Abstract

A re-orientation is under way in how environmental challenges should be approached and understood. Prompting this shift is the proliferation of environmental challenges, severity of ecosystem changes and widespread realisation of the limitations associated with conventional command and control approaches. Although these past approaches were relatively successful at addressing definable or point sources of issues such as pollution, there are increasing concerns about compliance and enforcement, growing conflicts pertaining to regulatory policies, and ineffectiveness in addressing ‘wicked’ problems characterised by complexity and uncertainty (Holling and Meffe 1996; Kettl 2002).