Nesting, subsidiarity, and community-based environmental governance beyond the local level
Community-based approaches to environmental management have become widely adopted over the last two decades. From their origins in grassroots frustrations with governmental inabilities to solve local environmental problems, these approaches are now sponsored frequently by governments as a way of dealing with such problems at much higher spatial levels. However, this ‘up-scaling’ of community-based approaches has run well ahead of knowledge about how they might work. This article explores how Elinor Ostrom’s ‘nesting principle’ for robust common property governance of large-scale common-pool resources might inform future upscaling efforts. In particular, I consider how the design of nested governance systems for large-scale environmental problems might be guided by the principle of subsidiarity. The challenges of applying this principle are illustrated by Australia’s experience in up-scaling community-based natural resource management from local groups comprising 20-30 members to regional bodies representing hundreds of thousands of people. Seven lessons are distilled for fostering community-based environmental governance as a multi-level system of nested enterprises. [pdf 422.2 kb]
Policy Options for the Tenure and Management of Government Agencies Land Resources
The objective of this paper is to identify policy options for the development of a whole of government approach to government land management and tenure rationalisation. Preferred options which are consistent with the broad policy objectives of the State Government are identified. [pdf 451.9 kb]
Regional Delivery Model for the Natural Heritage Trust and the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality
[pdf 891.3 kb]
