Politics, Policy and Process in the Forests

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The article provides an overview of the regional assessment and agreement process which is being conducted by the Commonwealth (i.e. federal) and State governments in the major forest regions of Australia. The context of the dominant position of the State in Australian forest management and its consequences are introduced. The acrimonious environmental conflicts over the use of the forests and the difficulties of resolving them led to a national forest policy in 1992 and joint Commonwealth-State regional planning. The processes of regional assessment are described and the difficulties of their hurried execution noted. The inter-governmental agreements which resulted reflect a remarkable transfer of Commonwealth environmental interests to the States and the apparent disabling of its environmental legislation for the forest sector in the regions concerned. They also reflect an apparent intention to maintain and improve the standard of environmental management.

This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit: