Diversity and Change in Australia's Rangeland Regions: Translating Resource Values Into Regional Benefits.

Abstract

Australia's rangelands are experiencing a radical re-evaluation of broadacre natural resources, with declining commodity values and enhanced amenity values. This is indicative of a transition from a productionist to a post-productionist era in rural resource use and related policy directions. While this transition offers new opportunities, it also presents formidable structural problems for our rangelands, most notably in the shift from market towards non-market values and in the geographical transfer of value. These challenges require new responses in strategic regional planning. Effective planning must recognise not only the structural problems endemic to the rangelands but also the highly differentiated regional potentials which are increasingly evident. A provisional regionalisation for strategic resource use planning is proposed, based upon resource orientation and obtained using a simple scaling of potentials for pastoralism, mining, tourism and Aboriginal resource use. Seven distinctive regional types are proposed, with the most powerful dimensions of differentiation being between commodity - versus amenity - orientation and also between accessibility/urbanisation (linked to closer settlement, mining and tourism) versus remoteness (associated with 'frontier' regions and Aboriginal homelands). A structured approach towards translating resource potential into regional benefits is outlined.