Barriers to Science Informing Community-Based Land and Water Management

Abstract

The move by Australian governments to mobilise rural communities in the fight against land degradation has resulted in huge benefits in terms of the ability to implement on-ground works and increased community ownership of both land management problems and solutions. These benefits have been at the expense of access to technical and scientific expertise, impacting on project outcomes. Technical and scientific expertise is an extremely important component of any land/water management project, providing the detailed understanding of the system that allows appropriate and efficient decisions to be made. In this article we present a case study in which an attempt was made to introduce scientific expertise to a small scale community project. The attempt at introducing scientific expertise was not successful, with the community failing to accept the technical report. Despite this failure there are a number of lessons that can be drawn from this experience, the main ones being: 1. Technical and scientific investigations should commence before project planning starts so that the knowledge can form one of the major inputs to the planning process; 2. The investigation must have the complete support of the community, which means they must be aware of what is being undertaken and how the results will be used to assist in planning and what benefits this will bring about; and 3. The method by which the outcomes of the investigation will be communicated to and discussed with the community must be carefully planned and allowed for in time-lines. Such lessons will be very useful for informing future attempts at solving the issue of technical/scientific input and community projects.