Enhancing Community Engagement in the Lake Eyre Basin

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Enhancing Community Engagement in the Lake Eyre
Basin

• Tim Smith

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Enhancing Community Engagement in the Lake Eyre
Basin
Desert Knowledge CRC project funded through NHT
The People, Communities and Economies of the
Lake Eyre Basin

• Objective
• To improve the understanding and functioning of
  the organisations that manage ecosystem services
  in the Lake Eyre Basin
• (ie. those organisations that act as the
  interface between government and communities)

• Researchers
• Tim Smith, Lynn Brake, Alexander Herr, Silva
  Larson, Tom Measham, Cathy Robinson, Angela
  Wardell-Johnson, Mark Stafford Smith, Tim Lynam,
  and Anne Leitch

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Benefits of community engagement

• Korfmacher (2001) states that the most common
  rationales are democratic, substantive, and
  pragmatic
• Democratic rationale emphasises the inherent
  value of public participation in decisions that
  affect the public
• Substantive rationale citizens may have unique
  contributions to public decisions and citizens'
  values and technical knowledge should help to
  inform the final decision
• Pragmatic rationale a community that has
  contributed to and been educated by the
  decision-making process is more likely to support
  the decision outcome and facilitate its
  implementation

Korfmacher, K. S., 2001, The politics of
participation in watershed modelling,
Environmental Management, vol. 27, pp. 161-176
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Problems created by ineffective engagement

• Adversarial modes of decision-making
• Mismatches of jurisdictions, benefits, costs and
  implementation
• Subordination of public interest to a special
  interest
• Lack of coordination and trust intra and inter
  institutional silos
• Institutional inertia
• Piecemeal or symptoms approaches to problems
• Ineffective use of science

• Inability to deal with complexity

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Evolution of community-based management

• Shift from top-down NRM management to
  community-based NRM
• Strengthened formalisation through regional
  arrangements (in some jurisdictions)
• Goal of place-based communities taking
  responsibilities for NRM

• Increasing importance of community engagement

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Challenges in remote regions

• Sparse populations and limited capacity
• Large distances
• High seasonal variability
• Dependence on natural resources
• Variability of costs and worth of those natural
  resources
• Remoteness in terms of support and influence
• Pronounced decoupling of resources, rights
  responsibilities

Remote regions are disproportionately dependent
on the management and use of their natural and
cultural resources
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Approach to understanding and improving engagement

• Regional social, economic and resource profiles
• Toolkit of engagement success factors of NRM
  organisations
• Case studies of organisational interventions
• Development of on-going engagement monitoring
  systems

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Regional social, economic and resource profiles

• Geographic display and overlay of socio-economic
  and ecosystem service characteristics of the Lake
  Eyre Basin
• A conceptual network analysis of formal
  relationships within and between sectors (eg.
  mining)

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Socio-economic and ecosystem service
characteristics
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Socio-economic and ecosystem service
characteristics

• The LEB scores low in terms of all four
  socio-economic indices that the Australian Bureau
  of Statistics developed to describe the wellbeing
  of the nation
• Socio-economic information base (Census
  information) usefulness limited in outback
  regions (data quality and resolution)

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Network analysis of formal relationships

• Disconnects in formal relationships exist between
  and within sectors

Mining networks
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Network analysis of formal relationships

• Grazing networks

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Network analysis of formal relationships

• Emphasis on one voice for sectors may not be
  appropriate
• Challenges for engagement of non-resident power
  holders
• There are multiple community associations
  affecting decision-making in the Lake Eyre Basin
• communities of place vs. communities of interest

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Lake Eyre Basin current research

• The current focus of the Lake Eyre Basin project
  is to develop a toolkit of success factors for
  interface institutions
• Community-based researchers
• Interviews with influencers in governments,
  industries and communities

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Lake Eyre Basin future work

• Case studies of success factors for interface
  institutions
• Action research
• Development of monitoring and evaluation
  approaches for NRM enabling factors

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Summary thoughts

• Natural Resource Management is a social process,
  creating both challenges and opportunities in
  remote regions
• Interventions need rigorous and ongoing
  assessment for continual improvement and informed
  adaptive management
• Remote areas have special data, research and
  management needs
• Identification of trends only possible where data
  are appropriate in spatial and temporal scale.
• Policies need to incorporate local
  idiosyncrasies, so blueprint approaches are
  inappropriate for large areas
• The drivers of communities and governments need
  to be understood and the mechanisms to support
  them