Laying Down the Ladder: A Typology of Public Participation in Australian Natural Resource Management

Abstract

The most influential attempts to classify forms of public participation are based on the ‘ladder’ of public participation (after Arnstein 1969), which orders approaches from those in which government dominates decision-making to ones in which its power is shared equally with the public or communities. Such unidimensional classifications can no longer reflect the realities and complexities of role-sharing between governments, communities and other parties in natural resource management. Initiative may come from nongovernment sources, and other dimensions besides power are relevant in designing participatory processes.

This article describes a typology of public participation in Australian natural resource management, commissioned by Land and Water Australia as part of a comprehensive project to enhance the information base on participatory approaches in Australian natural resource management (Buchy, Ross and Proctor 2002). Besides power sharing, it incorporates differences in agency (which parties carry the initiative), tenure (the nature of the parties' control over the resources), the nature of the participants, the nature of the task, and its duration. The typology distinguishes forms of participation based on voluntary action such as stewardship groups, from formal collaborations between stakeholder groups, and other forms of environmental management. The typology is intended as a guide to those designing or participating in such processes. The types should be considered in terms of their suitability for different circumstances, not as a hierarchy of desirability. Further, effective participatory processes should be customised to suit their circumstances, and can combine aspects of different types successfully to achieve greater advantages than single types may offer.