E D I T O R ’ SV I E W P O I N T

2 ECOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT & RESTORATION VOL 4 NO 1 APRIL 2003

Participatory decision-making in natural areas management isnow a fact of life; as much to ensure stakeholders engage with

solutions as to ensure innovations emerge that are based on real-life constraints and opportunities.Yet, finding common groundbetween researchers and community (see the Invited Editorialby Max Finlayson in this issue), is an intriguingly slippery exer-cise. This is not only because the exercise itself throws up factsand questions we did not anticipate but also because we aretrying to predict options that might be more ‘ecologically sus-tainable’ in a context that is without precedent. Furthermore, asour understanding of what may be ecologically sustainableincreases over time (or as our small successes encourage us todo better) what we agreed to do last year may be different fromwhat we may agree to do 3 years from now.

As Finlayson points out, community decision-makingprocesses can be chaotic and painful; revealing a need for greaterintercommunication and problem-solving skills as well as morereliable information about ‘what the bigger picture entails’. It maywell be that some acceptable ‘common ground’ can be found ifwe engage in equitable and reasonable exchanges; but whetherthis common ground will yield solutions that are ultimately sus-tainable cannot be guaranteed. Ecological sustainability, in otherwords, is not governed by good intention – but by the intrinsictolerances of ecosystem components and, ultimately, wholeecosystems. This means that good science (and sound protocolsthat flow from good science) are paramount.

Certainly,much of the work involved in ecological restorationdepends upon the willing participation of individuals and com-munities. The feature article by Deborah Nias and colleagues’(this issue) provides an impressive example of private land-holder participation in restoration actions that proved to be con-tagious to others once the results of trials became apparent.Thisissue’s second feature, by David Brunckhorst and Phillip Coop,also illustrates an entirely voluntary land sharing project called‘Tilbuster Commons’ in the northern lands of NSW that has

resonance for a range of other cooperative land and naturalresource management options. Willing participation is alsoenhanced by the positive experiences that individuals gainthrough natural areas tourism or gardening (see Yugovic, thisissue); although very real constraints need to be overcome if weare to protect natural areas from our own ‘communings’ (seeKelly et al., this issue).

Social participation (whether group or individual), however,cannot really provide solutions in the end if the motivation isbased on individual interests alone. Community impliescommon good over individual good. Facilitation must, then,provide a balance between sound ‘public good’ advice andencouragement: that is, between ‘regulation, and invitation’. AsKen Wallace points out in his comment piece (this issue), com-munity ‘empowerment’ can fail to deliver if it is allowed tobecome an end in itself rather than the means to achieving acommonly agreed outcome. Participants also need to be sup-ported by guidance as to which approaches work and which donot (such as provided by Dugald Close and Neil Davidson, thisissue); as well as supported by economic incentives to take upcurrent recommended management practices (such as shownby Curtis and Robertson, this issue).

In the end,‘the community’ is not an entity separate from gov-ernment or business. We are all community, and an imperativeexists for collaborative development of improved regulatory,socio-economic and technical frameworks to guide us towardsmore ecologically sustainable, restorative, management prac-tices.At a time when there seems to be more division than coop-eration at a global level, continuing to develop such rigorousparticipatory approaches (particularly in response to globalenvironmental threats that should override political differences)seems somehow all the more important.

Tein McDonaldEditor

Balancing regulation and invitation