Environmental governance and the hybrid regime of Australian natural resource management

Geoforum 41 (2010) 388–398

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Geoforum

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Environmental governance and the hybrid regime of Australian naturalresource management

Michael Lockwood *, Julie DavidsonSchool of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 7 July 2009Received in revised form 3 December 2009

Keywords:GovernanceGovernmentalityHybridityNeoliberalismEcocentrismLocalismNatural resource management

0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.12.001

* Corresponding author. School of Geography andversity of Tasmania, PB 78 Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Au

E-mail address: [email protected] (M

In this paper we explore hybridity in Australian natural resource governance, both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ ofneoliberalism. We develop an understanding of this governance regime as an assemblage of subjects, eth-ics, ends and techniques that constitute a hybrid of practices directed by three mentalities of govern-ment: neoliberalism, localism and ecocentrism. This three-way parentage engenders particularlycomplex internal dynamics – tensions and congruencies, grounds for contest and opportunities for col-laboration – that shape and transform the regime. Our analysis clarifies the formative roles of the threelogics and in so doing offers a new perspective of tripartite governance dynamics. We conclude by show-ing how the co-existing mentalities compete to establish NRM policy that is in accord with their respec-tive ends and ethics, subjectify problems and other actors to fit with their own agendas, and attempt tosecure primacy for those technologies congruent with their logics. At the same time, as mutually consti-tutive forces of the regime, they exhibit varying degrees of adaptivity as they co-opt or accommodatetechnologies favoured by their competitors.

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1. Introduction

Since 2002, Australian governments have experimented with adevolved form of natural resource governance in which commu-nity-based regional bodies, under government direction, developplans, procure investment and coordinate implementation of on-ground actions. Such approaches to natural resource management(NRM) are often seen as a response to the practical (continued de-clines in biodiversity and productivity) and moral (inattention tosocial justice) failures of centralised state-based governance(McCarthy, 2007). In Australian NRM, however, devolution to com-munities has been partial and conditional. Here, community-basedNRM bears the hallmarks of neoliberalised governing at a distance– deconcentration of responsibility to regional NRM organizationsas service deliverers without corresponding authorities; intensifi-cation of market logic through the promotion of market-basedinstruments such as competitive bidding; responsibilization andinstrumentalization of community as on-the-ground implementa-tion agents of regional NRM strategies; and performance manage-ment as a technology to direct regional NRM organizations(Davidson and Lockwood, 2009).

Nevertheless, elements of the state regulatory apparatus forenvironmental protection and development control established in

ll rights reserved.

Environmental Studies, Uni-stralia.. Lockwood).

the latter half of the 20th century have survived the neoliberalroll-back of government. And over the last decade, governmentshave designed and implemented new ‘soft’ regulations to enable,support and control the allocation of responsibilities, and, to a les-ser extent, powers, to communities and individuals. Regional NRMbodies, together with agencies of public government, private sectorbusinesses, civil society groups and individual landholders nowemploy, contest and shape governmental arrangements into a di-verse mix of voluntary, collaborative and rule-based measures.

Lemos and Agrawal (2006) interpret such trends as an emer-gence of hybrid environmental governance modes, comprisingco-management, public–private partnerships and social–privatepartnerships that bridge state–market–community divisions. Theyargue that ‘pure’ modes of governance are poorly equipped to re-spond to the complexity and multi-scalar character of coupled so-cial and natural systems, whereas hybrids that cross state–market–community divisions show considerable promise. Hybrid ap-proaches to environmental governance involving state–commu-nity partnerships have been used, for example, in the Amazonbasin to address the challenges of forest conservation generatedby road-building and climate change (Perz et al., 2008). The emer-gence of hybrid governance forms is also attributed to the crisis ofstate competence resulting from the scalar and capacity mis-matches that typify environmental problems (Karkkainen, 2005).

Neoliberal government in particular has shown a propensity tosustain and generate hybrid practices. The idea that neoliberallogics operate in tension with competing discourses to produce

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hybrid practices of government was first articulated by Stensonand Watt (1999). In their study of local government service provi-sion in southeast England, these authors found that earlier socialgovernment narratives around equitable and universal service pro-vision continued to be influential despite central governmentemphases on managerialist discourses of economy, efficiency andtarget-setting and community responsibility. Stenson and Watt(1999) conclude that different discourses and governmental logicsinteract and shift about as ‘governmental repertoires’ evolve. In thecase study, social governmental ideals were not so much relin-quished but reformulated with particular rationalities and prac-tices, such as lead roles for the public sector, being maintained.

McCarthy (2005) argues that the environment is an arenathrough which neoliberalism is actively engaging in experimentswith collaborative governance that are hybrids of neoliberal logicsand contemporary progressive impulses to democratize resourcemanagement. Australian agri-environmental programmes exem-plify this dynamic. Higgins and Lockie (2002) and Lockie and Hig-gins (2007) show how authorities’ expectations that landmanagers assume social and ecological responsibilities jointly withentrepreneurial and economically rational practices constitute aneoliberal strategy for resolving competing and apparently incom-patible imperatives. They term this a hybrid assemblage in thatpractices of governing attempt to address social and environmen-tal sustainability through economically rational means.

McGuirk (2005) charts the fortunes of neoliberal influences onmetropolitan planning in Sydney, paying particular attention tothe role of the state. This is a story of hybrid forms of governancemoving along a trajectory from roll-back neoliberalism, throughroll-out neoliberalism, to the most recent form of a metropolitanstrategy that is neither. She finds that successive narratives tendto overlap so that more recent global competitiveness narrativesintersect with rather than supplant earlier distributive concerns,with the interaction between these two discourses being com-pounded by a need for political legitimacy. The result is that,although neoliberal tendencies are present (that is, distributive is-sues and accessibility are viewed through an economic lens), themost recent metropolitan strategy portends considerable stateintervention and spatially directive planning. McGuirk (2005, p.67) concludes that ‘[s]omething more complex, partial and hybridhas been enacted’ that is ‘neither predetermined by any neoliber-alist prescription nor unequivocally neoliberalist’.

Similarly, recent scholarship from what might be called theNew Zealand school explores the ‘progressive spaces’ that some ac-tors have been able to create within the neoliberal project. Lewisand Underhill-Sem (2009, p. 167), for example, ‘highlight the po-tential of particular agents in particular contexts to harness neolib-eral technologies of control to alternative political projects’. Thecase study used to illustrate this contention involves an indigenousfamily, health and welfare organization in far northern New Zea-land, Te Rarawa, which was able to utilise new public managementcontract processes to become a successful deliverer of social ser-vices and advance a Maori anti-colonial agenda, despite the disad-vantages of competitive bidding and the uncertainties of project-based funding. So while earlier scholarship concentrated on theapparent hegemony of neoliberalism, more recent studies have at-tempted to de-mythologize it, to play up its inherent contradic-tions, and so to argue for the possibility of progressive spaceswithin the neoliberal project through exploitation of such tensions(Larner, 2003).

As these studies show, neoliberal forms of governing tend toemploy diverse and sometimes contradictory governmental tech-nologies in order to make programmes workable (Lockie and Hig-gins, 2007). Also evident is a concentration of research interest onhybrid forms as a strategy of neoliberal governance. Analyses ofneoliberalism’s propensity to hybridise have particularly focussed

on the interactions between actors and the ways in which collab-oration is conceptualised and managed. Key themes have beenthe distribution of power between parties in partnership arrange-ments, institutional forms in which actors come together toachieve mutual goals, and types and levels of stakeholder engage-ment. However, the forms, origins, structures and dynamics of hy-brid governance are largely unexplored. Little attention has beengiven to the underlying logics and dynamics that generate andshape these hybrids – their elements, the transformation processesacting upon them, and their resulting properties – limiting bothunderstanding and explanation. The focus on neoliberalism hasalso meant that accounts of hybridity pay little attention to thepower of socio-cultural processes to create and transform modesof governance (Barnett, 2005).

In this paper we explore hybridity in Australian natural re-source governance, both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of neoliberalism,and give a particular emphasis to nature conservation concerns.The analysis of governmentality approach is well-suited to thispurpose in that it ‘seeks to identify these different styles of thought[mentalities of government], their conditions of formation, theprinciples and knowledges that they borrow from and generate,the practices that they consist of, how they are carried out, theircontestations and alliances with other arts of governing’ (Roseet al., 2006, p. 84). And while Barnett (2005) argues that govern-mentality analyses tend to be blind to the ‘bottom-up’ agency ofspontaneous grass-roots collective actions, an aspect of nature gov-ernance that we are interested in exploring, this is more an artefactof governmentality literature concentrating on the neoliberal men-tality than a limitation of the approach. We agree with Barnett thatinvestigation of community-generated regimes is poorly devel-oped at present, and hope to make some contribution in thisregard.

We are not so much interested in particularities, but in thebroad dynamics that shape the current regime and influence itstrajectory. Our consideration of hybridity implicitly accommodatesthe understanding that natural resource governance is ‘alwaysbecoming, necessarily uneven, often contested, and sometimesexercised outside of the state’ (Rutherford, 2007, p. 292). We devel-op an understanding of NRM governance as an assemblage of sub-jects, ethics, ends and techniques that constitute a hybrid regime ofpractices directed by three mentalities of government: neoliberal-ism, localism and ecocentrism. This three-way parentage engen-ders particularly complex internal dynamics – tensions andcongruencies, grounds for contest and opportunities for collabora-tion – that shape and transform the regime.

We begin by introducing the contemporary structure of Aus-tralian NRM governance. To set the parameters for our analysis,we then outline the conceptual terrain and language of govern-mentality and hybridity used in this paper. Our analysis of the hy-brid dynamics of Australian natural resource governance follows.We conclude by showing how the co-existing mentalities – neo-liberalism, eocentrism and localism – compete to establish NRMpolicy that is in accord with their respective ends and ethics, sub-jectify problems and other actors to fit with their own agendas,and attempt to secure primacy for those technologies congruentwith their logics, while at the same time, as mutually constitutiveforces of the regime, exhibiting varying degrees of adaptivity byco-opting or accommodating technologies favoured by theircompetitors.

2. The structure of Australian NRM governance

Australian NRM governance comprises a complex of state, com-munity-based and private institutional structures concerned withsustaining agricultural productivity and the socio-economic

390 M. Lockwood, J. Davidson / Geoforum 41 (2010) 388–398

viability of rural communities, while addressing issues of decliningwater quality and quantity (both surface and ground water), salin-ity (irrigation and dryland), deterioration of soils (as a result ofincreasing salinity and sodicity), and loss of biodiversity and eco-system integrity.

Government in Australia has a three-tier structure. The primaryresponsibility for land and water management rests with the ‘mid-dle tier’: six Australian state governments (Western Australia,South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales (NSW), Victoriaand Tasmania) and two territory governments (Northern Territoryand Australian Capital Territory). The ‘top tier’ Australian Govern-ment has powers under the constitution to secure the delivery ofinternational obligations, such as those under the Convention onBiological Diversity, but has primarily engaged in NRM by gainingstate and territory support for national strategies and providing asignificant proportion of the funding for their delivery. Local gov-ernment is a creation of the states and the Northern Territory,and while this bottom tier has few direct NRM responsibilities, lo-cal governments influence NRM outcomes through their role asplanning authorities.

Up until the late 1980s, NRM in Australia was predominantly astate-based responsibility administered by government agenciesand statutory authorities. In the face of increasingly pressing con-cerns over the impact of declining water quality and soil saliniza-tion on agricultural productivity, the regulatory, enabling andadvisory roles of state institutions were augmented by the volun-tary formation of state-sponsored Landcare groups with a missionto deliver local on-ground outcomes. Following a ‘Decade of Land-care’, in 1997 the Australian Government allocated $1.25 billion ofthe funds generated from a partial sale of Telstra, the national tele-communications carrier, to a five-year programme, the NaturalHeritage Trust. This first five-year phase, NHT1, attempted to ad-dress problems of land degradation and biodiversity loss acrossrural Australia by funding community-based projects at the locallevel. As well as supporting Landcare and other local volunteer pro-grammes such as Bushcare and Coastcare, NHT1 assisted a wide-range of individual landholder initiatives. However, programme re-views identified a systemic inability of NHT1 to engender signifi-cant regional-scale change (Ewing, 2003) and highlighted a needto remediate this failure by regional strategic planning capable ofdirecting investment towards achieving priority outcomes (Austra-lian National Audit Office, 2001).

In response, the Australian Government redesigned the pro-gramme, so that from 2002 to 2008 a second phase NHT2 wasdelivered through a fourth tier of governance: an intermediate ‘re-gional’ scale between the state and local levels. Under a series ofbilateral NHT2 agreements, the Australian Government providedNRM direction and funding to the six Australian states and two ter-ritories, and thence to the regional level. NRM funds and responsi-bilities were devolved to 56 regional bodies, some based onexisting institutions and some specifically created for the purpose.The structures of these regional NRM bodies are different for eachstate and territory jurisdiction. In NSW, for example, 13 catchmentmanagement authorities (CMAs) were established under the Catch-ment Management Authorities Act 2003 (NSW), whereas in Queens-land regional NRM bodies were established as incorporated andnon-statutory community-based organizations.

The bilateral agreements established procedural, reporting andaccountability arrangements for regional NRM organisations,including requirements to produce regional assessment reportson problems and priority issues, develop investment priorities, en-sure that projects were aligned with priorities and focussed on per-formance outcomes, and provide comprehensive financial reports.Implementation of the bilateral agreements was administered byjoint steering committees comprising representatives of the Aus-tralian and relevant state/territory governments.

Regional NRM bodies were charged with preparing strategic re-gional plans which were subject to accreditation by the AustralianGovernment and the corresponding state or territory government.Following plan accreditation, associated regional investment strat-egies were developed by each regional body and used by govern-ments to allocate NHT2 funding. Performance against theseinvestments was monitored using the government-developedFramework for NRM Standards and Targets that identified nationalnatural resource outcomes and associated resource condition tar-gets, as well as establishing protocols for regional target-setting,monitoring and reporting.

Following completion of NHT2 in July 2008, the recently electedRudd Government instituted a replacement five-year $2.25 billionprogramme, Caring for our Country. This programme has widenedthe range of stakeholders able to participate, with NGOs such asGreening Australia and the World Wildlife Fund now able to bidfor the competitive funding component and so take an expandedrole in NRM delivery from which they were formerly largely ex-cluded. A potential outcome of this development is that biodiver-sity conservation concerns may receive greater attention. Whilequarantining 60% of available funding for regional NRM bodies, thisnew programme required them to compete for the remaining 40%with governments, community groups, conservation NGOs and anyother organizations seeking to deliver NRM outcomes. The Austra-lian Government identified specific outcomes to be delivered bythe programme in its first five years and potential strategies forachieving these outcomes. The Government intends to release an-nual Caring for our Country business plans that will specify targetsand invite proposals to deliver against the strategic objectives setout in outcomes statements. A ‘monitoring, evaluation, reportingand performance improvement’ framework will be used to mea-sure progress, which will be reported through ‘annual reportcards’.

It is this evolving regime of NRM governance, from Landcare,NHT1 and NHT2 to Caring for our Country, which we seek to analyseusing notions of governmentality and hybridity.

3. Governmentality concepts and the dynamics of hybridity

The conceptual elements of governmentality provide a powerfulmeans for characterising and analysing hybrid governance forms.Following Dean (1999), government entails the direction of sub-jects’ behaviours, in the service of an ethic or set of norms, towardsa variety of ends. To understand any form of rule, it is necessary tounderstand those who are subject to it (Agrawal, 2005). Subjectsare actors, individuals and their institutions, which are both poten-tially governable through agency of their responses to direction, aswell as being capable of thinking and acting in a manner contraryto that being sought by the governors (Dean, 1999). Subjects aretypically instrumentalized towards ends being sought by gover-nors. Directing takes place through the application by governingactors of technologies that provide the means to progress a govern-mental programme. The four elements – subjects, ethics, ends andtechnologies – are constructed into a regime of practices throughprocesses of rationalisation and according to explanatory logicsthat give rise to, and depend upon, particular forms of knowledge.A particular style of rationalisation and its associated logic and ele-ments constitute a mentality of governance. A regime of practices,such as natural resource governance, is constituted by one or morementalities.

Neoliberalism and communitarianism are well-known mentali-ties of rule. Such mentalities impart rationality to government in amanner characteristic to a regime – logics by which governors con-struct knowledge and agency through the practical deployment ofprocesses, techniques and instruments, by which they attempt to


realise their ends. Power is understood to be shaped by such logics,and is directed towards ends that arise within them. Governmentallogics also have an epistemological dimension in that they con-struct and employ knowledge to identify, characterise and proble-matize the objects of government. While having a degree ofinternal coherence (rationality) and retaining certain styles ofthought and technology, logics are beset by incompleteness, inter-nal contradictions and tensions, so that they are continually evolv-ing in response to newly identified problems and processes thatattempt to engineer internal consistency (Rose et al., 2006).

A regime of practices, which may incorporate multiple andoverlapping programmes, is constituted in response to the identi-fication of an object that is problematized as needing governance.Objects such as ‘nature’ and ‘natural resources’ are identified asrequiring intervention through processes that constitute the objectitself – how it is understood, delineated and related to other ob-jects – as well as the problems associated with it. The scope andcharacter of the objectification will be shaped by the mentality ofgovernance employed.

Rationalities are forms of thinking that strive to be clear, system-atic and explicit about how things are and how they ought to be(Dean, 1999). A rationality possesses a particular vocabularywhich, through explanatory logics, is employed to establish knowl-edge, set direction (as guided, more or less explicitly, by normativeprinciples) and negotiate positions (Rose, 1999). As such, they areconcerned with the proper ends, means and limits of government(Higgins, 2004). Governmental rationalities have an ethical aspectin that they possess normative principles or imperatives whichgovernment should seek to honour, and through the definition ofrelated ends, chart direction to which government is directed. Anethic can be defined as ‘a comprehensive, coherent set of principlesof obligation and value’ (Pluhar, 1983, p. 47). Because ethics inves-tigates what is of moral value and hence worthy of moral consid-eration, the values so defined can guide the formulation ofprinciples or rules to direct action. Rights-based ethics, for exam-ple, involve a claim to something and against someone, which isrecognised either through legal rule or by the principles of anenlightened conscience (Feinberg, 1974).

Regimes of practices have characteristic ways of indentifyingand constituting an object and the subjects acted upon in relationto it. A regime of practises exists as a relatively stable complex,such as ‘natural resource management’, that is supported by partic-ular rationalities, ‘mentalities of rule’, about an object, the prob-lems associated with it, the purposes being sought, the subjectsfrom whom responses are required, and the means by which theseresponses might be secured. Programmes contribute to regimes ofpractices without necessarily being fully internalised within them.

Technologies are assemblages of knowledge, expertise, calcula-tion, representation and inscription that transform rationalities ofgovernment into a means for shaping conduct in particular direc-tions for particular ends (Dean, 1996). Technologies are selectedand deployed in a strategic fashion as dictated by the regime logic,providing a regime with the means to make operational their rulethrough action, intervention and direction (Dean, 1999). Signifi-cantly, technologies of rule do not simply reflect broader politicalrationalities but, once applied, may have unforeseen or undesirableeffects, shaping both how rule is reflected upon and the types oftechnologies seen to produce the most ‘effective’ outcomes (Hig-gins, 2004).

In a hybrid regime of practices, multiple mentalities of rule andmultiple logics are simultaneously evident. Hybridization canpotentially occur between one or more of (i) a dominant form(such as neoliberalism); (ii) vestiges of once dominant now super-seded mentalities (such as welfarism); (iii) waxing and waning butnonetheless durable alternatives (such as localism which we dis-cuss below); and (iv) newly emergent modes that arise as a re-

sponse to novel or newly-recognised problems (such asecocentrism which we discuss below). Hybridized structures maybe evident within a regime of practices when the authors of a gov-ernance programme actively design in components from multiplelogics, so that the programme itself is a ‘meta-governance’ hybrid.A second ‘internal’ mode of hybridization may occur when authorsof a programme primarily follow the core elements of a particularlogic, but in an effort to resolve tensions or make a programmeworkable, graft aspects of another logic (particularly its technolo-gies) onto the primary logic.

‘Outside’ hybridization also has the potential to take two forms.A regime of practices may be constituted by the primary authors ofrule, as well as technologies established under prior forms of rulethat may not have been fully dismantled, giving actors the meansto pursue a parallel or rival programme based on a different logicto that evident in the dominant form of rule. This complex of formscomes together, not with intentionality on the part of any actor,but is an emergent outcome of competitive interactions betweenactors pursuing opposing governance logics. A second mode ofemergent hybridization can also be envisaged in which a regimeof practices is shaped more by the complementary interactions ofmultiple logics rather than competition between them.

We now apply these concepts of governmentality and hybridgovernance to Australian NRM.

4. The hybrid regime of Australian natural resource governance

Australian natural resource governance has, since the early1990s, been reshaped by a succession of neoliberal reforms thathave pursued a logic of community and individual responsibilityand deployment of market-oriented technologies. Alongside thisdominant regime, a pre-existing preservation-oriented regulatoryframework, attributable to pressures placed on governments byan ecocentrically-motivated conservation movement, remains lar-gely intact. And concurrent with both the roll-back and roll-outphases of neoliberal natural resource governance (Peck and Tickell,2002), a local community movement, while conditionally pro-moted and supported by the dominant regime, continues to havedistinct motivations and consequences. In this section we willshow how the three logics of neoliberalism, ecocentrism and local-ism, and the complementary and competing interactions betweenthem, have formed a hybrid regime of natural resource governance.Neoliberalism, ecocentrism and localism each constitute mentali-ties of governance insofar as they all adopt distinctive ethics, directefforts towards a specific end or ends, engage in particular subjec-tifications, and employ or advocate for technologies congruentwith their respective logics. That they cohere as identifiable men-talities does not gainsay, particularly in the case of neoliberalism,that each is polymorphous, possesses internal tensions and con-tradictions, and may not manifest as a single coherent programme.We begin by examining hybridity in the neoliberal, ecocentric andlocalist deployment of ethics and the identification of nature as anobject of governance.

4.1. Governance ethics and ends

Neoliberalism, while not one overwhelming idea (radical, glo-bal, market, conservative and social variants have been identified),grafts a range of technical developments onto a liberal ethics(Stratford et al., 2007). The core ethical commitments of liberalismare an emphasis on individual freedoms and property rights. Indi-vidual human freedom and the sanctity of human rights over prop-erty, including land, underpin a (neo)liberal objectification andproblematization of nature that understands humans, and only hu-mans, as ends unto themselves and consequently worthy of moral


consideration – the neoliberal mentality is firmly anthropocentric.An action is morally right if it produces the highest net utility (sat-isfaction) for humans of any available alternative action – the neo-liberal mentality is essentially utilitarian. Under this ethicalframework, nature is a fully instrumentalized resource requiredto support economic activity – an instrumentalization that isembedded in the regime label itself: ‘natural resource manage-ment’. Nature is represented using the language of economics asa type of capital asset that, along with financial and social capital,is understood as an input into the processes of material develop-ment. For example, the Victorian Government’s Green Paper onland and biodiversity management has a long-term goal to ‘main-tain and enhance natural capital’ (Department of Sustainability andEnvironment, 2008), and two of the five key issues in the earlierSustainability Action Statement are ‘maintaining and restoringour natural assets’ and ‘using our resources more efficiently’(Department of Sustainability and Environment, 2006a).

Benefits can be captured through the direct extraction of natu-ral resources, and as is increasingly recognised, through the main-tenance of ecosystem services that are essential inputs to economicproductivity. For example, the current Australian Government’sCaring for our Country programme:

recognises that a modern and prosperous Australia is inex-tricably linked to the health and sustainability of our ecosys-tems. Our waterways, atmosphere and soils all rely onfunctioning ecosystems. Successful farmers know that tobe profitable and to pass a productive business onto the nextgeneration, farming practices need to be environmentallysustainable (Australian Government, 2008).

Biodiversity and ecosystem integrity are to be protected in so far asthey ensure the productivity of natural systems and underpin themaintenance of those ecosystem services needed to secure a contin-uous flow of inputs such as water quality and quantity, soil healthand pollination capacity into human systems of production andreproduction. System inefficiencies in the generation of net (eco-nomic) benefits that arise from the secondary (negative) conse-quences of production, such as declining air, water and soilquality, are understood by neoliberalism as a problem of inadequatemarket inclusion. The neoliberal intention for nature governance isthus to maximise the flow of natural resource benefits while keep-ing negative externalities at the level at which the marginal benefitsof mitigation outweigh the costs.

This neoliberal problematization of, and purpose for, nature asresource co-exists with a competing set of understandings thatgained prominence amongst academics and activists during the1970s, and which have also been significant in shaping regulatoryprogrammes of nature governance. The essential ethic of this men-tality, which we will term ‘ecocentrism’, is a belief in the intrinsicvalue in nature, underpinned by an understanding of nature as anend in itself, independent of human instrumentalization. The riseto prominence in contemporary western thought of an intrinsic va-lue in nature is often traced to Aldo Leopold’s notion of a landethic:

It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land canexist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and ahigh regard for its value. By value, I of course mean some-thing far broader than mere economic value; I mean valuein the philosophical sense. . . . A thing is right when it tendsto preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the bioticcommunity. It is wrong when it tends otherwise (Leopold,1949, pp. 223–225).

While the intrinsic value of non-human nature is a ‘widely sharedintuition’ (Callicott, 1986, p. 140), and although intrinsic value innature is the foundation of a distinct environmental ethics (without

it, nature conservation claims reduce to lamination of environmen-tal concerns onto an anthropocentric ethic), exactly what in naturehas intrinsic value, and how intrinsic value inheres in that thing, re-main open questions. Arguments put forward in the environmentalphilosophical literature variously support location of intrinsic valuein higher animals (Feinberg, 1974), individual life-forms (Godfrey-Smith, 1980; Taylor, 1986), collective entities such as species (John-son, 1992), and ecosystems including their non-biotic components(Plumwood, 1991).

These positions provide a broad ethic through which conserva-tion activists have challenged the anthropocentric conception ofnature and built alternative policy platforms. They have ethicaland policy weight because the presence of end value implies moralconsiderability (Goodpaster, 1978) and a correlative imperative forimposing normative constraints on human action with respect tonature that emphasise preservation and non-intervention. The eco-centric mentality conceptualises nature as an absence of humansand their influences. Wilderness areas, as iconic places where hu-mans were perceived to be absent or should be excluded (exceptfor forms of contact that provoke a ‘wilderness experience’ andassociated opportunities for spiritual reflection), are a key focusfor protective action. The nature–human dialectic underpins a ‘for-tress logic’ according to which nature must be defended againstthe violence of people (Anderson and James, 2001). The early con-ception of national parks from the late nineteenth century until the1980s reflected such a nature–human dualism and confirmed theidea that nature should be protected from people. Over the lasttwo decades, this dualism has softened as many protected areaproponents adopted a more accommodating position – a ‘new par-adigm’ (Phillips, 2003) – in which certain low-intensity interac-tions between humans and wild nature are now understood andaccepted as legitimate. Nonetheless, threats to wild nature andthe accelerating contraction of wild areas under developmentand population pressures still give urgency and impetus to an envi-ronmental radicalism that, using intrinsic value of nature as a mor-al guide, constitutes a movement for change at a global scale.Ecological science has also been fundamental to the problematiza-tion of nature as something that is threatened and therefore ur-gently in need of governance (Rutherford, 2007).

The Tasmanian Wilderness Society, which exemplifies the eco-centric approach, was formed in 1976 to challenge the TasmanianGovernment’s hydro-industrialization strategy, and in the early1980s led a series of major protests and other actions against thedamming of Tasmania’s wild rivers for hydro-power. The organiza-tion has since changed its name to The Wilderness Society andadopted a national focus in taking up, amongst others, the causeof protecting ‘old growth’ forests against industrial forestry inter-ests. It continues to maintain its distance from mainstream politicsand focus on nature conservation issues, and although largelyresisting neoliberal influences, has recently introduced a localistelement into its campaigns by working with local communitiesand other NGOs to foster landscape-scale connectivity conserva-tion initiatives. In contrast, WWF-Australia, also formed in the1970s, has operated both ‘inside’ of neoliberal structures and withlocalist actors. From its beginnings WWF fostered working rela-tionships with businesses and governments, and in Australia ac-tively engages in a range of environmental policy, resourcemanagement and conservation programmes and projects, empha-sising social and economic as well as environmental needs throughestablishing partnerships with governments, business, local com-munities and scientists. The Australian Conservation Foundation,too, which was formed in the 1970s to advocate for the protectionof wilderness and natural reserves, began to pursue ‘brown’ issuesin the late 1980s. In 1989, it aligned with the conservative NationalFarmers’ Federation when the two organizations made a joint sub-mission to the Federal Government requesting the establishment


of a national programme of community-based land protection(Lockie, 1999). Such transferrals of environmental managementresponsibilities from governments to non-state actors have oc-curred worldwide as major NGOs have taken on responsibilityfor trying to change corporate and institutional practices (Emel,2002).

Neoliberal instrumentalization and ecocentric normalisation ofnature as a moral concern are, in different ways, supportive of nat-ure–human dualisms. The former externalises nature through aprocess of objectification, creating a relationship in which the‘other’ is available for use in ways constrained only by a concernfor human (material) well-being which motivates concern for thecondition of nature only insofar as it sustains the productive capac-ity required for economic development. The latter privileges areasfrom which humans are absent or on which they have had little,and preferably no, evident impact. Nature is constituted (somewould say romanticised) as a distinct and elevated domain fromwhich humans can gain spiritual insight and physical nourishment– and the more separated nature is from human intervention, pastor present, the more powerful and beneficial this interaction withthe ‘other’ will be. And while ecocentrism also emphasises a rela-tional connectedness by which humans strive to become a partof or closer to nature, the union being sought is with a pure ‘other’from which humans can learn and derive inspiration.

A third objectification and problematization of nature is evidentin the response of local communities to natural and semi-naturalenvironments co-extant with, or nearby to, the areas in which theyreside. Vestiges of a pioneering perspective, whereby the Austra-lian ‘bush’ (various forms of native vegetation including forestsand woodlands) was seen as a hostile place to be brought undercontrol and civilised, is still evident alongside a more positive sen-sibility that understands local natural features as important ele-ments in the construction of community identity. The latter,which is more relevant to contemporary nature governance, con-cerns the construction of a local ‘sense of place’ in which elementsof the natural world are invested with meaning and value as localbiophysical features become known through utilitarian, personal,social and spiritual encounters (Tuan, 1977). Sense of place is a re-sponse to environment that is simultaneously individual and rela-tional: intimately connected to self and community identity andexperience; it is visceral, emotional and cognitive, being made byand constituting sights, sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings (Van-clay, 2008). Its dimensions include attachment, which usually re-quires long and deep experience of, and involvement with, aparticular place (Relph, 1976), and dependence associated withthe satisfaction of physical or psychological needs; and identity –a sense of belongingness or symbolic connection through whicha subjective sense of self is constructed and expressed (Jorgensenand Stedman, 2001). As a component of self-identity, place identityenhances feelings of belonging to one’s community (Relph, 1976),thereby fostering community cohesion and capacity to act towardscollective goals. It is through such attachments, dependencies andidentifications that the moral significance of particular places isconstructed. Such places are intimately connected with self andcommunity identify and behaviours towards them are under-pinned by norms that identify what is appropriate and acceptable.

Across much of ‘traditional’ rural Australia, these norms areutilitarian, and embedded in social histories, in that they legitimiselocal activities such as hunting, ‘bush grazing’ and extraction of for-est products, to the extent that these practices are associated withlong-standing associations with the areas on which they occur.These are the ‘traditional users’ – actors who have in common withneoliberalism a concern for the sanctity of private property rights.They differ, however from the neoliberal mentality in their privi-leging of local control over resources, restricted capital mobility,and respect for traditional modes of production. This characteristic

is emphasised, for example, by the resentment shown by somelong-time rural Tasmanian residents towards the non-traditionalindustrial-scale forestry now being practiced in their area (Hay,2008). They also resent controls exercised in the name of wilder-ness protection on their ‘traditional’ pastimes and activities (Kirk-patrick, 2001).

This is not to suggest that local places are fixed in a particularform – rather, temporal change tends to be slow in comparisonto the more open and speculative innovations supported by neolib-eralism. Most importantly, change must be instituted by the localcommunity. Autonomy and self-determination are fiercely pro-tected, as is the ‘right’ to maintain and shape ‘their’ environmentin forms that meet local needs. We use the term ‘localism’ to indi-cate a mentality that is motivated by an ethic of maintaining theintegrity of local places, as this is understood by the local commu-nities to whom they are important. The distinctiveness of thismentality, and the moral assertion of local possession on whichit is based, is evident in the construction by its agents of ‘control-ling’ bureaucrats, ‘irrational’ environmentalists and ‘predatory’ bigbusiness.

Although localism and neoliberalism have in common the sanc-tity of property rights and an emphasis on self-determination,localist rights to property are morally grounded in a long termassociation with and commitment to a particular place, rather thanthe primary freedoms espoused by the liberal tradition. Localism istherefore protectionist with regard to local identity and autonomy,resisting control of natural resources passing into outside hands.Neoliberal structural market-based reforms, in contrast, encourageand enable delocalisation of asset control, creating conditions bywhich large non-local private interests strategically acquire andmanage natural resource assets as part of large portfolios thatare largely insensitive to the particularities of local geography.The process of delocalisation is evident, for example, in the neolib-eral introduction of tradable rights to water allocations by whichownership of water is detached from particular parcels of land.

Of the three mentalities, localism supports the most unifiedconception of human–nature relations – humans have a legitimatepart in contributing to the creation of landscapes, and at the sametime are shaped, and have their identities formed, by the particu-larities of local environment. Instead of the universalist natureontologies of neoliberalism and ecocentrism, localism understandsthe modes of human interaction with nature as place-specific,leading to a particular respect for localised diversity in combinednatural and cultural forms.

The three ethical positions, neoliberalism, ecocentrism andlocalism, and their associated ends, exist alongside and in tensionwith each other. While neoliberalism is currently dominant,place-independent instrumentalist purposes co-exist with main-taining and protecting place-specific human–nature relations anda concern for protecting the intrinsic value of nature. We now turnour attention to the subjects of governance formed by eachmentality.

4.2. Creation of NRM subjects

The subjects of neoliberal governance are individual resource(land, vegetation, water) owners, institutions both private and pri-vatised (such as government business enterprises responsible forforest and water governance) and, interestingly, ‘community-based’ organisations. Under a neoliberal logic, private individualsand corporate entities are the subject of privileged attentionthrough governance regimes that support and seek to increaseopportunity and capacity for entrepreneurial activity. Under theguidance of the state, subjects are responsibilized and given auton-omy to act in a manner consistent with market logic. Neoliberalismseeks to create active subjects (including organizations, voluntary


associations and communities) who accept the devolved tasks ofgovernment (Bergh, 2004; Gibbs and Jonas, 2001; Goodwin et al.,2002; O’Neill, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2005), act with enlightenedself-interest, understand the social value of individual and mar-ket-based rights, and manage and minimize their own risks (Pel-lizzoni, 2003; Rose, 1996; Swyngedouw, 2005). Protection andextension of private actors’ power is assisted in two ways. In Aus-tralian NRM, private rights have been allocated over resources suchas water. At the same time, and in somewhat contradictory fashion,biodiversity is characterised as a public good so that it is placedoutside the sphere of responsibility inhering in private land use,enabling compensation for any actions taken by private rightsholders that protect biodiversity by such means as stewardshippayments (Lockie and Goodman, 2006).

Concurrent with the empowerment of private individuals andcorporations, under neoliberal influence the powers of governmentdepartments with responsibilities for allocation of forestry, waterand tourism resources have been either passed over to privateinterests or these institutions have themselves been restructuredalong corporate lines so that their key decision-making and deliv-ery functions have been distanced from government. As a result,technical resources, previously available through governmentextension programmes, have been cut back in the name of smallgovernment and are now undersupplied, particularly in more re-mote regions that have difficulty attracting and retaining theirown expertise. The practice of corporatisation is a second spherethrough which neoliberalism seeks to institutionalise a utilitarianagenda, thereby shifting the emphasis away from a public interestmandate and towards a goal of delivering efficient resource alloca-tion of natural resources to private interests. This practice wasembodied in NHT2 as an expectation that all regional NRM organi-zations would be directed by boards operating according to corpo-rate governance procedures so that bodies established under theCatchment Management Authorities Act 2003 of NSW, for example,have the powers of corporate entities. Boards are also appointedby the NSW Minister on a skills basis while Victorian CMAs havetheir responsibilities spelled out in a Statement of Obligations thatspecifies monitoring, financial, social and environmental perfor-mance to ensure ‘the sustainable development of natural resourcebased industries’ (Department of Sustainability and Environment,2006b). Regionalization can thus be understood, in part, as a covertliberal and economic rationalist agenda that is devaluing govern-ment and leading to quasi-privatisation (Lane, 2003). In this sense,regional NRM bodies can be interpreted as more akin to boardsintent on pursuing regional agendas consistent with their ownprivate interests, than a fourth level of government, although, asdescribed in the next sub-section, such character is made morecomplex (an instance of hybridization inside of neoliberalism)by governmental deployment of ‘governing at a distance’technologies.

The third, and perhaps most significant, subjectification by neo-liberalism has been the construction of ‘communities’ as govern-mental subjects. Under a neoliberal logic, actors can be madegovernable by creating and using their identity with and allegianceto a community (Rose, 1996). During the 1990s, the most impor-tant ‘community-based’ subjects of NRM governance were Land-care groups – voluntary associations of landholders associatedwith particular locally-defined places. Landholders were encour-aged by governments to form and join Landcare groups throughstate-sponsored suasive communications, and indirectly throughthe efforts of industry bodies such as the National Farmers’ Feder-ation. Under NHT2, however, regional NRM bodies became the newsubjects of governance, as well as the agents charged with deliver-ing regional outcomes within a government-prescribed frameworkto their subject ‘communities’. Under these reforms, regional com-munities have been constructed over geographic areas for which

‘community’ members had little or no prior identification in anexample of what Rose (1996) termed the artificial disaggregationof a state jurisdiction’s population. Regionalized governance struc-tures, together with technologies of implementation such as catch-ment management plans, have in effect created new governablespaces at a sub-jurisdictional scale (Lane et al., 2008). In thisway, social concerns are inscribed as new communities of placewithin which relations between individuals and their communitiesare responsibilized and redefined in terms of neoliberal morality(Higgins and Lockie, 2002; Rose, 1996).

Regionally de-concentrated Australian natural resource gover-nance makes new subjects for whom the environment constitutesa critical domain of thought and action, and changes the way thesesubjects view the environment and their place in it. Such transfor-mation is achieved by the exercise of state power that reconsti-tutes political–economic relations between centres, localities andsubjects (Agrawal, 2005). Governing at a distance is attemptedthrough alignment of actors’ subjectivities so that they internalisethe ends being sought by government. By defining the objects ofperformance, and signifying normative expectations, the resourcecondition targets established under NHT2 are means by which gov-ernments exercise control over regional actors and thereby makenatural resources governable (Rydin, 2007). Under NHT2, the abil-ity of state actors to draw regional actors into the new governancestructures was predicated on making access to substantial state re-sources conditional on acceptance of the regional model, whichprovided for devolution of responsibility for achieving NRM out-comes, under strong direction from the state. Regional actors alsosaw an opportunity to increase community control over decisionsaffecting regional resources (Lockie and Higgins, 2007). The latter,promulgated through state-sponsored narratives, was crucial inengendering the support needed to push through the reforms, par-ticularly in the face of localist resistance from Landcare and otherplace-based groups who were marginalised under the new struc-tures. Some states enacted specific legislation to support theregionalization of resource management often with AustralianGovernment funding as both ‘stick’ and the ‘carrot’. The TasmanianNatural Resource Management Act 2002, for example, specifiesinstitutional arrangements including the composition of regionalcommittees, which have a strong though not overwhelming repre-sentation from the private sector. Legislative arrangements inother states, such as Victoria’s, specify that primary producersshould comprise 50% of the membership of regional organizations’governing boards.

As well as redefining communities of place, neoliberalism hasattempted to subjectify non-local and spatially indeterminatecommunities of interest. Implementation of the neoliberal pro-gramme requires placation, and preferably cooption, of nature con-servation advocates, bodies representing resource user interestsparticularly in the agriculture and water sectors, as well as aca-demics and other researchers. While some of the more radicalenvironmental groups have refused to be drawn into neoliberal-in-spired policy processes (the Wilderness Society, for example), oth-ers such as the WWF-Australia that actively participate in andattempt to shape policy, face a continual challenge in maintainingindependence and avoiding absorption into or use by the dominantregime.

Localist actors, rather than looking outward and attempting anexternalised subjectification, seek to normalise subject populationswithin the geographic range of their place identification. Local com-munity leaders, working through local informal networks, localgovernment, local associations such as Landcare groups, and the lo-cal membership of larger organisations such as farmers’ federations,seek to consolidate and mobilise local residents’ and landowners’calls for more control over local resources. Neoliberal and localistregimes thus compete for subjects amongst rural populations.


And in contrast with the multiple subjectifications of neoliber-alism, ecocentric actors have pursued a monolithic, universalist ap-proach. Assuming the ‘voice of nature’, they have attempted tocondition human subjects according to an ecocentric imperativethat identifies all humans as subject to the moral duties that arisefrom intrinsic value. Darier (1999) interprets this as a strategic at-tempt to normalise the human population into ecological subjectsbound to follow new protectionist modes of thought and behaviourtowards nature. As noted above, this subjectification has enjoyedsome success in being translated into statements of global environ-mental intent. Social psychology research is also suggestive ofsuccessful subjectification amongst a significant proportion ofAustralians – surveys show that ecocentric views are held by a sig-nificant proportion of the Australian population (Winter and Lock-wood, 2004). Although the extent of ecocentric belief is notnecessarily or solely attributable to green activist campaigns, theyare a key influence in promulgating and shaping this value orienta-tion. Correlation between conservation group membership andecocentric orientation (Winter and Lockwood, 2005) is also sugges-tive of such influence.

Ecocentric actors seek to construct subjects as citizens with amoral responsibility of environmental care, willing to act on thisresponsibility by constraining their own behaviour in the interestsof nature conservation, and recruiting others to the cause. In this,ecocentric and localist subjectifications both share a mobilisationimperative. They differ vastly, however, in their scale of operation.While the formation of localist subjects can be firmly placed withinrural Australia, ecocentric subjects have, until recently, been pre-dominantly made in the cities. Notable examples of massed urbanresponse to ecocentric subjectification include the WildernessSociety’s successful campaign against the Gordon–below–Franklinhydro-development scheme and recent anti-pulp mill rallies inTasmania. Over the past decade or so, ‘sea-change’ and ‘tree-change’ migrations of urban retirees and people seeking amenitylifestyle opportunities in rural areas (Burnley and Murphy, 2003)have expanded the scope for ecocentric subjectification, particu-larly in coastal areas and peri-urban fringes. In the state of Victoria55% of private land is moving towards amenity or lifestyle uses(Mansergh and Cheal, 2007), significantly diluting prior localistconstituencies and opening up new opportunities for hybrid modesof natural resource governance.

4.3. Deployment of technologies

While, as we have shown, hybridity between neoliberalism,ecocentrism and localism is evident in the ethics, purposes andsubjectifications of Australian natural resource governance, theprecise form of the three-way hybridity is most sharply revealedby the employment of technologies associated with eachmentality.

Neoliberal technologies for NRM comprise means of responsibi-lizing regional and local communities (deconcentration, partner-ships); measures to build agency (development of social andhuman capital, creation of markets in natural resources, an empha-sis on voluntary agreements); technologies of control (tied fund-ing, strategic planning, performance accountability, knowledgeproduction and dispersal systems); and strategies of placationand cooption (participation, partnerships). With respect to respon-sibilization technologies, Higgins and Lockie (2002) explain howthe rationality of government underlying Landcare gave priorityto economic self-calculation, an approach that continued underNHT through increasing deployment of market-based instrumentsand further expressed through the competitive funding arrange-ments under Caring for our Country. Under NHT2 neoliberal perfor-mance accountability mechanisms included a requirement forregional NRM organizations to develop a resource condition strat-

egy and to report on their performance on fulfilling national re-source condition targets established by government. Caring forour Country further establishes this approach with the programmedesigned as ‘one clear goal, a business approach to investment,clearly articulated outcomes and priorities and improved account-ability’ (Australian Government, 2009). Clearly the performancecontrols evident under NHT2 are being maintained under thenew regime. Partnerships and participation too have been de-ployed as a neoliberal technology of control, enabling cooption ofboth ecocentric and localist actors. In New Zealand, communityactivists have been forced into, opted for, or been recruited intonew ‘professionalised’ roles in their efforts to advance social justice(Larner and Craig, 2005). Similar dynamics are evident in Austra-lian NRM. The Australian neoliberal programme has employed par-ticipation rhetoric in an attempt to neutralise threats posed by agreen urban citizenry, separating them from the subjects of gover-nance – regional communities – and co-opting the more amenableof them into representative roles within the regional governancestructures. As mentioned above, these roles are predominantlyfilled by primary producers many of whom could be characterisedas conservative-leaning. Rural people have also been given thechoice of either participating in the regionalized NHT2 processesor missing out on significant funding opportunities that may ben-efit their local area. The effect of this has been a (partial) shift ofallegiances away from the Landcare and local place-basedinitiatives.

In contrast with the neoliberal logic, the preferred ecocentrictechnologies are moral suasion, political mobilisation and strongregulation. While neoliberal state propaganda employs moralpressure and appeals to enlightened self-interest to establishenvironmentally responsibilized individuals, ecocentric conserva-tion NGOs use the same methods to mobilise citizens into takingboth personal and political action. Some conservation NGOs,particularly those relying on a more mainstream constituency, alsoattempt to broaden their influence by engaging with institutiona-lised NRM processes, such as regional NRM planning. GreeningAustralia, whose original raison d’être was the mass planting oftrees, has more recently become heavily involved as a negotiatorand deliverer of diverse NRM services. Because from its inceptionthis organization has cooperated with landholders on mitigatingthe land degradation which is an outcome of productivist agricul-ture (Lawrence and Vanclay, 1994), growth-oriented governmentsview Greening Australia as non-threatening. However, such orga-nizations risk cooption into the neoliberal programme – a key rea-son why the more radical conservation groups continue to resistsuch engagements.

Core to the ecocentric logic of the organized conservationmovement is a need to secure nature conservation outcomesthrough regulation (and an associated mistrust of economic instru-ments, although again the more mainstream groups have recentlygiven them a somewhat nervous and qualified acceptance). Alllands in Australia are subject to legislation, enacted at both the na-tional and state/territory levels, that identifies rare, threatened orvulnerable nature plants and animals, and authorises mechanismsto prevent harm to these species. Regulations to protect areas arealso prominent, with all jurisdictions having provisions to establishnature conservation reserves on public lands, and to encourage andenable such reserves on private lands. These instruments, firstestablished under pre-neoliberal governments in the late 1960sand early to mid 1970s, were a response to the first wave of greenecocentric activism that had some success in mobilising anincreasingly educated and environmentally-motivated urban mid-dle class.

During the 1990s, regulatory responses to NRM issues such asclearing of native vegetation, though established under predomi-nantly (but not entirely) neoliberal rule, are attributable to a com-


bination of pressure from environmental activists acting under themoral and political force of ecocentric logic and scientific evidenceof the link between removal of native perennial vegetation andthreats to agricultural productivity through flow-on effects suchas soil salinization. However, regulatory responses met with strongresistance from a coalition of productivist and localist agri-inter-ests. In NSW, for example, the State Environmental Planning Policy46 and subsequent Native Vegetation Conservation Act 1997 werefiercely contested on the grounds that they unfairly restrictedlandholders’ capacity to determine locally appropriate manage-ment regimes. Such resistance ultimately led to the repeal of thelegislation and its replacement by a complex of incentive-basedand capacity building measures, as well as intuitional reforms al-lied with the two NHT programmes. So while instituting new leg-islation from the mid-1990s proved politically unacceptable, thepre-existing legislative regime was not dismantled. It has, how-ever, been marginalised under the neoliberal influence throughchronic under-resourcing, managerialist appointments to manykey environmental posts, and policy settings that are both incom-plete and rhetorical rather than substantive (Crowley, 1999).

Hybridity in knowledge deployment is also apparent. Consis-tent with a neoliberal agenda, favouring of economic and produc-tivist agricultural knowledge is evident in the formation of NRMdecision processes and outcomes, but this is tempered by theuse, under NHT2, of resource condition targets informed by theecosystem science and conservation biology favoured by ecocen-trists. At the same time, local knowledge, the import of which isof course emphasised by localist actors, has been built into theinstitutional structure of Australian NRM by the majority presenceof local actors on regional NRM boards. While this, as observed ear-lier, is part of the neoliberal responsibilization of local actors, italso serves to directly inject local knowledge into the formulationof NRM plans.

Some localist technologies – decentralisation and local empow-erment; institutionalising access rights to public lands for tradi-tional local uses such as hunting, horse riding and cattle grazing– push at the margins of neoliberal policy and achieve traction tothe extent that accommodation is possible, or placation of a polit-

The Wilderness

Society

Neoliber

Ecocentrism

Coastc

WWF

Governm

Fig. 1. Indicative institutional and organizational positions in A

ically troublesome constituency is necessary. With mechanisms toprotect property rights, localists are to some extent in accord withneoliberals, but part company over the former’s protectioniststance against non-local ownership. McCarthy (2005) suggests thatcommunity-based (localist) governance forms are susceptible toneoliberal appropriation, citing the experience of community for-estry in the US. In this case, neoliberalism and (localist) communityforestry are linked through their similar discourses on civil societyand community and state incapacity. First of these linkages is thecore shared idea that communities manage forests better and withgreater legitimacy than central governments. Second, in their crit-icism of state failure, communities are at one with markets, whoseown failings communities ironically supplement. Underneath this‘symbiotic’ hybridization of localist community forestry with aneoliberal agenda, issues of values, power, inequity of outcomes,unequal access to resources, and conflict are masked by homoge-neous conceptions of community, win–win rhetoric, and consen-sus decision-making. An Australian instance of neoliberalcooption of localism is the formation of Timber Communities Aus-tralia, an organization that uses the credibility and traction oflocalism to support the forestry industry’s agenda. When commu-nities’ participatory capacity is used in an instrumental fashion so-lely for productivist purposes, such cooption may ultimatelydamage one of localism’s strengths, namely, the stocks of socialcapital and social trust that support the community cohesion nec-essary in cooperative efforts for public good outcomes, such as nat-ure conservation or community sustainability.

5. Conclusion

The analysis offered in the previous section demonstrates thatthe institutions and organizations of Australian NRM each exhibitparticular combinations of neoliberal, localist and ecocentric men-talities (Fig. 1). As indicated by the clustering of more powerful ac-tors in the vicinity of the neoliberal apex, the equilateral geometryof Fig. 1 does not imply equal influence. State and national govern-ments, together with regional NRM bodies, occupy a broad space of

Farmers Federations

Regional NRM

alism

Localism

areLandcare

Greening Australia

ents

ustralian NRM relative to the three governing mentalities.


predominantly neoliberal character, with some localist and to alesser extent ecocentric attributes. Caring for our Country hasshifted and extended the ground somewhat, strengthening theexpression of some elements of neoliberal rule, while reintroduc-ing opportunities for localist influence and elevating the promi-nence of nature conservation concerns. Organizations such as thevarious farmers’ federations attempt to occupy ground jointly con-stituted by localist and neoliberal productivist logics. Despite his-toric state-sponsorship, Landcare remains a dominantly localistenterprise that, while still emphasising productivity-related issues,is also, under the influence of ecocentrically-oriented urban immi-grants, pushing out into nature conservation space. This phenom-enon is also evident in some NRM regions, particularly those onthe eastern seaboard and south-west Western Australia. Giventhe environments with which they deal are much less focused onagricultural production than those of their Landcare cousins, andreinforced by the urban and peri-urban locality of many groups,Coastcare is both localist and mildly ecocentric in character. Sincetheir inception in the 1970s, community-based nature conserva-tion organizations such as The Wilderness Society have advocateda strong ecocentric mentality and associated protectionist technol-ogies, and in particular strong forms of species conservation andprotected area legislation. Other conservation groups have beenmore immediately responsive to international shifts in thinkingabout a more people-focussed paradigm of protected areas, com-munity-based conservation, and the potential of using market-based instruments to achieve nature conservation outcomes.WWF-Australia, for example, works in this complex space of eco-centric, neoliberal and localist influences.

We have shown that neoliberalism, while predominant, is notthe sole mentality of governance that has shaped and is shapingthe regime of Australian NRM. Along with neoliberalism, localismand ecocentrism constitute variously competing and mutually con-stitutive mentalities in that they each possess defined ends andprogrammatic logics, undertake strategic subjectifications of com-munities and/or resources, and attempt to fashion outcomesthrough deployment of favoured technologies. Localist actors em-ploy place-based and protectionist/exclusivist rhetoric to mobiliseand construct a constituency willing to challenge the unfettereddeployment of neoliberal technologies and the associated instru-mentalization of community, while showing a willingness to adaptand accommodate elements of the neoliberal programme to fur-ther their own ends. Ecocentric actors inject sustained and re-peated challenges to the neoliberal instrumentalization of natureand have had some success in driving an expansion of a nationalreserve system encompassing substantial areas of public and pri-vate lands. And while neither of these subsidiary mentalities canclaim the political or institutional power enjoyed by neoliberalism,they have both provided an enduring countervailing influence. Inpart their persistence is a consequence of adaptive accommodationand cooption of neoliberal programme elements, as for example inthe localist participation in devolved NRM governance and the eco-centrist acceptance of market-based instruments to secure natureconservation outcomes on private land.

The co-existing mentalities are thus in competition to establishNRM policy that is in accord with their respective ends and ethics,subjectify problems and other actors to fit with their own agendas,and secure primacy for those technologies congruent with theirlogics. At the same time, as mutually constitutive forces of the re-gime, they exhibit varying degrees of adaptivity, co-opting oraccommodating technologies favoured by their competitors. Whilethis may, over time, blur their distinctive character, each mentalityhas, at its core, retained the essence of its primary ends and ethics.Around the edges, however, a fraying is evident whereby organiza-tions such as Greening Australia are apparently disassociating froma core and internalizing some of the hybridity that is evident across

the regime as a whole. Such organizations, if stable and able toaccommodate the internal tensions of their adopted positions,have the potential to become powerful players by virtue of theirwide ‘middle of the road’ appeal and inherent flexibility.

Identification of the mentalities, with their ends, logics, subjec-tifications and technologies which constitute the hybrid regime ofNRM governance, together with analysis of the associated intra-and inter-logic dynamics, provide understandings that open newpossibilities for interrogating the trajectory, efficacy and normativeimplications of unfolding regimes of environmental governance.Exposing the hybridity of NRM governance in this way provides aframework for future design work that might envisage forms ofcombination between the three logics as a meta-governance men-tality that may yield better social and environmental outcomes.Such dynamics also point to the possible formation of a higher-or-der hybrid mentality of rule which is itself a product of sustainedco-existence of the three mentalities. Further work is needed tomore fully examine the theoretical and empirical dimensions ofsuch hybrid trajectories and their normative implications for envi-ronmental governance.

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Environmental governance and the hybrid regime of Australian natural resource management