Full Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education, Issue ...

122McKayState Implementation of the NWI throughRegional OrganizationsRegional delivery of natural resourcesmanagement is the principle mode of investmentunder the Natural Heritage Trust and National ActionPlan for salinity and the particular role of DEHthrough its leadership of the Natural Heritage Trustsecond Phase. Each State needs to create new regionalNatural Resources Management structures.Such bodies should include landowners, industries,non-government organizations, indigenousrepresentatives, representatives from the three levelsof government (local, state, and national) andother interested people. This is the way for localand other parties to be involved in natural resourcesmanagement (Australian Local GovernmentAssociation 2005). Australia has been divided into60 regions with each one responsible for preparinga regional natural resources management plan.The structure and nomenclature varies betweenand within the states based on variations in statelegislation (Mutton pers. com. 2006 SA). Theselection processes for members of the regionalbodies differ as well. The final aspect of differenceis where the state overarching body is placed inthe existing state natural resources managementprocesses. The case study from South Australiasets out the process in a well advanced state. Therole of the Natural Resources Management Councilin South Australia under the Natural ResourcesManagement Act 2004 is to draft a State Plan fornatural resources management and to take responsibilityto deliver the National Action Plan andNatural Heritage Trust bilateral Agreements signedwith the Federal Government. The State Plan is for5 years and was completed in 2005 with a 50-yearvision. The Plan informs government agencies,the eight regional Natural Resources ManagementBoards, local government, community and industrypartners (Eyre Peninsula Coastal DevelopmentStrategy 2006). Each Regional Natural ResourcesManagement Board drafts their own Regional Planinvolving all of the above with support from StateAgencies. Each Regional Plan highlights all thenatural resources management issues in the region,develops actions to address these concerns and thenselects the most important issues for action. Theplans also set resource conditions and managementaction targets based on agreed national standardsto help determine progress toward achieving outcomes.State-Based Definitions of EnvironmentallySustainable Development and NaturalResources Management: PotentialPartnership Problems for Water SupplyBusinessesWhile the overarching goals are set federally, themeans to achieve them are left to the states who,as in all federations, chose to do things differently.This can create a laboratory of policy experimentsthat offer learning opportunities, but can also createconfusion (Brandies 1932). What does sustainabledevelopment really mean? Sustainable developmentas a concept is notable for the lack of consistencyin its interpretation (Sharachchandra 1991). Whileits breadth is appealing on the political level, thisis also its weakness as the problems of poverty,environmental degradation, economic growth, andparticipation are not well articulated. Such a lackof clarity may hamper the debate and certainly theimplementation.In Australia, each state has definedEnvironmentally Sustainable Development ina number of acts that apply to all actions of thewater supply businesses and other institutions.The definitions of each of these spans over manysections of each of the Acts and the rules andinterpretation of Acts in each state are alsodifferent. The modern concept of EnvironmentallySustainable Development, which in someinstances date from only 1987 (Brundtland 1987),differs in its width within each state (Table 1).The fundamental premise of EnvironmentallySustainable Development (ESD) is that economicdevelopment must be balanced against theprotection of biological diversity, the promotionof equity within and between generations, and themaintenance of essential ecological processes. TheCommonwealth Government working groups onESD drafted these principles as a guide in 1992(Hamilton and Throsby 1998) to facilitate decisionmakingprocesses to effectively integrate both longand short-term economic, environmental, social,and equity considerations.1. Lack of full scientific certainty should notbe used as a reason for postponing measuresto prevent environmental degradation (theUCOWRJOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY WATER RESEARCH & EDUCATION