ABSTRACT

Over the past three decades, the Australian Government has led the coordination and implementation of strategic policies that aim to manage natural resources sustainably. Strategic policies typically seek to manage the consumptive use of natural resources to improve a range of environmental variables. This article focuses on strategic policies which operate under national arrangements where the Australian Government has limited direct constitutional powers to regulate natural resource use, so resorts to indirect measures and financial incentives. While the extent to which such policies give effect to sustainable development principles is debatable, as is their appropriateness for achieving environmental gains, a number of strategic natural resource management policies have persisted in the national policy domain. These present opportunities for understanding good-practice policy-making for managing natural resources sustainably, and an evaluative framework is presented to this effect. Relevant inter-relationships and complexities for policy design and implementation are revealed with the intent of stimulating further enquiries and analyses of strategic NRM policies in the context of Australia’s federal system.

摘要

在过去的三年中，澳大利亚政府领导了旨在以可持续方式管理自然资源的战略政策的协调和实施。战略政策通常寻求管理自然资源的消耗性使用，以改善一系列环境变量。本文侧重于在国家安排下运作的战略政策，澳大利亚政府在监管自然资源使用方面的直接宪法权力有限，因此诉诸间接措施和财政激励措施。虽然此类政策在多大程度上实现可持续发展原则尚有争议，但它们是否适合实现环境收益也值得商榷，但一些战略性自然资源管理政策一直存在于国家政策领域。这些为理解可持续管理自然资源的良好实践决策提供了机会，并为此提出了一个评估框架。揭示了政策设计和实施的相关相互关系和复杂性，目的是在澳大利亚联邦制度的背景下激发对战略性 NRM 政策的进一步调查和分析。