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Applying an Analytical Model for Assessing Community Sustainability: some preliminary results from northern Australian remote towns

Colin Macgregor

Social Sciences Centre, Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS), Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry – Australia (AFFA), Canberra. Phone: (02) 6272 5600; Fax: (02) 6272 4687 Email: Colin.Macgregor@brs.gov.au

Formerly: School of Tropical Environmental Studies & Geography, James Cook University, Townsville. Phone: (07) 4781 4841; Fax: (07) 4781 4020 Email: Colin.Macgregor@jcu.edu.au

Paper presented to the First National Conference on the Future of Australia’s Country Towns, 28th – 30th June 2000, Bendigo, Victoria.

Introduction

The concept of ‘sustainability’ is now so entrenched in government and non-government organisations that it now seems appropriate to describe it as a ‘social norm’ (Fenton et al 2000). Ideally, the principles that underlie sustainability should guide information dissemination, strategic thinking and planning, behavior, and the actions, of all organisations, groups and even individuals in society. So far sustainability has found its way through to the more obvious applications in the environmental management context and it has been widely adopted as an underlying premise in most recent natural resource management and planning documents. It also has an equally important role in guiding social and economic management and planning. However, there is increasing concern lately that, in many circumstances, the exact meaning of sustainability is being obscured as it is perverted by various socio-political actors seeking to use it to promote their own agendas. But of even more concern perhaps, is that since sustainability was first defined as a social goal more than ten years ago, our capacity to assess and monitor progress towards it still seems illusive particularly in the social and economic realms. This paper reviews some highlights from a PhD study that sought to address this concern. More specifically, the project used community perceptions and attitudes to examine community sustainability in a sample of country towns from remote northern Australia.

The paper is presented in two parts; part one very briefly reviews the research process and methodology employed in the project. It first looks at the root definitions of sustainability and then presents an analytical model that, when used with appropriate indicators, has the capacity to assess and monitor community support for sustainability. Part two of the paper presents some preliminary results from the case study towns.

Part One: Research Theory & Methods Defining Sustainability

The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987) defined sustainable development as “that which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. This simple definition has far-reaching implications, the first of which is associated with the environment. In considering this, the Biological Diversity Advisory Committee (DASAT), through its 1992 National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity, emphasised the importance of maintaining biological diversity:

Conservation of biological diversity is a core objective of ESD [Ecologically Sustainable Development]...biological diversity underpins human well being through provision of ecological services, such as the maintenance of soil fertility and the supply of clean, fresh water. It also provides recreational opportunities and acts as a source of inspiration and cultural identity.

The WCED definition of sustainability also makes it clear that inter-generational equity is one of the fundamental goals of sustainability. Of course, the concept of equity has implications for existing generations also, i.e. intra-generational equity. Falk et al (1993) perhaps best summarised this when they said:

Equity derives from a concept of social justice. It represents a belief that there are some things which people should have, that they are basic needs that should be fulfilled, that burdens and rewards should not be spread too divergently across the community, and that policy should be directed with impartiality, fairness and justice towards these ends.

Such statements are typical of the widespread consensus that sustainability must be accountable in environmental, social and economic contexts (e.g. Cernea 1993). The nature of sustainability requires that initiatives must be both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ i.e. it relies on a well-informed, sensitive leadership and on community-wide support. Local Agenda 21 (LA21), which was born at the United Nations Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, describes itself as a ‘blueprint for sustainable development’. It recognised the important role that local authorities have in bringing about sustainability. The extent to which LA21 is being promoted and adopted in country Australia is an important question in itself but, since sustainability is heavily dependent on community support, it is also important to ascertain how receptive and supportive country town communities are to such initiatives and strategies. It is this second question that formed the basis for this research.

The research process employed in the study can most simply be understood by stating the principle aim and objectives of the study. The research had essentially one aim:

Develop and use an analytical index model to ascertain the level of support for sustainability of a representative sample of small town communities in northern Australia with a view to providing advice to local government about achieving community sustainability.

Eight objectives were derived in order to achieve this aim.

1. Review literature associated with community sustainability with particular emphasis on the northern Australia context.

2. From a review of existing hierarchical models, develop an analytical model capable of measuring support for the sustainability of rural towns;

3. Obtain a local community profile of the major towns in the region to include

4. demographics, service provision, economic base, and, natural and cultural features.

5. Identify from (3), a set of suitably representative towns from the region in which to conduct more detailed studies.

6. For the towns identified in (4) determine from a suitable group of local professional informants, their understanding and level of commitment to the concept of sustainability.

7. Assess community values and attitudes with respect to sustainability issues, possible development opportunities, environmental protection and, community participation in the development and planning process for the towns identified in (4).

8. Based on the results found in (5) and (6), compare and contrast the representative towns identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses with respect to sustainability support.

9. From the data obtained in meeting objectives (1) to (7), review the analytical model developed in (2) and make recommendations for future research.

A Working Theory for Assessing Sustainability Support

Measuring improvements in the environment is usually a fairly straightforward scientific process. For example, if one wishes to determine water quality then samples can be taken and laboratory chemical analysis will reveal its condition. It is also fairly easy to monitor changes over time with such indicators to determine if improvements are being made. Much of the indicators within State of the Environment (SoE) reporting are of this nature and, in most cases, their selection can be done without a theoretical basis. While this is quite acceptable in SoE reporting, if one is interested in the less tangible aspects of sustainability, such as the level of support for community sustainability, then the selection of indicators becomes more difficult simply because there is such a wide variety of potential indicators that could be drawn on. It is extremely important to be clear about exactly what is to be examined and what type of data will contain the answers e.g. the data could be in either primary (e.g. surveys) or secondary (e.g. census) form. The application of a well conceived theory will certainly assist the research process and ensure indicator selection is not carried out in an ad hoc manner, i.e. indicators are selected because they are known to contribute to the construct of interest – in this case, sustainability support. It follows then that one of the most important tasks in this study was to develop a theory that would fulfil the primary aim of the study, hence objective (2) above.

Since sustainability can be defined as a normative objective, it was considered that a hierarchical model would be the most useful form of the assessment tool. The final model, which is presented in Fig 1, was conceived by taking account of relevant theoretical work from a range of perspectives. Examples include: the behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow (1954); the work done on community involvement by Sherry Arnstein (1969); the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale of Dunlap and Van Liere (1978); Andrew Nash’s (1990) work on environmental ethics; supporters of the Ecosystem Health concept such as Costanza et al (1992) and Rapport (1995), futurists such as Duane Elgin (1994) and Richard Slaughter (1996), and sustainability commentators such as Gale and Cordray (1994), Clark (1995), and Berkowitz (1996).

Fig 1: A Hierarchical Model for Assessing and Describing Sustainability Support in Small Town Communities

The model can be considered three-dimensional - one dimension for environment, society and economy. The triangular image aims to convey the impression of a community that is disparate and diffuse at the bottom as opposed to one that is sustainable, highly united and integrated at the top. The hierarchy is divided into five levels - from bottom to top: basic needs; information; attitudes; activity; and, completion. At the apex of the model is the sustainability ‘vision’ (for example, it could be a LA21 strategy), which may or may not exist. The top level (completion) represents a community that would demonstrate an extremely high score on all indicators. It is essentially a hypothetical condition (a Utopia) because one is never likely to encounter a community at this level - even in the most progressive communities, one could always expect that improvements could be made. The four lower levels are those that allow measurable indicator development and there is a sense that they are sequential i.e. the basic needs of the community would usually need to first be satisfied before the level of information becomes important. In terms of the provision of basic needs (essentially, food, water, shelter, safety etc) the community could either be in a position of complete supply (‘satisfaction’) or completely starved (‘deprivation’). Essentially, the variables here refer to more structural circumstances that are likely to encourage or prevent potential support. Unlike Maslow’s model, it is not absolutely essential for a community to obtain complete ‘satisfaction’ before the next level, or even higher levels, can be addressed. In terms of information (i.e. information about sustainability and its implications), those in local government could possibly have full ‘knowledge’ or alternatively be in complete ‘ignorance’. Community attitudes towards the principles of sustainability could, on the one hand, reflect a position of ‘arrogance’, e.g. ‘sustainability has nothing to do with me, I’ve got to get on with my life and make the most of it in any way I can’. Or, ‘understanding’, ‘it’s very important that we all pull together to improve all our lifestyles but not at the expense of future generations’. The activity level can be differentiated by the degree to which the community is actually working towards achieving sustainability. The dimensional nature of this can loosely be described as ‘lethargy’ at the bottom or ‘commitment’ at the top. Typically, the indicators within all these levels and dimensions should be based on scales so that a score can be calculated and the community ‘plotted’ against the model. From this, a pattern for each community will emerge making it possible to identify areas of concern.

Weighting Indicators

The complete set of indicators used in this project can be seen in Appendix A. An area of concern with the use of indicators is that, depending upon circumstance, some may not be relevant at all at one level while others may be relevant, to differing degrees, to more than one of the levels. For example, the level of community interest in assisting local government with development decisions is relevant to a greater or lesser degree on all the levels of the society dimension. However, it might appear more important to a community operating at the attitudes level than to one operating predominantly at the basic needs level. In this sense, the indicator ought to receive a higher weighting at attitudes than at basic needs. In order to address this ambiguity, a survey of a small number of key informants (all with a working knowledge of community sustainability), were asked to rate all the indicators for ‘relevance’ against four hypothetical communities that reflect the four levels of the model. Four options were offered; indicators could be considered ‘marginally relevant (MR)’, ‘relevant (Rel)’ or ‘very relevant (VR)’ (Appendix A). If the indicator was not considered relevant at all at a level then it simply received no nomination and so was not included in the primary analysis at that level. The results of this allowed a weighting factor to be determined and introduced into the analysis so that the final scores received weighting (multiplier) of 1 for ‘MR’, 2 for ‘Rel’ and 3 for ‘VR’.

Part Two: Research Findings

Originally there was a sample of nineteen towns, which were distributed across the northern third of the Australian continent. Town profiles of all of these was developed from which, six towns were identified using cluster analysis. These were Charters Towers, Hughenden and Cloncurry in Queensland, Jabiru in the Northern Territory, and, Kununurra and Halls Creek in Western Australia. A random sample survey of residents yielded completed questionnaires from between 80 and 192 residents of these towns. A review of the results from this is now discussed.

The Environment Dimension

The major findings for the environment dimension are presented in Fig.2.

Fig 2: Results from the Environment Dimension

Note that all scores displayed on the right side of the figure are out of 100, i.e. they are expressed as a percentage to aid interpretation (a higher score is indicative of greater support). Here, only levels II, III and IV have results because the key informants of the relevance survey believed that none of the environment question items were relevant to communities struggling with social basic needs. However, the results in some ways appear to contradict what those key informants had assumed. As will be seen later, Halls Creek is the town most struggling with basic social and economic needs, but is also the one town to score the highest on all three levels of the environment dimension. However, this result must also be considered within the context of the sample populations, which in Halls Creek was largely made up of professional, well-educated people who were often employed in some management capacity within the town. Notably, they are well paid and so certainly not struggling with economic basic needs. The others in the sample were Aboriginal people who are well known to have a strong affiliation with the ‘land’ regardless of their position with respect to basic needs. This is probably the reason why Kununurra, which also had quite a high proportion of Aboriginal people in the sample, consistently fell into second place.

Most of the environment question items were statistically ‘reliable’ (Cronbach’s alpha = .69). This makes it possible to develop an ‘environmental empathy scale’ similar to Dunlap and Van Liere’s (1978) New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale. An examination of this also showed that Halls Creek expressed the greatest environmental empathy. But, it is important to acknowledge that all the towns scored quite well and the difference between the towns on all these measures is also only marginal. In fact, differences between them were only statistically significant between the highest and lowest scoring towns and even there the margin was just 5%. This is a fairly interesting result because it demonstrates that people are generally supportive of the environment regardless of their circumstances. What is more, regression analysis revealed very marginal correlation between higher scores for environmental empathy and environmental activity in the form of environmental group membership (adjusted R square = .13). There is at least one important implication inferred by this as it has been assumed by some theorists that attitudes have an important influence on intentions and behavior (see for example, Fishbein and Ajzen 1975; Holahan 1982; Ajzen 1985; Curtis and De Lacy 1996). Theories such as these imply that if one can encourage environmentally sensitive attitudes, then people’s behavior will also become more environmentally sensitive. However, this and other studies that have also used environmental attitude scales, have demonstrated that the link between attitudes and behavior is rather tenuous (Dunlap and Van Liere 1978; Schuman and Johnson 1976). Basically, if people are already empathetic towards the environment then it is quite likely that campaigns that seek to encourage people to behave more empathetically may actually be a waste of meager resources. This is not to say that the diffusion of information concerning sustainability does not have an important role to play but it seems likely that more could be achieved by addressing other the areas of sustainability. In short, the findings associated with the environmental dimension are probably not of greatest concern to these communities.

The Society Dimension

The society dimension (Fig 3) reveals a much more diverse range of results compared with the environment dimension. First, the scores were generally lower than the environment dimension, particularly on the basic needs and information levels. Second, the differences in the scores of the highest scoring and lowest scoring towns is as much as 15%. This suggests that the towns differ quite markedly in terms of community attitudes towards social issues associated with sustainability. As one might expect, Charters Towers, which is by far the largest town, has come in first place on three of the four levels compared to Halls Creek (the most remote and ethnically diverse town), which has come last on all four levels by quite a significant margin.

Unlike the environment dimension, there is not sufficient internal reliability to talk about constructing a single item scale that could be said to be representative of a community-wide view of social sustainability. Given the diversity of the results, such a scale would reveal little about the patterns revealed in Fig 3 anyway. Explanations can only be found by looking at this dimension in more detail. Inevitably there are common themes within the data that statistical procedures can draw upon to determine clusters or groupings of variables. Applications of cluster and factor analyses revealed seven groups, which for convenience were named cultural sensitivity, service provision, community involvement, Aboriginal concerns, sense of security, historic sensitivity, and social interaction.

Fig 3: Results from the Society Dimension

The other society construct, which is also extremely important, is sense of place or community. The variables associated with this are well documented (see for example, McMillan and Chavis 1989; Shannon 1996; Twigger-Ross and Uzzell 1996). So long as there is a reasonable degree of internal reliability within the variables that make up the sense of place construct, then it is possible develop a scale for it. In this case nine questionnaire items contributed to a sense of place scale (alpha = .53). Table 1 displays the scores for these constructs and, just as above, a higher score is a more positive result in terms of sustainability.

 

Cultural
Sensitivity

Service
Provision

Community
Involvement

Aboriginal
Concerns

Sense of
Security

Historic
Sensitivity

Social
Interaction

Sense of
Place

Charters Towers

52.5

54.4

87.5

57.5

38.7

63.3

58.7

71.1

Hughenden

41.2

48.1

90.5

60

56.2

62.5

61.2

73.9

Cloncurry

52.5

45.6

88.5

48.7

53.7

60

56.2

69.7

Jabiru

52.5

48.1

84.5

55

58.7

50

58.7

64.7

Kununurra

48.7

51.9

84.1

45

31.2

51.7

55

62.2

Halls Creek

60

32.2

83

35

36.2

52.5

50

58.3

Table 1: Sustainability Support Scores (%) obtained for the Major Social Dimensional Constructs

The scores for ‘sense of place’ would seem to suggest a regional variation i.e. the Queensland towns obtained a higher score than the Western Australian and Northern Territory towns. It is notable that this pattern can also be seen with historic sensitivity. This finding supports earlier work completed by other human geographers and rural sociologists, e.g. Watson (1964) and Pahl (1965), who noted the presence of ‘spiralists’ in rural communities. This group of people tends to be young highly qualified employees usually on higher incomes. This is the demographic pattern that can be seen in the towns of Jabiru, Kununurra and Halls Creek. They are attracted to small towns by the incomes and because it often fits in with their early career development. Success in the job means an upward spiral in their careers, which will take them on to larger places and promotion. In this sense they are the least attached and committed group of people within the town.

Perhaps not surprising, Charters Towers (population ~9,000) has obtained the best score for ‘service provision’ and while the smallest town (Halls Creek) has by far the lowest score here, it is only just the smallest town. In fact, Halls Creek, Jabiru and Hughenden all have similar populations of around 1,500 people. Hughenden has a long history and was once a much larger town and although it is now declining, its functions partially reflect its past and so the town remains fairly well serviced. Jabiru was recently established as a mining town and the mining company had a vested interest to ensure the provision of good services in order to attract and retain employees. Unfortunately Halls Creek has neither heritage nor economic incentives that might encourage the provision of services. Consequently, only the bare necessities are provided.

The town to score the highest for ‘cultural sensitivity’ (Halls Creek) is the town with the greatest Aboriginal population. Of course cultural sensitivity is an important quality of sustainability but the town has also scored the lowest in terms of ‘Aboriginal concerns’. This would seem to suggest an inverse relationship exists between Aboriginal concerns and Aboriginal sensitivity. In other words, the greater the extent of Aboriginal concerns within the community, the more sensitive it will be to Aboriginal culture. This is a ‘reactive’ rather than ‘pro-active’ response to a set of problems, which is not really indicative of sustainability. What would be encouraging here is a demonstration of cultural sensitivity without problems. It is also notable here that the Aboriginal concerns being expressed within this result is primarily attributable to alcohol misuse. This is by far the greatest single issue facing remote communities with high Aboriginal populations (Watson et al 1988; Hunter et al 1991). Alcohol misuse is responsible for most crime (Lea 1989), domestic violence (d’Abbs et al 1993) and poor health (Brady & Palmer 1984; Hudson 1989) among Aboriginal people and it is certainly the most important contributor to Halls Creek’s very poor score on basic needs. Although not reflected in the scores, Halls Creek’s Aboriginal housing is also extremely problematic with poor infrastructure maintenance (water, power etc).

‘Sense of security’ revealed an interesting result. The lowest scores were found in Kununurra, which was then followed by Halls Creek. As already noted, alcohol misuse has been linked with petty and more serious crime, but where consumption occurs in public places, squabbling and fighting is also common. Interviewees commented about feelings of apprehension when encountering large groups of street drinkers, which may account for poor sense of security scores in these communities. But also notable here is the score for Charters Towers. It too has scored relatively low – significantly lower than the other two Queensland towns and Jabiru. Literature confirms that, in urban contexts, the elderly are more fearful of the young (e.g. Clemente and Kleiman 1977; Braungatt et al 1980; Clarke and Lewis 1982; Stafford and Galle 1984). Charters Towers is a town with a large proportion of retirees who, during the survey process, often commented about the presence of young people ‘hanging around’ parks and on the streets. This apparently created the impression of insecurity. Charters Towers may also be large enough to be suffering from other types of insecurity problems (e.g. burglaries etc) typical of those often found in other larger cities. Of course, unemployment coupled to the lack of things for the young to do was also identified as a major issue of concern in most of these towns, which could help to explain why the young are hanging around.

There is a very clear and significant demarcation between the Queensland towns and the two Western Australia and Northern Territory towns with ‘historic sensitivity’. This almost certainly reflects the history of the towns. Charters Towers has a relatively long history and the buildings at its centre reflect its past. Hughenden also has a long history and again it is something that is apparently valued highly by its residents despite the fact that the town centre architecture is less impressive than Charters Towers. Cloncurry too has a similar history to Hughenden with a similar pattern of preservation of historically significant buildings – mostly hotels. Such buildings stand out as symbols of the past – a past that is indicative of more buoyant and affluent economic times. But, Jabiru, Kununurra and Halls Creek simply do not have such a history. None of these towns were established during the glory years of a gold rush such as was the case with Charters Towers. Perhaps more importantly, because the WA towns and Jabiru were not established at a time when it was considered important to ‘open up’ northern Australia (they were established during the 1970s), they lack architectural purpose and permanence. These newer towns were established with one motive in mind - to quickly provide services to those who were developing natural resource industries in the surrounding area (mining at Jabiru and agriculture around Kununurra). While this motive was also true of the Queensland towns, it could however be argued that they were conceived within a ‘pioneering ethos’ – a time when motivations perhaps extended beyond mere resource exploitation and perhaps even cost-effectiveness. The expense and investment evident in the architecture of the Queensland towns, particularly Charters Towers, testifies to a desire to, not merely create functional ‘quick fix’ buildings, but to also produce something that would impress existing and future generations. They are symbolic of intended permanence and an expectation of continued prosperity. Evidence from the community survey would seem to confirm that the buildings of Jabiru, Kununurra and Halls Creek engender little if any feeling of intrinsic value. The results from one of the questionnaire items perhaps best demonstrates the point; 84.3% of respondents from Charters Towers compared to just 10.5% from Jabiru either agreed or strongly agreed that ‘it is important to preserve the architectural style of buildings in the town centre’.

Scores for ‘community involvement’ are very positive for all towns suggesting that most people are supportive of community involvement in decision making. This is by far the one construct to have received the most positive response in all the towns. The consistency of this result would suggest there is an important available resource in terms of social capital 1. ‘Social interaction’ can be considered a surrogate for community networks, which has also been associated with social capital (Putman 1993; Elkins and Newby 1998; Wallis et al 1998). In itself, the score for this construct reveals little variation between the towns but it does seem noteworthy that Hughenden (the highest scoring town) is the one town in this sample known to be suffering decline in terms of population and services. This town also scored the highest for ‘sense of place’ and ‘community involvement’ so it seems plausible that an argument can be made that higher scores for all these will be found in circumstances of decline. Possibly, the threat of continued decline might be helping unite the community in Hughenden and so enhance social capital. On the other hand, the strength of these scores may be more attributable to the long history and shared sense of identity of Hughenden’s residents. Never the less, a good social capital score must be regarded as a positive attribute of social sustainability. However, it is still easy to remain pessimistic in this case because it is quite plausible that the response is a reaction to negative socio-economic signals rather than being symbolic of a pro-active initiative born from something more positive. Despite this, in terms of strategic planning, positive social capital offers a clear ‘window of opportunity’ to engender sustainability.

The Economy Dimension

The negative socio-economic signals referred to above are clearly apparent in the results from the economic dimension (Fig 4). Of the three dimensions examined, it is the economy dimension that has scored the lowest overall, and this is particularly true at the information and basic needs levels.

Fig 4: Results from the Economy Dimension

In simple terms it seems Charters Towers scores best overall. The town comes first on levels III and IV, second on level II, and third on level I. One might expect such a result since it is the largest town and certainly the most diverse in terms of its economic functions. Jabiru, which does well on levels I and II only comes forth on level III and IV. Cloncurry does well in terms of attitudes and activity (second places) but not so well for the other two levels (forth place). Kununurra only does well on level I but poorly on all the other levels i.e. it is good at providing basic economic needs but the level of economic sustainability information, attitudes and activity are all relatively poor. Likewise, Halls Creek also does poorly on most levels including the basic needs level although it apparently has a relatively well informed community (perhaps not so surprising given the sample population). Hughenden does moderately well in terms of attitudes and activity but very poorly in terms of information and basic needs.

Like the social dimension, cluster and factor analyses can be used to establish groupings of questionnaire items. Five groups were identified: altruism, community economic support, Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) central issues, future prosperity, and the time that ought to be considered in planning (Table 3).

The ‘altruism’ construct was based on two contingent valuation items that explored Willingness To Pay (WTP) to improve environmental protection and community involvement in development in planning decision-making. As one might expect, the score for altruism was not high in any of the towns but the hypothesis that there would be a greater degree of altruism in towns that demonstrated higher incomes has, in a simple sense, been confirmed. Jabiru, the town with the greatest per capita income, was also the town to demonstrate the greatest level of financial altruism. Notable also here is that there was greater support (WTP) to protect the environment than there was for improved participation - this is true for all the towns.

 


Altruism

Community
Economic
Support

DSP
Central
Issues


Future
Prosperity

Time
Considered
in Planning

Charters Towers

12.5

75.6

25

65

30

Hughenden

8.7

75

15

52.5

32.5

Cloncurry

11.2

72.5

22.5

67.5

30

Jabiru

23.7

57.5

36.2

67.5

45

Kununurra

11.2

59.4

22.5

80

45

Halls Creek

10

61.3

30

42.5

35

Table 2: Sustainability Support Scores (%) obtained for the Major Economic Dimensional Constructs

Both ‘community economic support’ and ‘sense of place’ (previously discussed in the social dimension) display very similar results. A clear distinction can be found between the Queensland towns and those of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The relationship between the two constructs is also supported by a Pearson’s test of correlation, which showed an r-value of .50 (p = .01, N = 673). Given the fairly average scores found in Jabiru for ‘community economic support’ and ‘sense of place’, one must conclude that, just because there is capacity to obtain relatively higher incomes and therefore perhaps create some financial altruism (i.e. if one has the money it is easier to give some away), altruism in itself should not be considered a good indicator of support for sustainability.

The ‘DSP central issues’ construct is made up of two question items that examined attitudes towards economic growth and financial self-sufficiency. In both these, all the town’s scores were quite low - especially for self-sufficiency – even in Jabiru. But never the less, and following the pattern found for altruism, the town that is struggling the most (Hughenden) is the town that scores the lowest in terms of DSP central issues. The residents there evidently believe that growth is important to the town’s long-term prosperity. But perhaps more significant is that they also believe the idea of self-sufficiency to be unrealistic. If this is true, then government policy that seeks to encourage an economic ‘level playing field’ in the name of competition, efficiency and economic sustainability must be questionable. In short, it is likely that these three are not compatible ‘bed-fellows’ and that economic sustainability in remote and regional areas particularly probably needs to be defined in such a way that it includes external financial support from the major economic centres. Certainly, the small rate bases and the enormity of the local municipal areas means that many local authorities in the northern region could virtually be considered financially bankrupt were it not for external support through various state, territory and commonwealth grants.

It also seems likely that respondents associate future prosperity with present economic vitality but the picture is a little confused by the results from Jabiru and Hughenden. Although Jabiru was found to be one of the most economically vibrant towns, its future is actually quite uncertain because of its strong association with uranium mining – the initial reason for its establishment. Jabiru’s future is at least partially dependent on the town being ‘normalised’. This implies that its jurisdictional definition as a mining town with its current bureaucratic conditions for its management and future development, may be changed to become a ‘normal’ open town subject to ‘normal’ Northern Territory local government legislative requirements. There is some uncertainty about this prospect and what it might mean for the future of the town and this is undoubtably reflected in the results. Also, broader public concern about uranium mining in the world heritage listed Kakadu National Park from some national environmental and local indigenous groups has placed some uncertainty over the mine’s future and therefore the town’s. Of all the towns, one might assume it would be Hughenden that would demonstrate the least amount of optimism about the future but this turns out not to be the case. Hughenden actually comes second last for ‘future prosperity’ with Halls Creek coming last. The reason for the perceived ‘bleakness’ of Halls Creek’s future seems certain to be linked to a perceived lack of ‘real’ economic functions, except for those that have an indigenous support purpose. But in actual fact, that is a very important function and it is one that, for the foreseeable future at least, will continue. As an external observer, I feel more concerned about Hughenden’s future because it presently has very few primary economic functions and because it is located along a stretch of road with five other very similar towns.

The ‘time considered in planning’ result is interesting because apparently it is those towns that have all the characteristics of short-term planning and development that have scored the highest (Jabiru, Kununurra and Halls Creek). This contrasts the results found for ‘sense of place’ etc discussed above. So, why has this come about? First, it could be that this is a consequence of the lack of sense of place and actually reflects an inherent desire by the residents of these towns for a sense of permanence. Or secondly, it may be that the higher incomes associated with these towns allow its residents to think in the longer-term and therefore support longer-term community planning and investment. It turns out that analyses do not support this second proposition. Given the ‘historic sensitivity’ result (discussed above), it seems plausible that the moderate desire of these much newer town communities for longer-term planning and development may be related to their daily encounters with the results of short-term planing. They simply desire a feeling of permanence and stability often found in more substantial town architecture.

Conclusions

One aspect of the research only touched on so far was the information level on all three dimensions. The diffusion of information question actually involved a very different research method (i.e. interviews with local authority staff); time and space constraints here have not permitted a review of those findings. However, it was very apparent that most staff and elected members have nothing but a very rudimentary understanding of sustainability and certainly know nothing about its application. It was also apparent that this was not really the fault of the local authorities; rather, the hierarchical diffusion processes that should have been operating to bring sustainability information down to the local authority level, had simply not be operating - if they had, the messages were not getting through. Once again, effective bureaucratic networks are an important component of social capital. The state and territory government agencies charged with local government responsibilities must take responsibility for this. As one of the Council members said, ‘they [state government] should be more active to the extent that they physically come out to the remote and regional authorities and hold seminars and workshops…[on the subject of sustainability]’. Without such initiatives, the level of information about sustaining communities will never come close to what can be observed in the large cities.

As far as the analytical model is concerned, there seems little doubt that it has potential for assessing support for sustainability. What has been done in this study is obviously very generic, which was important in order to understand its capacity to perform as an assessment tool. What was found with respect to the towns of northern Australia certainly seems consistent with what may be understood from a more qualitative and intuitive perspective. Further analysis is still needed however in order to be really confident of its usefulness to measure sustainability support. Obviously, any further work with the model in other geographic situations would help to enhance and refine it further. However, the real value of the model and methods described here will be truly tested in real-world practical situations i.e. where more specific sustainability questions need exploration and where more carefully refined indicators can be developed according to specific local contexts. As for the constructs, the most useful for measuring support for community sustainability in this case were: environmental empathy; cultural sensitivity; service provision; community involvement; ethnic relations (examined here as ‘Aboriginal concerns’); sense of security; sense of history; social interaction; institutional networks; sense of place; altruism; community economic support; and, perceived future prosperity. Some of these appear within discussions associated with social capital but perhaps it could also now be appropriate to extend that area of research to include these additional constructs – perhaps under the heading of sustainability capital. After all, these are clearly tangible and measurable features of a community resource.

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Appendix A: Indicators According To ‘Relevance’

Analysing According to Relevance (Environment Dimension)


Level


Degree of
Relevance


Indicator

Community Survey (Q.No.)

Professional Survey (Q.No.)









IV



MR

Level of support for constructing energy
efficient housing
Membership of environment groups
(eg Landcare/ICM)
(11) Level of support for mixed land uses
(13) Level of knowledge of sustainable development


23

44
5




7

1






Rel

(1) Level of commitment to soil & water problems
Level of commitment to exotic weed control
Level of enjoyment of nature/environment
(the ‘bush’)
Level of interest in diversity of flora/fauna
(biodiversity)
(6) Level of support to preventing land/water
degradation
(9) Level of commitment to recycling programs
(10) Level of acceptance of smaller blocks
(14) Level of knowledge and commitment to LA21
(15) Level of knowledge of landcare & ICM/TCM

35
22

2

19

15
33
46

7
7



7,9




27
6

VR

(3) Level of support to conservation of natural areas

13

4









III



MR

(6) Level of support to preventing land/water
degradation
(10) Level of acceptance of smaller blocks
(11) Level of support for mixed land uses
(13) Level of knowledge of sustainable development
(14) Level of knowledge and commitment to LA21


15
46
5





1
27







Rel

(1) Level of commitment to soil & water problems
(2) Level of commitment to exotic weed control
Level of enjoyment from nature/environment
(the ‘bush’)
Level of interest in diversity of flora/fauna
(biodiversity)
Level of support for constructing energy
efficient housing
Membership of environment groups
(eg Landcare/ICM)
(10) Level of acceptance of smaller blocks
(12) Level of knowledge of the ‘precautionary
principle’

35
22

2

19

23

44
46

7
7










5




II


MR

Level of support to preventing land/water degradation
(12) Level of knowledge of the ‘precautionary
principle’
(15) Level of knowledge of landcare & ICM/TCM


15




5
6

Rel

(13) Level of knowledge of sustainable development
(14) Level of knowledge and commitment to LA21

 

1
27

I

None

     

Analysing According to Relevance (Society Dimension)


Level


Degree of
Relevance


Indicator

Community Survey (Q.No.)

Professional Survey (Q.No.)







IV

MR

(16) Level of attachment to town
(23) Level of interest in heritage groups
(27) Level of neighbourhood support
(29) Extent of desire for further recreational facilities &
opportunities
(30) Level of interest in the history of the town

1
31
16

3, 9
18





3

Rel

(20) Level of demand for empowerment processes
(32) Level of ethnic egalitarianism
(33) Level of interest in assisting LG with
development decisions

39
27

7, 47


14

26

VR

(17) Extent of strategic approaches to development
and planning
(22) Extent to which LG encourages community
participation




37


26

20











III

MR

(16) Level of attachment to town
(18) Level of compassion shown between family and
community
(19) Commitment shown to different cultural & ethnic
groups
(20) Level of demand for empowerment processes
(24) Level of interest in community clubs e.g. Lions,
CWA etc.
(26) Level of interest in the protection of architectural
heritage
(27) Level of neighbourhood support
(29) Extent of desire for further recreational facilities &
opportunities
(33) Level of interest in assisting LG with
development decisions
(34) Level of importance given to land rights
(Aboriginal context)

1

24

10
39

8

41
16

3, 9

7, 47

36





24




11


3

26

15

VR

(17) Extent of strategic approaches to development
and planning
(22) Extent to which LG encourages community
participation




37


26

20

II

MR

(28) Extent of desire for further service provision

29

3





I

MR

(16) Level of attachment to town
(20) Level of demand for empowerment processes
(25) Perceived level of racial problems in the town
(28) Extent of desire for further service provision
(29) Extent of desire for further recreational facilities &
opportunities
(31) Level of the sense of security and safety
(33) Level of interest in assisting LG with development
decisions

1
39
4
29

3, 9
26

7, 47



12,13
3

3


26

Rel

(21) Extent of alcohol related problems

11

 

Analysing According to Relevance (Economy Dimension)


Level


Degree of
Relevance


Indicator

Community Survey (Q.No.)

Professional Survey (Q.No.)









IV



MR

(39) Level of emphasis on short-term or long-term
planning
(42) Level of interest in informal economies (barter
clubs, co’ops)


48

45

 




Rel

(35) Level of empathy towards the idea of ‘no limits to
growth’
(40) Willingness to Pay (WTP) to improve
participation
(41) Willingness to Pay (WTP) to improve the
environment
(43) Degree to which cost determines purchasing
patterns


32
59

58

14

 


VR

(37) Level of interest in developing local industries
and businesses
(38) Level of interest in improving local ‘lifestyles’


40
24


17







III



MR

(36) Level of optimism about the future
(41) Willingness to Pay (WTP) to improve the
environment
(42) Level of interest in informal economies (barter
clubs, co’ops)

28

58

45

 





Rel

(35) Level of empathy towards the idea of ‘no limits to
growth’
(37) Level of interest in developing local industries
and businesses
(43) Degree to which cost determines purchasing
patterns
(44) Belief that the town needs external support (State
and Federal Government)


32

40

14

43




17



21

VR

(38) Level of interest in improving local ‘lifestyles’

24

 

II

Rel

(44) Belief that the town needs external support (State
and Federal Government)


43


21





I



Rel

(36) Level of optimism about the future
(39) Level of emphasis on short-term or long-term
planning
(40) Willingness to Pay (WTP) to improve
participation

28

48
59

 

VR

(44) Belief that the town needs external support (State
and Federal Government)


43


21

1 Professor Robert Putman (1993) originally developed the term ‘social capital’. Defined simply, it consists of networks and norms of civic engagement. Without participation in public life, Putman argued feelings of trust and bonds of reciprocal helping are undermined, and the ability to solve problems and sustain prosperity is weakened.

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