Rural natural resource governance reform directions

1. Rural natural resource governance reform directions Professor Paul Martin

2. Institutions as the key link: context, strategy and resources. Determining the feasible/effective rules markets, governance and coordination arrangements. Effective? Feasible? Fair?

3. Some realities of rural Australia. Invasions? Weeds? Where is the money? Biodiversity? Where is the manpower? What institutions might ensure resource allocation does match our national objectives?

4. 9 fundamental rural NRM challenges • Rural NRM resource demands are driven by unique socio-spatial and ‘autopoietic’ characteristics of rural landscapes. • Fundamental NRM challenges are embedded in strategies for social inclusion (n.b. Aboriginal rights and disadvantage). • Relative resource scarcity will fuel increasing conflicts. • Many forms of fragmentation (tenure, rules, institutions, politics) result in governance incoherence. • High transaction costs sap the limited financial and human resources that are nominally available. • The treatment of the human dimensions of NRM (behaviour, capacity, equity) is largely unscientific. • NRM motivational arrangements (including incentives and accountability) are far too weak. • Resource politics and policies reflect strategically naïve positions about rights, rules, and implementation. • Governance processes are grossly under-developed compared to the nature of the challenges.

5. What rural changes should we expect? • Representative Concentration Pathways • Population • GDP • Energy consumption/ intensity/mix • Carbon price at 2100 • Land use • Climate (estimate) • GHG emissions • Air pollutants The second industrial transformation of Australian landscapes Wayne Meyer, Brett Bryan, Andrew Campbell, Graham Harris, Ted Lefroy, Greg Lyle, Paul Martin, Josie McLean, Kelvin Montagu, Lauren Rickards, David Summers, Richard Thackway, Sam Wells, Mike Young.

6. Discussion: some challenges in detail The accepted rural NRM investment model is insufficient and extremely vulnerable. Transaction cost and incoherence – are rules, administration, tenures and property based instruments etc. likely to get worse? Will the pursuit of insufficiently developed ‘policy’ ideas, from government, NGOs, and agencies stand in the way of sensible resolutions?

7. The most critical rural NRM vulnerability? • Resources, not rules, are needed to change outcomes! • Funds are not increasing to meet the growing challenge. • Can we get far more outcome for less dollars? • How can voluntarism, and instruments be made to work far better? Radical innovation in NRM models?

8. Fragmentation, transaction costs and incoherence • Fragmented laws and institutional arrangements • ~250 national laws • ~100 for weeds alone • Fragmentation across public and private tenures • Fragmentation even within tenures • Proliferating instruments, declining coherence • The constitutional dimension

9. Property fragmentation within tenures WATER-LINKED Surface water Groundwater Salinity Pollutants PRODUCT-LINKED Food Fibre Fuel Finances AIR-LINKED Tree carbon Pasture carbon Foregone clearing INTELLECTUAL Cultural Aesthetic Intellectual property SUPERVENING Family/society Services Finances Heading for property right incoherence? Heading for property right straightjacket? BIODIVERSITY Iconic species Iconic habitats Non-iconic biodiversity GROUND-LINKED Minerals Oil Gases Soils INCHOATE Development rights Cultural values Others?? Ownership dimensions Period/temporality, Security, Exclusion, …….

10. 7 priorities for reform • Apply behavioural science to the design and implementation of rural governance. (Innovations in institutions to improve weed funding, strategy and outcomes) • Reduce the counterproductive transaction costs (funding, compliance, coordination). (Various - see Innovations in institutions to improve weed funding) • Harmonise rule administration/ implementation, eventually architecture) (Various – see Harmonising Australia's Environmental Laws). • Create a systemic approach to accountability for harms. (Various - see Concepts for Industry Co-Regulation of Bio-fuel Weeds) • A credible framework for collaborative governance/co-regulation (flexible but with teeth). (Various and research in progress) • Principles based rural policy impact assessment (including social impacts of market mechanisms). (Developing a Good Regulatory Practice Model for Environmental Regulations Impacting on Farmers) • Implement an integrated rural sustainability investment system at the rural landscape scale (Land & Water Australia PR071389)

11. Where you can find the details • Innovations in institutions to improve weed funding, strategy and outcomes, May 2011 RIRDC Publication RIRDC 12/091 ISBN: 978-1-74254-433-5, 113 pages • Expert review from a social and economic perspective in Developing the Guide to the proposed Basin Plan: Peer review reports, pp190-202, Published by the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, ISBN (online) 978-1-921557-77-4, Australian Government, 2010 • Concepts for Industry Co-Regulation of Bio-fuel Weeds IUCN Academy of Environmental Law eJournal, Vol 1, May 2010.p. 1-13 • Harmonising Australia's Environmental Laws: Scoping of Harmonisation of Environmental Regulation and Regulatory Practice across Jurisdictions in Australia. Report to the Australasian Environmental Law Enforcement and Regulators Network, February 2011 • Policy Risk Assessment. CRC for Irrigation Futures Technical Report Series No. 03/10. March 2010 at http://www.irrigationfutures.org.au/news.asp?catID=9&ID=1209 • Evaluation of the Risks and Benefits of Granting Rights in Land, report commissioned from the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law and Marsden Jacobs Associates by the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, August 2010. • Discussion paper: An industry plan for the Victorian environment? Dept. of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria (2009) • Concepts for private sector funded conservation using tax-effective instruments Land & Water Australia PR071389, November 2007. • Developing a Good Regulatory Practice Model for Environmental Regulations Impacting on Farmers Australian Farm Institute and Land and Water Australia 2007, ISBN978-0-9803460-4-6 • Using Environmental Law for Effective Regulation Research project number TPF1 of the Social and Institutional Research Program of Land & Water Land & Water Australia Natural Resource Management – People and Policy II, 2002 Australia. • Submission on future regulatory reform, with a focus on the rural sector BRCWG Secretariat Deregulation Group, Department of Finance and Deregulation 14/10/11

12. They said it better than I ever could:Match the words to the mind. He who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new. For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
 Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

13. Can we fix this? Yes we can! Bob the Builder