Canaries of the Catchment: Exploring the partnership between oyster farmers and government actors in estuary management
Abstract
Coastal catchments are increasingly popular sites of human settlement. The ecological and social wellbeing of these catchment communities relies significantly on high water quality. As the physical sinks of catchments, estuaries provide important information regarding the sustainability of catchment activities due to their influence on water quality. Oysters are a sentinel, filter-feeding species that occur naturally in estuaries, but are also commercially bred as the major aquaculture industry in New South Wales (NSW). In the past two decades, oyster farmers in NSW have become increasingly involved in estuary management. Within a collaborative governance frame, this thesis investigates the emergence of a partnership between oyster farmers and government actors – local, regional and state – to address water quality challenges.
Partnerships in Natural Resource Management (NRM) are an important area of research, as they represent a critical opportunity to apply participatory governance ideals and approaches to solving sustainability problems. However, studies of the operationalisation of NRM partnerships are sparse. This thesis responds to this theoretical gap, while also responding to professional stakeholder needs that have been identified through a transdisciplinary research approach. This thesis aimed to investigate the how existing institutional arrangements influence collaborative partnerships between oyster farmers and government actors in estuary management. My findings highlight that there are a range of factors – structural, contextual and personal - that influence the effectiveness of oyster industry-government partnerships. While these factors can act as barriers, they can also drive institutional adaptation on local and regional scales. Formal and informal types of institutional adaptation were identified in the research context, highlighting the opportunities for flexibility and innovation within a collaborative governance regime. A key finding of this research are how the personal capacities of knowledge and trust can be fostered to collaborate in estuary management and consequently encourage institutional adaptation. Adequately scaled and resourced regional NRM bodies are also critical to collaborative governance for NRM, and this research suggests that there has been a significant capacity reduction in the current regional NRM bodies in NSW. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for actors wanting to improve the likelihood of effective collaborative processes in NRM more broadly, while also providing specific insights to the NSW estuary governance context.