Six Reasons not to Engage: Compromise, Confrontation and the Commons

Whelan J¹*

1. Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Environmental advocates have experienced a frustrating honeymoon with deliberative governance. After decades of relatively fruitless dialogue, environmentalists are (re)turning from collaborative governance to community mobilisation. This strategic reorientation is evident in national and international efforts to halt dangerous climate change, the successful community-led campaign to control land clearing in Queensland and in grassroots campaigns to halt the release of genetically-engineered food crops. It is also reflected in the early signs of failure of the Commonwealth Government’s regional natural resource management planning processes.

Environmental policy processes in Australia are increasingly framed around claims of environmental democracy. Plans, strategies and decisions are considered legitimate and their prospects of successful implementation purportedly enhanced if community members are actively involved in policy setting. Why, then, would conservation-minded citizens eschew the opportunity to communicate their interests and values through consultative committees, public hearings, submissions and other community engagement mechanisms? Recent research suggests seven rational reasons to consider community engagement in the forms most commonly practiced an entirely inadequate basis for conserving the commons.

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