Towards Design Principles for Nesting in Australian Watershed Management

Despite the complexity of watershed management, policy-makers in Australia and other countries have given little systematic attention to the challenge of learning how to organise it effectively. Meanwhile, evidence has emerged that community-based organisational systems with enduring success in addressing complex problems of natural resource management are likely to consist of ‘multiple layers of nested enterprises’. This paper considers the contribution that organisational nesting of this kind could make to improving the performance of watershed management programs, particularly in Australia. After reviewing the theoretical advantages of the organisational nesting concept for complex problems, the focus of the paper shifts to identifying on the basis of a literature review a set of preliminary design principles that, after an appropriate process of ‘ground-truthing’ and refinement, might be used to guide application of the concept to watershed management, at least in Australia. The set identified contains 24 preliminary design principles. This includes 10 structure-related principles organised under four headings (i.e., base-level units, boundaries, rules, and subsidiarity) and 14 processrelated principles organised under 12 headings (i.e., catalysing voluntary cooperation, formalising organisational processes, pacing organisational growth, purposefulness, recruiting leadership, learning, participation in decision-making, monitoring and enforcement, conflict resolution, government recognition, deliberative decision-making, and leading by example). The value of this set for actual watershed management programs in Australia is to be explored over the next few years through case studies of three such programs. * This paper has been prepared as part of the project ‘Nesting community-based NRM for regional accountability and grassroots cooperation’ funded by the (Australian) Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. Assistance from the Australian Research Council for the related project ‘Institutional transitions to sustainable agriculture: An interdisciplinary analysis of a novel common-property resource governance system’ is also gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed in the paper are not necessarily shared by these organisations. † Institute for Rural Futures, The University of New England, Armidale NSW 2351 AUSTRALIA. [email protected] © 2004 Graham R. Marshall