Designing Eco-Civic Regions for Natural Resources Management

Abstract

This work is guided by three considerations that are believed to be important if regional resource management is to be meaningful to the citizens involved. The first is that the character of the landscape units within the region possess a high degree of similarity, which should lead to greater coincidence of interest among the inhabitants of the region. The second consideration is that the choice of management region maximises the areal proportion of the region that is considered to be part of their 'community' by the inhabitants, which should lead to greater commitment to civic engagement in resource management. The third principle relates to the need to be able to scale up from local to broader regional contexts as appropriate for effective resource management and administration, while not compromising the first two principles.