Avoiding the presumptive policy errors of intergovernmental environmental planning programmes: a case analysis of urban stormwater management planning

Abstract

This social research aims to identify and examine the implementation presumptions of intergovernmental environmental planning programmes and how to improve their effectiveness in future practice. It contrasts and explains the organisational dynamics and implementation responses of municipalities that succeeded and failed in realising the objective of such a programme. The research involved a qualitative multiple-case comparison between four high- and four low-performing municipalities implementing a stormwater programme within metropolitan Sydney, Australia. These two organisational types substantially differed in corporate expertise, environmental leadership, extended relational activity, and overall disposition to learning and ownership of local environmental issues. The paper identified five presumptions underpinning the programme design which privileged the high-performing organisations, but did little to garner commitment and develop capacity among the low-performing group. These implementation insights not only provide guideposts for intergovernmental programme design, but also reveal how policy design can undermine policy intent if empathy to local organisational dynamics is lacking.

Keywords:

• intergovernmental environmental planning
• urban stormwater
• local government
• organisational dynamics
• capacity building

Notes

1. The direction under Section 12 of the Protection of the Environment Administration Act 1991 was sent as a letter to each council's General Manager.

2. Unlike a number of European and North American states, the stormwater system in Australia is separate to the sewerage drainage system.

3. Forty-four local councils in the Sydney “Greater Metropolitan Region” (as defined by the EPA) were sent the letter on 24 April 1998. The plans were due in July 1999. Rural and regional councils were later directed to prepare the plans.

4. May et al. (1996), from their research into intergovernmental environmental programmes, identified the need to design programmes with a built-in capacity development function. The intention of capacity development is to raise the normative commitment of the local governments to environmental policy implementation. In the case of the urban stormwater programme, strategic capacity development was considered towards the end of its life, using extension officers to work within or close to local governments in clustered catchments and regions throughout NSW. However, the extension model was limited by short-term funding and petered out within two years from inception, providing little opportunity for capacity development.