Community environmental management in New Zealand: exploring the realities in the metaphor

Abstract

Over the preceding decade, there has been a national and international resurgence in the support for, and use of, community-based approaches to address the sustainable management of natural resources and systems. Despite this attention, there has been a paucity of research devoted to the critical exploration of this management method within New Zealand.

This investigation helps address this shortfall through the critical interpretative study of six community-based groups, operating in different parts of New Zealand's South Island. Those initiatives studied represented a cross section of groups from the productive (e.g., farming) and social (e.g., recreational) sectors. Each initiative was inspected through the analytical lenses of social capital, the social construction of nature and sustainability.

The study found that community environmental management (the term used to describe the approach in this thesis) is invariably more complex than prevailing images portray it. More specifically, some of the key findings from this research are: (a) the positive and negative contributions that elements of social capital can make to collective action within community environmental management groups; (b) the dualist tendency of community based groups to provide, on the one hand, vehicles for the assertion of peoples' 'social natures', while on the other serving as arenas where these 'natures' compete for legitimacy; and (c) the disjuncture that can arise between normative notions of sustainability and the processes and outcomes associated with community environmental management endeavours. This study also highlights the role that variables such as social meaning, network ties and scale play in the form, function and delivery of community environmental management.

The image of community environmental management that emerges from this study is one of a hybrid arrangement that reflects elements of overseas experience, different theoretical contributions and contextual variables distinct to New Zealand. Further, the contribution that this approach makes to environmental management is revealed to be more complex than inferred through popular pronouncements.

The discussion and conclusion sections of this thesis draw attention to the contribution that this study makes to the theory and practical applications of community environmental management. It concludes with a series of recommendations for improving the practice and study of this institutional form.