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PDF
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Type:
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Conference Paper |
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Author:
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Brunckhorst, David; Reeve, Ian |
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Conference:
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Governing Shared Resources: Connecting Local Experience to Global Challenges, the Twelfth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Commons |
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Location:
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Cheltenham, England |
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Conf. Date:
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July 14-18, 2008 |
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Date:
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2008 |
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URI:
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https://hdl.handle.net/10535/1548
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Sector:
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Social Organization
General & Multiple Resources |
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Region:
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Subject(s):
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resource management
collective action
participatory management
regionalism
IASC
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Abstract:
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"Despite a growing body of theory that emphasizes the importance of socio-spatial aspects in the representation of community interests, regionalisation for natural resource governance remains dominated by river catchments. At the same time, across many nations, local governments are being given increasing responsibilities for environmental and resource management, but work within boundaries that are largely historical artifacts. The confluence of these trends suggests it is timely to examine the requirements for spatial definition of resource governance regions. A considerable body of research on place attachment, social networks, and participatory resource management combines to suggest that joining forces to take responsibility for collective action towards sustainability is more likely within particular social-ecological contexts and scales. We suggest three essential principles to guide the definition of boundaries of more efficient and effective regional contexts for collective engagement in natural resource planning, governance and actions. First, the nature and reach of environmental externalities of resource use should determine the size and nesting of resource management regions. Second, the boundaries of resource governance regions should enclose areas of greatest interest and importance to local residents. Third, the biophysical characteristics of a resource governance region should be as homogenous as possible. We applied these principles to the derivation of an eco-civic, resource governance regionalisation for the Australian state of New South Wales. This paper describes these concepts, the results and their potential policy application. An important finding was that many administrative and resource governance regions fall short on a regionalisation performance measure developed to gauge the fragmentation of representation of community interests. Such fragmentation of individuals collective shared interests as communities reduces participation and effectiveness of planning, creates loggerheads and increased transaction costs. Potential institutional (re-) design is likely to be more effective given the spatially nested common grounds provided by the ecocivic regionalization technique."
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