Marcus B. Lane

Community-based Environmental Planning: Operational Dilemmas, Planning Principles and Possible Remedies

The operational dilemmas and challenges associated with the practice of community-based environmental planning (CBEP) are examined. The paper examines the frequently invoked ‘bottom-up’ versus ‘top-down’ dichotomy and argues that environmental governance is more complex, dynamic and multi-scalar than this simple dichotomy implies. The paper identifies six key problems with the CBEP approach: (i) the conceptualization of ‘community’ which poorly accounts for difference; (ii) problems of inequality; (iii) the organizational capacity and efficacy of community groups; (iv) the scale of CBEP; (v) the types of knowledge utilized by communities in environmental management; and (vi) the potential for parochial concerns to dominate the priorities and agenda of community organizations. The paper analyses each of these issues, identifies planning principles that may aid resolution, and suggests possible remedies.

Public Participation in Planning: an intellectual history

Abstract This paper tracks the changing role of public participation in planning thought. In doing so, the paper shows that the role of public participation in planning is largely determined by the nature of the planning enterprise being undertaken. The definition of the planning problem, the kinds of knowledge used in planning practice, and the conceptualisation of the planning and decision-making context are the important determinants of the extent of participation offered to the public. The paper therefore contributes to thinking about how to evaluate public participation by showing that it can only be understood in terms of the decision-making context in which it is embedded. Specifically, it makes little sense to evaluate public participation in terms that are not shared by the planning model itself

Affirming New Directions in Planning Theory: Comanagement of Protected Areas

In recent years the conservation management literature has seen many calls for comanagement of parks and protected areas. The rationale for this approach to protected area management has come from the experience of park managers struggling to integrate the protected area with the socioeconomic fabric of the surrounding region. This rich experience informs calls for comanagement. A theoretical rationale for and explanation of comanagement, however, have been slow in coming. This article considers the trajectory of change in planning theory over the past 50 years and demonstrates that planning theorists have converged on similar ground to managers of protected areas. Developing cooperative relationships with local stakeholders and sharing the burden of management responsibilities have emerged as a potential new paradigm in natural resource planning. Protected areas therefore provide a context in which many of the ideas and concepts, much debated among scholars of planning, have been empirically tested.

The Tyranny of localism: Indigenous participation in community-based environmental management

Abstract This paper examines the claim that community-based environmental management is fairer and more democratic than so-called ‘top-down’ approaches. The paper examines the experience of Australian indigenous peoples with a national, community-based environmental management programme. The analysis of the programme reveals systemic marginalization of indigenous peoples. The paper suggests that ‘bottom-up’ governance serves to magnify the importance of local material and symbolic contests in which indigenous groups are engaged. Community-based environmental management can fail precisely because of what many of its advocates take to be its more democratic quality: its localism.

Decentralization or privatization of environmental governance? Forest conflict and bioregional assessment in Australia

Abstract This paper is concerned with the democratic governance of public environmental resources. The paper examines the use of bioregional assessment in Australia as a means of resolving long-term, multilateral, and acrimonious conflict over native forest use and management. Reflecting on recent theorizing in environmental management that has pivoted on concepts of democracy, including representations of the public interest and mechanisms to promote public deliberation, the paper identifies the anti-democratic implications of decentralized environmental governance. In particular, the paper demonstrates how uncritical engagement of civic actors can lead to development of privatized, corporatist style agreements that fail to reflect diverse values and interests. It concludes by arguing that calls for decentralization and devolution of many areas of state responsibility fail to acknowledge the potential for powerful actors in a diverse civil society to subvert, rather than promote, democratic processes and outcomes.

The Split Personality of Planning Indigenous Peoples and Planning for Land and Resource Management

The international movement toward recognition of indigenous rights over the past thirty years has created a number of complex and compelling issues in planning for the use of land and natural resources. Planning should have much to say about many of these issues, given its concern for the use of land and resources, its focus on problem-solving, and its normative disposition. There is, however, only a modest literature on indigenous planning. Thus, we draw on the planning literature, but also call heavily on work from associated disciplines to introduce to planning scholars some of the problems and opportunities indigenous communities face with respect to land and resource management.

Indigenous Peoples and Forest Management: Comparative Analysis of Institutional Approaches in Australia and India

This article examines recent institutional approaches that address questions of access to forest resources and issues of redistributive justice for indigenous peoples in Australia and India. For over two decades, both countries have seen the emergence of claims to forest access and ownership made by indigenous communities that have been historically disadvantaged and marginalized from the benefits of mainstream social and economic development. The analysis focuses on regional forest agreements (RFA) in Australia and joint forest management (JFM) experiments in India through a comparative analytical framework defined by three concepts?access, control, and substantive democracy?to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of institutional processes that aim to engage in sustainable management of forest resources.This article examines recent institutional approaches that address questions of access to forest resources and issues of redistributive justice for indigenous peoples in Australia and India. For over two decades, both countries have seen the emergence of claims to forest access and ownership made by indigenous communities that have been historically disadvantaged and marginalized from the benefits of mainstream social and economic development. The analysis focuses on regional forest agreements (RFA) in Australia and joint forest management (JFM) experiments in India through a comparative analytical framework defined by three concepts?access, control, and substantive democracy?to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of institutional processes that aim to engage in sustainable management of forest resources.

Doing It for Themselves Transformative Planning by Indigenous Peoples

Colonial processes of territorial acquisition and state formation have constituted a continuous assault on the political and cultural autonomy of the indigenous peoples of the New World. In recent decades, indigenous claims for land justice and resource sovereignty have posed considerable legal and political challenges for postsettler states. Planning offers an indispensable conceptual and operational lens through which to examine state responses to indigenous claims. The authors use case studies to explore the utility, contribution, and key features of planning undertaken as a means of resolving resource conflicts, enhancing indigenous capacity to regain and manage custodial lands, and developing community autonomy.

Institutional Complexity and Environmental Management: The Challenge of Integration and the Promise of Large-scale Collaboration

Integration has become something of a byword for those concerned with environmental planning and management in Australia in recent years. Yet efforts to collaborate with non-state actors in policy development and implementation, and to co-ordinate local, state and federal government policies and activities suggest that integration can become an amorphous and often ambiguous goal. This article draws on recent collaborative and co-ordination efforts to address water quality issues in Queenslands Great Barrier Reef region to highlight some of these challenges. A preliminary assessment shows how a Reef-wide collaborative water quality partnership has risen to the challenge of integration. To date, this large-scale collaboration has focussed on co-ordinating a defensible knowledge-base to guide water quality management responses and developing an adaptive management strategy to test this knowledge through management experience and monitoring feedbacks. An initial evaluation of these efforts suggests the value of ‘scaling-up’ collaboration to facilitate integrated environmental management. There is no ‘hard-wired’ or structural solution to the problem on integration; instead, this experience shows that the development of collaborative partnerships also holds great promise. Such partnerships need to be carefully fitted to the particular management contexts in which integration is being pursued.

Strategic perspectives analysis: A procedure for participatory and political social impact assessment

Recent developments in planning and social impact assessment (SIA) theory have traveled parallel paths. Both fields have moved away from centralized, purportedly apolitical modes of decision making and are moving toward enhanced participation of parties affected by resource development. Some writers now view SIA and planning as essentially sociopolitical processes that should facilitate bargaining and negotiation among interest groups within the constraints of the law and government administration. Strategic perspectives analysis has been designed as a flexible procedure that can be used to conduct both participatory and political applications of SIA. In a progression from position analysis techniques, the method uses strategic planning principles to elicit the vision, objectives, and strategies of each party. It then facilitates the articulation of their interests with the planning process through more effective bargaining and negotiation.