Farmers, voluntary stewardship programs, and collaborative natural resource governance in rural Australia

Qualitative, semi-structured interviews and surveys of Australian 23 farmers involved in voluntary stewardship programs. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews of 7 non-farmer stakeholders (animal welfare and environmental NGOs, Regional NRM body, government, researchers).

Despite large financial investments by governments and farmers, as well as significant inputs of time, effort and goodwill, the ecological, social and productive capacity of the Australian rural environment is under threat. The nature of environmental problems, the limited capacity of rural communities and government constraints pose immense challenges of governance. Traditional governance measures (ie those centred on public laws) and purely private and self-regulatory forms seem unable to meet these challenges. This has spurred interest in collaborative modes, with the hope of combining the best of both the public and private spheres. Collaborative experiments are already underway in rural Australia, but there is a need for more empirical examination of how such arrangements work in practice. The great hopes attached to the success of collaborative governance are mostly theoretical or based on applications that may not be relevant to rural natural resources in Australia.