In order for meaningful engagement to occur all stakeholders first require the capacity to do so. For a community group this capacity may include adequate cohesion and leadership within the community, literacy and numeracy skills for participants, and adequate time and financial resources to participate. For agency staff this capacity may include skills in cross-cultural communication, adequate time allocated to genuinely engage with the community, reflective practice that promotes awareness of institutional barriers and power structures which may prevent genuine engagement.

Activity: Capacity building for decision making in rural Australia

What are the tenets of capacity building in rural Australia?

Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation (now Land & Water Australia) commissioned a research project to review rural capacity building (McAdam et al. 2004). Specifically the researchers were charged with

  • reviewing social, economic, political and technological trends that are likely to have an impact on a future learning environment
  • identifying the current institutional arrangements supporting and constraining rural capacity building and learning
  • engaging key stakeholders in dialogue about improved institutional arrangements to support rural capacity building and learning – including inter-organisational structures, inter-relationships, roles, responsibilities, and possible barriers for change in institutional arrangements and the desirability and feasibility of those changes

McAdam et al. (2004) define capacity building as follows:

Capacity building is construed as externally or internally initiated processes designed to help individuals and groups associated with rural Australia to appreciate and manage their changing circumstances, with the objective of improving the stock of human, social, financial, physical and natural capital in an ethically defensible way. The stock of human and social capital is developed through learning, but learning is not the sole outcome of capacity building: all forms of capital can be enhanced.

Refer to the report to identify the five propositions that underpin capacity building. What issues, practices or other realities can impact upon capacity building, and how might these in turn impact upon community engagement in fire management planning?

Reading:

MacAdam, R., Drinan, J., Inall, N.& McKenzie, B. (2004) Growing the capital of rural Australia: the task of capacity building. Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (Australia), Publication No. 04/034. Accessed July 2005.

 

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