Department of Natural Resources and Mines (Brisbane) Showcase
CHRRUPP Experiment and Future Options for Community Engagement
- Background
- What is different about this case study that shows how government, industry and communities can better engage with each other?
- What are the key outcomes of the case study for government, industry and community?
- What are the key learnings/insights about community engagement?
- What will sustain community engagement into the future in this case study?
- References
Background
As society's understanding of the need for sustainable natural resource management improves, regional approaches to resource use planning increasingly are being proposed. Australia has a long history of involvement in such approaches, but success in the form of sustainable land use outcomes has been limited. There have been few attempts to build a healthier system of planning at the regional scale.
Dale and Bellamy (1998) outline three cornerstone elements of healthy regional planning systems:
- supporting, individuals, communities and sectors in regions to develop their own planning and management capacity;
- building stronger institutional arrangements that facilitate negotiation between these interests; and
- facilitating better understanding of the social, economic and biophysical processes within regions.
Based on these cornerstone elements, the Land and Water Resources Research and Development (LWRRDC) R&D Project CTC13 was designed to address the sustainable use of natural resources in Queensland's Central Highlands. The project was developed following extended negotiations with key stakeholders in the Highlands. The Central Highlands Regional Resource Use Planning Project (CHRRUPP) established and evaluated the outcomes from a more negotiated approach to regional planning for sustainable resource use by:
- directly supporting regional stakeholder groups to do their own regional planning with respect to the sustainable use of natural resources;
- supporting these regional groups to get together in a structured way to negotiate regional solutions to common natural resource use problems; and
- researching what regional planning and assessment techniques and processes best suited communicative planning and the planning needs of regional stakeholder interests.
Queensland's Central Highlands was an ideal region to explore such an approach. The region's economy is based on coal mining, pastoralism, irrigated agriculture and dryland cropping. Extensive tree clearing and debates about dam building remain the focus of national attention. The region is currently subject to a range of overlapping native title claims, and lacks a comprehensive a representative reserve system. This diversity of problems lent itself to regionally negotiated solutions.
CHRRUPP has achieved significant on-ground improvements in the region's planning system as well as delivering change in on-ground natural resource use and regional infrastructure. It has also developed a range of principles required for the development of healthy planning systems, as well as a number of new tools and techniques for undertaking regional planning activity. These include: process technologies for structuring resource allocation negotiations and industry capacity building; a prototype web-based Regional Information System; a new form of State of the Region Reporting; two new Decision Support Tools for negotiation support and knowledge delivery; and a framework for evaluating complex research activities in natural resource management. It has also delivered new techniques for predicting community capacity for change, undertaking social assessment of resource use change and for mapping social data.
While the research component was completed in mid 2000, the key elements of the CHRRUPP planning system and its support services and arrangements continue beyond formal LWRRDC funding.
What is different about this case study that shows how government, industry and communities can better engage with each other?
This Project demonstrated that there are significant social, economic and environmental benefits from strategically investing to the key elements of healthy regional arrangements. It was a significant three year collaboration between Government, community and CSIRO.
At the end of the Project, however, it was clear that there remain significant barriers to longer term, whole of government approaches to strategic investments in community engagement infrastructure.
What are the key outcomes of the case study for government, industry and community?
Key CHRRUPP outcomes included:
- Significant increases in planning and management capacity across a number of sectors;
- Resolution of significant NRM conflict in the Central Highlands;
- Significant project developments for sustainable regional development;
- New methods and software tools for community-based decision making;
- New Queensland government policy directions for regional NRM planning.
What are the key learnings/insights about community engagement?
On the CHRRUPP experience, the Project Team would suggest that fundamental change is required in the way we currently undertake planning to achieve regional sustainability. This change, however, is not one that will be too costly; in fact it could actually be cheaper than our current disjointed, fragmented, conflictual and inefficient planning system. Instead, it requires the collective will of (perhaps a 'coalition of the willing' of) Federal, State, local government, industry and communities to agree on what constitutes an healthy planning system, and to work towards its achievement.
CHRRUPP tells us that this is indeed possible, but that it relies on consistent high level political support. The CHRRUPP experience provides the substantive framework, and process and technical tools for this to occur.
What will sustain community engagement into the future in this case study?
The successful long term community engagement mechanisms established by CHRRUPP in the Central Highlands region has enabled the formation of a stakeholder-based cooperative that provides ongoing engagement and regional planning/decision making services to Governments and Regional NRM bodies. The Cooperative has recently completed the development of a draft sub-regional NRM plan and investment strategy as part of the NAP/ NHT2 programs.
References
Dale, A.P. and Bellamy, J.A., 1998. Regional resource use planning in rangelands: an Australian review. LWRRDC Occasional Paper 06/98. Canberra, Australia.
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