Power, perspective, and privilege: The challenge of translating stakeholder theory from business management to environmental and natural resource management

Stakeholder analysis and engagement is a central tenet for understanding and solving sustainability challenges, and is applied widely in environmental and natural resource management (ENRM). The practice in ENRM follows translation of stakeholder theory from its origins in business management to the sustainability sector. In this analytical essay we explore key concepts in ENRM research and practice to examine complexities that have accompanied this translation to ENRM. In particular, we consider the centrality of stakeholders' landscape perspectives in defining their stake in ENRM issues, and through this lens examine the limitations that are inherent in the classic 'hub-and-spoke' model of stakeholder analysis that is the theoretical underpinning for ENRM stakeholder analysis and engagement practice. We argue that unlike the traditional business context where both power and perspective are centred on the business entity that then defines other stakeholders in reference to itself, in ENRM, stakeholder relations are centred on an ENRM issue, typically a landscape or the implications of policy change on a landscape. As a consequence, decision-making power is decentred onto one of several stakeholders; often a government or other high power entity, implicitly conferring privilege to those powerful stakeholders' landscape perspectives over those held by low power stakeholders. We conclude with priorities for foregrounding power and explicating landscape perspectives to identify privilege in ENRM. We direct these insights especially to those ENRM actors who have the dual roles of adjudicator and privileged stakeholder such that they do not inadvertently perpetuate power imbalances through the privilege of aligning their decision-making power with their landscape perspectives.

Open woodland tree and shrub dynamics and landscape function in central Queensland after killing the trees with herbicide

Herbicides are used in savanna to control tree and shrub density, primarily to maintain the value of the country for pastoral enterprises. However, the concomitant effects on biodiversity and landscape functioning need to be recognised and better understood. This study monitored tree and shrub dynamics and eventual landscape functionality in response to tree-killing over 7–8 years at two open eucalypt woodland sites in central Queensland. Paddocks denuded of trees using herbicide or not so treated were subject to three differing grazing pressures by cattle. Similarly treated but ungrazed sets of plots were subjected to either regular spring burns or were rarely burnt. Tree and shrub growth and seedling recruitment were slightly affected by grazing pressure but regular spring burns minimised recruitment of minor woodland species and reduced the population of original saplings and seedlings that survived the herbicide. Few eucalypt seedlings emerged from soil surface samples taken each spring in any treatment, despite the presence of flowering trees in half the treatments. Capture and retention of resources, particularly rainfall and nutrients, were slightly improved by killing the trees, and worsened by grazing. We conclude that killing trees with herbicide at these sites did not adversely affect landscape function and that woody species regeneration was almost inevitable on these open eucalypt woodland native pastures.

A 150-year fire history of mulga (Acacia aneura F. Muell. ex Benth.) dominated vegetation in semiarid Queensland, Australia

Changes to fire regimes associated with European colonisation are implicated in declines in biodiversity and productivity in rangelands globally. However, for many areas there is incomplete knowledge of historical fire regimes and purported changes can become accepted wisdom with little empirical evidence. In the Mulga Lands of south-western Queensland, the dominant narrative implicates reduced fire frequency as a cause of woody vegetation thickening. We present a fire history of the Mulga Lands since pastoral exploration in the 1840s based on a review of explorer and early pastoralist journals, newspaper articles, interviews with long-term landholders and collation of satellite imagery. Fires in mulga communities are infrequent and only occur after at least two years of above-average summer rainfall. The assumption of regular pre-pastoral fires is not supported by available evidence. Since pastoral settlement in the 1860s, fire events affecting >1000 km2 have occurred seven times (1891–1892, 1904, 1918, 1950–1951, 1956–1957, 1976–1979 and 2011–2013), with only the 1950s fires affecting a >10% of the total area of mulga-dominated vegetation. We argue that fire is limited by fuel loads, which are in turn limited by rainfall events occurring only a few times a century. Even in the absence of grazing and active fire suppression fire intervals would be extremely long, perhaps 30–50 years in relatively fire-prone communities and much longer throughout most of the region. Combined with quantitative studies of fire and tree and shrub population dynamics, detailed fire histories will allow for more informed and nuanced debates about the role of fire in rangelands subject to abrupt management upheavals.