Science and Policy in Natural Resource Management: Understanding System Complexity

Description

This book was first published in 2006. Despite many well-intentioned policies and changes to management practices, the world's natural resources continue to decline. The roles and interplay between science and policy in the regional broadacre agriculture landscape are examined here, offering readers a thorough understanding of the complex interactions that occur across spatial scales to produce the regional-scale impacts. The fundamental causes of resource degradation, social decline and environmental pollution are addressed, examining the cross-scale drivers from the individual farm level to the global level of commodity systems. Broadacre agriculture is a common land use throughout all continents of the world and is driven by the same type of dynamics, and this case study of the Western Australia agricultural region can be used to clearly demonstrate the principles for other agricultural systems. Aimed at academics, ranging from researchers through to policy analysts, this book will inspire innovation and action in sustainable natural resource management.

Helen E. Allison is a researcher into complex systems and has experience working terrestrial and aquatic systems in tropical, temperate and Mediterranean climates in Australian, Europe and South Africa. She is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. Richard J. Hobbs is Professor of Environmental Science at Murdoch University, where he teaches Environmental Restoration. He is the author of over 230 refereed publications, many magazine articles and unrefereed publications, and author/editor of 12 books. His particular interests are in vegetation dynamics and management, fragmentation, invasive species, ecosystem restoration, conservation biology and landscape ecology.

'... useful to policy makers dealing with similar intensive farming situations ...' Biologist