Author(s)

J. A. Williams, R . J. S. Beeton & G. T. McDonald

Abstract

Whilst the investment in natural resource management in Australia both in financial and regulatory terms is at its highest point, Australia’s natural systems are in decline. This trend in degradation of the resource base is seen worldwide with studies indicating that humanity’s collective demands on natural resources first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. The complexity of natural resource management, which is socially an evolving ‘discipline of disciplines’, creates challenges for society. With the continual degradation of the natural resource base, the past and present approaches to natural resource management in Australia could be assumed to be failing. NRM is recognized in the 21 st century as having an assumed importance as a development strategy, because of the claims that it can contribute towards sustainable livelihoods, thus NRM has two facets: the natural resource base and the institutional arrangements to maintain these. Australia is presently going through a transformation with the evolution of a regional NRM systems approach. The paper reports a hypothesized model of a sustainable regional NRM system for Australia that will be tested by a subsequent study. Keywords: sustainable, regionalism, trans-disciplinary, success attributes, regional NRM system, literature model, means, ends, organisations and their governance, people and their attitudes, decentralised democracy. 1 Introduction Natural Resource Management (NRM) in Australia has the explicit objective of achieving sustainable utilisation of major resources, such as land, water, air,

Keywords

sustainable, regionalism, trans-disciplinary, success attributes, regional NRM system, literature model, means, ends, organisations and their governance, people and their attitudes, decentralised democracy.