribulations of ‘new technologies of governance’

Abstract Social and political changes occurring in Western democracies have required the development of approaches referred to by scholars such as Nikolas Rose as ‘new technologies of governance’. These experiments in governance are paradigmatically different from previous approaches and, as a consequence, there is much to learn about how to ensure their equity and effectiveness. In this paper, we examine the contribution of the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) to the management of Indigenous lands in Australia. We present data which show, conclusively, that the land management needs of Indigenous communities have been poorly accommodated by the NHT. We suggest that the architects of NHT III and similar programs need to remember that: (i) rescaling governance does not ensure equitable outcomes across diverse regional populations; (ii) strategies for Indigenous community engagement need rethinking; and (iii) Indigenous community and civil society capacity building remains an ongoing challenge.

Household types as a tool to understand adaptive capacity: case studies from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Bangladesh and India

Supporting smallholder households to adapt to climate variability is a high priority for development agencies and national governments. Efforts to support climate adaptation in developing countries occur within highly dynamic contexts. Macro-level changes in national and regional economies manifest in dynamic local conditions, such as migration, changing household labour dynamics, market access and land-use options. Research aimed at developing adaptation options is often focused on particular activities or industries and struggles to take into account the broader, interrelated suite of household livelihood activities or the non-climate stressors driving change and adaptation. This paper explores the use of household types to (a) understand the diversity of household circumstances and (b) place agricultural adaptation options within the broader context of household livelihoods. Results from application in four countries are discussed, which highlight the utility of the method and identify broader level trends and drivers that are common challenges (experienced differently) across multiple contexts.

The Effects of Climate and Socio‐Demographics on Direct Household Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Australia

Household CO2 emissions are a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions and consequently climate warming. Despite this, there has been little consideration of how household CO2 emissions may be affected by changes in climate. The aim of the present study has been to investigate the way climate, as well as socio-demographic characteristics, may affect household CO2 emissions produced from energy use. A national online survey was conducted to determine current household CO2 emissions in Australia as well as capture the ownership and use of household appliances and installations. Electricity and gas-based emissions as well as the ownership of a variety of household appliances and installations were found to be strongly associated with temperature. Electricity and gas emissions were found to decrease as annual average temperatures increase. However, as temperatures continue to rise under climate change this pattern may be reversed owing to increased reliance on air conditioners. One option for preventing this from occurring is to encourage houses to adopt more solar-passive installations. Although this may be expensive, households with higher emissions tend to have higher incomes, indicating that they may have the capacity to pay for such installations.

Constraints to the capacity of smallholder farming households to adapt to climate change in South and Southeast Asia

Rural households in developing countries face a range of pressures to secure their livelihoods. Households feel the effects of changing rainfall patterns, droughts, cyclones, floods and increased temperatures, and draw on a wide range of resources to adapt but some households are better equipped than others. We explore the extent to which smallholder rural households might be able to adapt to the processes of increased climate variability or climate change through assessing their adaptive capacity using elements of the rural livelihoods framework. We involved almost 600 participants in discussions and interviews in India, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Lao PDR to explore the factors that condition their ability to adapt. We identified 36 key indicators of adaptive capacity, half were specifically related to climate change or climate variability, with others recognized as important in terms of overall livelihoods. “Experience”, “health” and “labour” (Human capital), “access to market” and “farmer networks/groups” (Social capital) were considered strongly enabling of adaptation, whereas “lack of training” (Human capital) and “soil quality/condition” (Natural capital) constrained adaptation. It takes time for households to recover from climatic events, but, households with better access to diverse resources, and a more balanced livelihood portfolio were better able to cope. Mechanisms to support adaptation involved supporting farmer groups, novel information networks, better access to markets and value chains, land ownership, improved financial and economic management, and credit options.