A Geography of Place: principles and application for defining ‘eco-civic’ resource governance regions

Abstract

River catchments have been the dominant form of regionalisation for natural-resource management in many countries since the 1980s. Local governments play a considerable role in planning with ever-increasing responsibilities for sustainable environmental management, planning and development controls. There has also been an increasing emphasis on community participation in resource management, which emphasises the need to re-examine the requirements for spatial definition of resource governance regions. This paper proposes three principles. 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, which provides resource planning and management efficiencies. The paper describes a range of concepts and empirical techniques used to apply these principles to the derivation of a resource governance regionalisation of the State of New South Wales, Australia.

Keywords:

• Regionalisation
• catchment management
• community
• resource governance
• social catchment
• eco-civic
• nesting

Acknowledgments

The NSW Department of Lands and, Land and Water Australia have funded different elements of this research. Our conclusions do not necessarily reflect the policies of these organisations. We greatly appreciated assistance in data analysis, GIS and mapping, and review from Karl Bock, Phil Coop, Phil Morley, Judith McNeill, Brendan Doyle, Graham Marshall and Richard Stayner.