Limitation and opportunity: the institutional basis for social assesment in natural resource management in Australia

[Extract] Since the mid-l 970s in Australia, the legal basis for environmental impact assessment in natural resource decision-making has been steadily evolving. With it has emerged large and complex institutional structures (for example, Environment Departments, Natural Resource Management Agencies, etc.). These focus on the environmental consequences of resource management and decision-making. Even with early developments in legislation, there has always been a capacity to consider social issues as part of the 'environment' by virtue of wide-ranging statutory definitions of that term. By contrast, with the proliferation of institutional structures to deal with biophysical aspects of resource use, there has been little or no parallel development of institutional arrangements to deal with social impacts. Across Australia, in various jurisdictions, there have been a few fledgling attempts to institutionalise social aspects of natural resource management processes. These attempts, however, have often been limited and short-lived