Science, Communication and Stakeholder Participation for Integrated Natural Resource Management

Arhetorical move towards participatory resource planning has underpinned much policy in Australian natural resource management and rural development for the past decade. Research providers have only recently begun to understand the context of complex problem settings, multiple stakeholders, divergent interests and scales of relevance associated with integrated natural resource planning and management activities. Most traditional research approaches in the natural resource planning and management domain have favoured a linear model of technology transfer. Increasingly it is being acknowledged that consideration of the needs of stakeholders forms an integral part of the research and adoption continuum from design to inception and from development through to delivery. Participative research processes provide an extremely powerful means of responding to these needs. However their use raises fundamental methodological and institutional issues as to how Research and Development (R&D) is conducted, what constitutes an outcome, who controls the agenda and R&D providers accountability to others. In particular, it also challenges the way in which R&D providers communicate both internally and externally, and the role of communication and communication research. In this article we use a case study approach to describe how a multidisciplinary team in CSIRO has responded to the R&D and communication challenges arising from involvement in stakeholder participation processes. This has underpinned improved natural resource planning and management in the Herbert River catchment of north Queensland.