Fairness and Justice Prove to be Fundamental Building Blocks in the Success of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM)

In recent years there has been a noticeable increase in the number of everyday citizens participating in the development and implementation of land and water management plans worldwide.

As with many things, when a large population comes together to work towards a common goal, there are often many different opinions, values, and ideas brought to the table; making an already hard decision, that much more difficult.

The issue is - How do those with the power to put plans into motion, make decisions that everyone will be happy with? Farmers want their fair supply of clean water to grow crops. Urban people want to keep their lawns looking green. Conservationists would be happy if cuts in water usage were made everywhere. So how do plans succeed with so many people pulling in all different directions?

In a recent study done by Jonathon Howard and published in the Journal of Environmental Conservation it was found that the keys to success were simply justice and fairness.

“The problem” writes Howard “is how do we than define justice and fairness?” Indeed such a looming question seems like it would pose as a road block toward the successful development and implementation of management plans because we as humans want a definition in order to act upon.

However, Howard found “An individual’s view of justice varies not only according to the resource, but also because of a number of other related factors (for example greed, efficiency, and moral rights) which might also be relevant to any particular decision”.

So it seems that justice and fairness is situational. So how did he come to conclude that they are essential?

It wasn’t until he looked into the issue on a greater and more detailed scale “On a case to case basis, is actually where I was able to pick out these keys to success”.

He was able to look at 2 specific cases in Australia, where the public was immensely involved in the stages of planning and implementation. The first case involving the Murray Irrigation Area was a success, the second involving the Murrumbidgee River was a failure. So Howard took the time to go over each case, through each step and he was able to discover what worked and what didn’t.

The first thing Howard noticed was a similarity between the two - that they shared the same overall process. There were 4 steps that each case followed: The Conceptualization Stage, The Development Process, The Implementation Stage and a Review Process, which came sometime after the plan was set into action and was a way for the public to provide their feedback on the outcomes.

It took Howard quite a while to really figure out what it was that made one work and the other not. But once he found it, he knew. “It was the levels of overall justice and fairness present in the Murray Irrigation case that made it a success” wrote Howard.

It was the review stages that helped Howard to reach his final conclusions. He was able to find that “the two justice issues (opportunity and influence) associated with the predominant fairness issue, which is having an overall voice, were met in the Murray Irrigation case”.

Essentially everyone had a fair chance to speak, and they were given the justice to speak their mind and vote without added influence from one side or the other. The board which voted was an open table, anyone could speak, and anyone could be on it.

“The real issues were brought up, not just squashed under the table by a powerful opposition and the state played the role of an impartial spectator or facilitator attempting to act as an honest broker” reported Howard.

Such was not the case in the Murrumbidgee River situation. “Immediately from the conceptualization stage, there were appointments of people to the board who represented specified groups. However even regional facilitators acknowledged that the process did not include some key groups.”

The public still went to meetings, in fact Howard wrote “The development stage, which was conflict ridden, consisted of 32 meetings over a 6 year period; and this was simply because the board consistently voted one way, the overall public opinion supported the other way, and so decisions were made, and contested, consistently”.

At the end of it all various environmental groups appealed 12 of the 36 water-sharing plans that were “decided on”.

“The justice issues associated with the decisions were not apparent (in the Murrumbidgee River case) because the principles on which the allocations were made were not based on science or discussion, but on history and power”.

Howard was able to conclude that justice isn’t just something waiting to be assessed once the outcome is decided, but something that should be actively constructed through the entire process of discussion, negotiation and decision making.

It would seem that justice and fairness are defiantly essential because as humans, once an injustice was done, we see the motives and actions of our opponents as unreasonable and then initiate actions and behaviours that are regarded as unfair.

"Justice leads to fairness, and being fair maintains justice" Wrote Howard.

Jonathon Leigh Howard (2010). Managing for justice in community-based water planning: a conceptual framework. Environmental Conservation, 37, pp 356-363.

Link to site : http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7911286&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0376892910000627