In Australia, Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICM) is the policy framework adopted by government to manage the coastal zone. Amongst other principles, ICM contains an explicit mandate to include local communities in the management of the coastal zone. In Australia, the Coastcare program emerged in response to international acceptance of the need to involve local communities in the management of the coastal zone. This dissertation is a critical cultural investigation of the Coastcare program to discover how the program and the coastal zone generally, is understood and negotiated by three volunteer groups in SE Queensland. There is a paucity of data surrounding the actual experiences of Coastcare volunteers. This dissertation begins to fill this gap in our knowledge of local community involvement in coastal management. My dissertation considers the culture of Coastcare and broadly, community participation initiatives. Coastcare participants, government policymakers, environmental scientists, etc bring to their encounter a specific way of seeing the coast a cultural framework which guides their actions, ideas and priorities for the coastal zone. These cultural frameworks are established and maintained in the context of unequal relations of power and knowledge. The discourses of environmental science and economics as evidenced in the chief ICM policy objective, Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) are powerful knowledges in the realm of community participation policy. This arrangement has serious consequences for what governments and experts can expect to achieve via community participation programs. In short, the quest for power-sharing with communities and meaningful participation is impeded by dominant scientific and economic cultures which act to marginalise and discredit the cultures of communities (and volunteers). Ironically enough, the lack of consideration of these deeper relations of power and knowledge means that the very groups (such as policymakers, environmental scientists, etc) who actively seek the participation of local communities, contribute disproportionately to the relative failure of community participation programs. At the very least, as those in a position of power, policymakers and associated experts do little to enhance communication with local communities. To this situation add confusion wrought by changes in the delivery of the Coastcare program and a lack of human and financial resources. From this perspective, the warm and fuzzy sentiment of Coastcare can be understood as the Coastcare of neglect. However, the emergence of community participation as legitimate in environmental policymaking indicates a fissure in the traditional power relations between communities and experts. Indeed the entry of community participation policy is relatively new territory for the environmental sciences. It is this fissure which I seek to explore and encourage via the application of a cultural studies framework which offers another way of seeing community participation in coastal and marine management and thereby, offers avenues to improve relations between communities and experts. My fieldwork reveals a fundamental mismatch between the cultural frameworks which communities bring to the coast and those frameworks embodied and implemented by the Coastcare program. Upon closer examination, it is apparent that the Coastcare program (and community participation programs generally) are designed to introduce local lay communities to environmental science knowledge. Local coastal cultures are relegated to the personal and private realm. An excellent example of this is the scientifically oriented eligible areas for funding of the Coastcare program. The volunteers consulted for this project emphasized their motivation in terms of maintaining the natural beauty of the coast and protecting a little bit of coast from the rampant development of the coastal zone. Their motivations were largely the antithesis of ESD. They understood their actions as thwarting the negative impacts of coastal development this occurred within a policy framework which accepted development as fait daccompli. Australias nation of coastal dwellers may not know a lot about coastal ecologies but they do know the coast in other ways. Community knowledge of the coast can be largely accounted for in the phrase, Australian beach culture. Serious consideration of Australian beach culture in environmental policy is absent. The lack of attention to this central tenet of the Australian way of life is because, as a concept and in practice, beach culture lacks the seriousness and objectivity of environmental science knowledge it is about play, hedonism, holidays, spirituality, emotion and fun. The stories (including Indigenous cultural heritage) which emerge when Australians are asked about their beach cultural knowledge historical and contemporary experiences of the Australian coast await meaningful consideration by those interested in communicating with Australian communities living on the coast. This cultural geography is an avenue for policymakers to better communicate and engage with Australian communities in their quest to increase participation in, or motivate interest in community coastal management programs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/195077 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Foxwell-Norton, Kerrie-Ann, na |
| Publisher | Griffith University. School of Arts |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.gu.edu.au/disclaimer.html), Copyright Kerrie-Ann Foxwell-Norton |
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