To develop options for operating environments which encourage the prevention of dryland salinity and the appropriate management of its impacts.

Specific Challenge | Strategies | Performance Indicators

Specific challenge

The NDSP recognises the importance of the operating environment in determining how quickly land and water resource managers change the way they do things to address salinity and its impacts. The operating environment includes the ways government agencies and local government are organised and communicate between themselves; the way catchment groups operate; the regulations, incentives and market mechanisms which influence decision making by resource managers; and the relationship between investors, researchers, and communities who live and work in catchments at risk from salinity and its impacts.

This objective addresses trade-offs between best practice management and doing nothing. It recognises the urgency of the salinity problem in Australia and aims to provide understanding and tools which help catchment groups, landholders, resource managers and those with an interest in natural resource management choose the best balance between competing resource use interests to minimise the cost of salinity and its impacts.

Strategies

Strategy 1.1:

Develop understanding of institutional, social and economic processes which determine resource management behaviour affecting dryland salinity and its off-site and on-site impacts in selected landscapes under typical land uses.

Strategy 1.2:

Identify and develop new institutional arrangements and economic instruments that enable management of dryland salinity and its impacts.

Strategy 1.3:

Develop principles and practices that help catchment communities become more self reliant in design and implementation of salinity management plans.

Strategy 1.4:

Communicate institutional, economic and policy instruments that improve the operating environment for management of dryland salinity and its impacts.

Strategy 1.5:

Increase understanding of the causes and extent of dryland salinity, and options for its prevention and management, amongst regional and national decision makers, elected leaders and opinion shapers to improve investment in natural resource management.

Strategy 1.6:

Improve the extension systems that deliver knowledge through a mix of public and private service providers.

Performance indicators

1. Catchment communities are more self-reliant.
2. Salinity management is a recognised component of catchment management strategies.
3. Stakeholders better understand options and practices available for implementation.
4. New institutional arrangements and economic instruments are developed and promoted.
5. Salinity management investments are coordinated.
6. Local government actively manages dryland salinity and its impacts.
7. Community leaders better understand causes and extent of dryland salinity, and options for its management.

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