Managing Australia's Environment: (Land and Water Australia Environmental Solutions)

Managing Australia's Environment is a report card of unprecedented scope, examining Australia's resource and environmental management institutions and policies against the requirements of ecologically sustainable development. The contributors engage with policy, management and legal issues at all levels of government, across a diverse range of sectors including forests, oceans, the arid zone, water, regional development, the Indigenous domain and environmental protection. The result is a rich source of recommendations for purposeful and adaptive policy and institutional responses to the great challenge of sustainability. Managing Australia's Environment is written by leading researchers and practitioners, including: Ian Lowe; Robyn Eckersley; Tim Bonyhady; Clive Hamilton; Ronnie Harding; Gerry Bates; Stephen Dovers; John Dore; Sarah Ewing; Mark Stafford-Smith.

Table of Contents:
I. Introduction Processes and institutions for resource and environmental management: why and how to analyse Stephen Dovers II. Sectoral Studies Rangeland institutions over time and space Mark Stafford Smith and Nick Abel The ocean and marine realm Marcus Haward Water resources management Dingle Smith National Forest Policy and Regional Forest Agreements Catherine Mobbs III. Processes and Institutions The Resource Assessment Commission: lessons in the venality of modern politics Clive Hamilton Discrete, consultative policy processes: lessons from the National Conservation Strategy for Australia and National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development Stephen Dovers Sustainable regional development: lessons from Australian efforts John Dore, Jim Woodhill, Kate Andrews and Colma Keating Informing ESD: state of environment reporting Ronnie Harding and Denise Traynor IV. Managing, regulating and motivating Straddling boundaries: inter-governmental arrangements for managing natural resources Peter Crabb Legal perspectives Gerry Bates EPAs - orphan agencies of environmental protection Peter Christoff Parliamentary and intergovernmental processes Brett Odgers Local government Su Wild River Marketisation in Australian freshwater and fisheries management regimes Jennifer McKay V. People, policy and programs Catchment management arrangements Sarah Ewing Institutions and processes for resource and environmental management in the Indigenous domain Kim Orchard, Helen Ross and Elspeth Young The Landcare experience Allan Curtis VI. Perspectives and synthesis The disappointment of the law Tim Bonyhady Science, research and policy Ian Lowe Politics and policy Robyn Eckersley Economic policy and sustainable use of natural resources Warren Musgrave and Onko Kingma Reflecting on three decades: a synthesis Stephen Dovers

Review :
In my view it is those chapters that grasp the opportunity to go beyond the adaptive management framework by either using it to draw generalisations or relate it to other areas of social and economic theory that stand out. Mobbs, for example, explores the rationalities, or worldviews, that underlay, and eventually clashed in, the Regional Forest Assessment process. Dore et al, couch their analysis of principles for sustainable regional development in the context of global and national social and political trends and shifting understandings of the meanings of regions, regionalism and regionalisation. McKay takes a critical look at the manner in which property rights in water have been defined; the dearth of information informing current approaches to the marketisation of water management; and the need to recognise that marketisation is not in itself sufficient to generate sustainable outcomes. The concluding chapter by Dovers raises a range of themes, including power and the definition of 'resources', that emerged from the preceding chapters but which unfortunately, did not receive the same systematic treatment as the principles of adaptive management. These are by no means the only well written and insightful chapters. Given the size and scope of Managing Australia's Environment, almost any reader with an interest in environmental management should be able to find something of relevance. - Stewart Lockie, Rural Society, Vol 14 No 1