Designing Extension to Deliver Triple Bottom Line Outcomes

A report for the Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building

by Ruth Beilin, Mark Paine and Rebekah Pryor

July 2007

RIRDC Publication No 07/100 RIRDC Project No UM62A

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© 2007 Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. All rights reserved. ISBN 1 74151 498 3 ISSN 1440-6845 Reconceptualising extension to deliver triple bottom line outcomes Publication No. 07/100 Project No. UM62A The information contained in this publication is intended for general use to assist public knowledge and discussion and to help improve the development of sustainable regions. You must not rely on any information contained in this publication without taking specialist advice relevant to your particular circumstances.

While reasonable care has been taken in preparing this publication to ensure that information is true and correct, the Commonwealth of Australia gives no assurance as to the accuracy of any information in this publication.

The Commonwealth of Australia, the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), the authors or contributors expressly disclaim, to the maximum extent permitted by law, all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any act or omission, or for any consequences of any such act or omission, made in reliance on the contents of this publication, whether or not caused by any negligence on the part of the Commonwealth of Australia, RIRDC, the authors or contributors.

The Commonwealth of Australia does not necessarily endorse the views in this publication.

This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, all other rights are reserved. However, wide dissemination is encouraged. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the RIRDC Publications Manager on phone 02 6271 4165

Researcher Contact Details Associate Professor Ruth Beilin Associate Dean (Academic) Faculty of Land & Food Resources University of Melbourne PARKVILLE VIC 3010 Phone: (03) 8344 5009 Fax: (03) 9348 2156 Email: rbeilin@unimelb.edu.au In submitting this report, the researcher has agreed to RIRDC publishing this material in its edited form. RIRDC Contact Details Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation Level 2, 15 National Circuit BARTON ACT 2600 PO Box 4776 KINGSTON ACT 2604 Phone: 02 6271 4100 Fax: 02 6271 4199 Email: rirdc@rirdc.gov.au. Web: http://www.rirdc.gov.au Published in July 2007

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Foreword Extension is a critical process in communicating and developing ‘best practice’ knowledge in rural industries, especially in promoting the uptake of more economic, environmental and socially sustainable practices at the local level. However, to improve the delivery of triple bottom line outcomes in the future, extension processes need to be further assessed and refined.

This report explores the origins of the triple bottom line (TBL) evaluation process to clarify its meaning and identify its potential as a tool for planning and evaluating local practices, and for developing extension policy. The researchers have analysed the existing literature on TBL, and found it does not meet the needs of the complex, multi-faceted economic, environmental and social context in which extension operates. In response to this they have developed a framework that can be used to assess the potential of extension policies and programs to contribute to more sustainable rural industries.

The way the researchers approached this project was to rethink the concept of the triple bottom line and how it might be incorporated into extension practice in ways that are more meaningful for extension and research practitioners and for farmers. Of necessity, this means that the work is at least in part theoretical and deals with concepts rather than concrete descriptions and activities. The work will be valuable for extension practitioners and managers working in rural industries to enable better triple bottom line outcomes.

This project was funded through the Cooperative Venture for Capacity Building in Rural Industries which is made up of the research and development corporations: Australian Wool Innovation; Cotton Research and Development Corporation; Dairy Australia; Grains Research and Development Corporation; Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation; Horticulture Australia Limited; Land & Water Australia; Meat & Livestock Australia; Murray-Darling Basin Commission; Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation; Sugar Research and Development Corporation; and the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. This report is an addition to RIRDC’s diverse range of over 1600 research publications which can be viewed and freely downloaded from our website www.rirdc.gov.au.. Information on the CVCB is available online at http://www.rirdc.gov.au/capacitybuilding/. Peter O’Brien Managing Director Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation

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Acknowledgments We wish to acknowledge the input and support of the extended project network comprising Neels Botha (AgResearch, NZ), Roy Murray-Prior (Curtin University, WA), Stuart Morriss (Massey University, NZ) and Tony Dunn (Charles Sturt University, NSW). We also acknowledge the support and direction of John McKenzie (Project Manager, on behalf of the Cooperative Venture), and thank him, together with Alice Roughley (Social and Institutional Research Program, Land & Water Australia), Steve Coats (Dairy Australia), John Whiting (Department of Primary Industries – Bendigo, VIC) and Ruth Nettle (University of Melbourne, VIC) for their constructive review and feedback throughout the life of the project. We thank Alison Reid (Murray-Darling Basin Commission) and Megan Hill (Department of Primary Industries – Tatura, VIC) for the provision of secondary documentation relevant to this desk-top study. We also acknowledge the assistance of the administrative and support staff at Parkville and Burnley campuses of the Institute of Land and Food Resources, University of Melbourne.

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Contents Foreword ................................................................................................................................. iii

Acknowledgments................................................................................................................... iv

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................... vi

Introduction ..............................................................................................................................1 Objectives ...................................................................................................................1 Methodology...............................................................................................................1

Literature Review.....................................................................................................................2 Origins of the ‘triple bottom line’ ...............................................................................2 Drivers of TBL adoption.............................................................................................3 Applications of the TBL: TBL reporting ....................................................................4 Examples of TBL in agricultural and NRM extension ...............................................7 TBL and sustainability................................................................................................7 Towards an invigorated conceptual framework for extension..................................10 The ‘discursive community’ .....................................................................................10

Examples of discursive community................................................................13 TBL outcomes emerging from discursive communities .................................14

Conclusion ................................................................................................................14 TBL is not just an outcome but a process.......................................................14 Integrated extension practice ..........................................................................15

Discussion of results ...............................................................................................................17 Diagnosing the context of extension practice ...........................................................17 Civic space as the venue for discourse......................................................................18 Social cohesion, equity and capacity ........................................................................18 A framework for re-configuring TBL outcomes and the potential of extension to achieve them ..........................................................................................................................19

........................................................................................................................21 Opportunities for making TBL policies and programs...................................21 Sites for negotiating meaning .........................................................................21 Sites for documenting TBL indicators............................................................22

Implications.............................................................................................................................23

Recommendations ..................................................................................................................24 Recommendations for extension practice .................................................................24

Glossary...................................................................................................................................26

References ...............................................................................................................................29

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Executive Summary What this report is about This report examines the origins of the triple bottom line (TBL) evaluation process to clarify its meaning and identify what potential it has as a tool for planning and evaluating local practices, and for developing extension policy. It includes an analysis of the existing literature on TBL. The authors concluded that TBL as it has been applied does not meet the needs of the complex, multi-faceted context in which extension operates. As a result they developed a framework that can be used to assess the potential of extension policies and programs to contribute to more sustainable rural industries. This report describes that framework.

Who is the report targeted at? The report is targeted at a number of key audiences. Extension practitioners and managers will find it useful in providing a definition of triple bottom line and how it can be applied in extension programs. People from the academic sector will find the literature review and theoretical framework of particular relevance as will those from organisations that fund extension as well as the policy sector.

Background Recently, extension initiatives in Australia and New Zealand have aimed to deliver TBL outcomes that provide economic, environmental and social benefits. In practice, institutional providers of extension incorporate this commitment to sustainability without necessarily identifying the many stakeholders and their different ways of perceiving and defining the TBL. This lack of definition has contributed to a sense of confusion resulting in unclear outcomes and uncertain evaluations of extension outputs. As a result, funding bodies may condemn extension practice as not leading to change and land managers are often labelled as resistant to change. The lack of definition has contributed to a ‘business as usual’ perspective that ignores the challenge of achieving sustainability within agricultural industries and resource management. Objectives This research explores the various perceptions and definitions of the TBL as they are applied in extension theory and practice. The study began with the following objectives:

1. to develop a critical perspective on the current use of the TBL in agricultural production systems, particularly in extension theory and practice:

a. to understand the production landscape context of extension and its implications for extension practice; and

b. to identify an alternative theoretical framework for the practice of extension that better enables the delivery of TBL outcomes

2. to develop a tool in the form of a framework that will facilitate understanding and managing the TBL indicators and outcomes.

Methods used There were two phases in the research methodology. The first phase consisted of a comprehensive review of the literature on agriculture, extension and related disciplines, the aim of which was to develop a critical perspective on how the TBL is currently being used in production systems.

In the second phase, the findings of the literature review were used to develop a framework to better inform the process of extension and to improve the capacity to identify and evaluate TBL outcomes.

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Key findings This research reveals several factors critical to influencing the capacity of extension practitioners to support TBL processes. The first of these relates to the theory and method behind the project itself.

At the completion of the literature review it was clear to the researchers that the complexity and usefulness of engaging in a TBL approach would depend on acknowledging ‘mess’. That is, the TBL as a concept, is not linear. Users of a TBL process will not be able to set up a straight line or ‘a’ to ‘b’ approach. Rather, TBL requires many lines to be followed simultaneously, and this requires ‘mapping’ or the construction of a matrix or model in order to track the strands in play through what we might call ‘mess’. To be realised as an effective addition to extension practice therefore requires the establishment of a framework without a guaranteed direction as an outcome.

The acknowledgment of multiple strands simultaneously at work is that in linking social and economic and environmental outcomes as an integrated process throughout a project or program (rather than just summing up each as a silo at the end of the project page in the manner of accounts) there is going to be continually new and even unexpected outcomes. Each time the framework is integrated into extension programs and practice there will be different processes involved. It will require discussion and analysis—a diagnosis of the implications if ‘x’ is pursued, for example.

Extension practitioners and funders will have a conceptual tool that assists them to acknowledge the dynamic reality of social, economic and environmental interaction, but they will not have a guaranteed outcome1. Each use of this framework will elicit the evolving reality of that particular project or program. The diagnosis will emerge throughout the application of the framework but most notably at the design, implementation and evaluation stages of the extension practice.

Therefore a key finding of the report is that the TBL concept can be a useful tool by providing both a process to help recognise and define local economic, environmental and social factors that affect everyday practice, as well as a process to identify a set of sustainable outcomes or goals.

A stronger understanding of what the TBL means and adopting the concept for both outcomes and process at both local (micro) and policy (macro) levels can result in better extension practice. This potential often remains largely unexplored because extension programs are generally focused on outcomes rather than processes. Current extension efforts commonly reflect a confusion of goals around a single target such as improved production. There is also a tendency to minimise the lack of coherence between locally and institutionally defined TBL best practice.

It may be optimistic to imagine that by devising a framework for fleshing out the TBL, we can improve the relationship between institutional expectations and demands, and local practice. The proposed framework is designed, however, to improve how stakeholders approach the concept of the TBL. Therefore this research proposes that extension practitioners work as facilitators at the interface between stakeholders. In reconceptualising the extension practitioner in this way, we recognise the challenge to traditional industry or commodity-based programs. However, we argue that in complex times, recognising the wider context for decision making is key to understanding the resource management, social and economic possibilities. We also argue that this context is often understood implicitly but in making it explicit in the use of the framework, it helps create the necessary conditions that enhance discussion and trigger change.

Discussion between stakeholders is an essential part of the TBL extension process and outcomes. This discussion between stakeholders is called the ‘discursive community’ and is an idea that originates in the literature on civic space and civil society. It suggests that citizens can make complicated decisions on issues such as sustainability and globalisation if they are able to engage with the ideas in a way that makes them locally relevant. This interaction requires multi-directional communication that is

1 In reality the outcome is more likely to be one in which there is a simultaneous linking of the TBL indicators but the attention in the framework is initially to the process.

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generated with citizens as participants, rather than the conventional ‘top-down’ flow of knowledge and information.

Further, the discursive community does not imply just one ‘community’ or one perspective, rather it recognises a variety of perspectives. Logically, therefore, extension policy and practice need to reflect a more complex relationship to and with stakeholders, including recognising that extension practitioners are one of the stakeholders. The potential to change the way we think about extension policy and practice by integrating social, economic and environmental processes and outcomes offers the opportunity to integrate production systems and post productivism landscapes across regions and nationally. This simply means that extension is acknowledged as being relevant to more than just production outcomes. The social, economic and environmental well-being of those within these landscapes may depend on other values being incorporated into the landscape mosaic—for example, ecotourism or farm forestry.

Finally, the framework requires the extension practitioner to have two roles. One is to be proactive and reflective so they can contribute to the discursive community as a participant in the multi-disciplinary interaction. The other is to facilitate the TBL framework process. The framework acts as a tool, identifying the potential connections between social, economic and environmental policy types, between types of connective opportunities and between stakeholders.

Recommendations The framework is a useful tool for recognising and interpreting the context in which extension processes and practitioners operate. It is also a way of determining the potential for existing and future extension initiatives to stimulate sustainable change in economic, environmental and social systems at the micro and macro levels of production policy and practice.

The research provides some important guidelines for extension theory and practice that aim to deliver TBL outcomes. These are summarised below.

• Extension that adheres to a TBL approach requires that the economic, environmental and social aspects of issues be considered as three strands of a whole approach when extension policy and program development are being planned, implemented and evaluated.

• To understand the complex context in which it operates, extension must involve the range of stakeholders, including official institutional and local stakeholders, and allow their various perspectives on policy and practice – in particular, their definitions of best practice – to be represented.

• Extension that effectively promotes and contributes to sustainable landscape change depends on participative methods that encourage genuine collaboration through discourse between institutional policy makers, researchers, extension practitioners, program participants and other stakeholders. This includes those from other local production industries and interest groups. These methods will also enhance the collective capacity of stakeholders to define and continuously evaluate what TBL best practice is according to local contexts.

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Introduction Recently, extension initiatives in Australia and New Zealand have aimed to deliver triple bottom line (TBL) outcomes that provide economic, environmental and social benefits. In practice, institutional providers of extension incorporate this commitment to sustainability without necessarily identifying the many stakeholders and their different ways of perceiving and defining the TBL. This lack of definition has contributed to a sense of confusion resulting in unclear outcomes and uncertain evaluations of extension outputs. As a result, funding bodies may condemn extension practice as not leading to change and land managers are often labelled as resistant to change. The lack of definition has contributed to a ‘business as usual’ perspective that ignores the challenge of achieving sustainability within agricultural industries and resource management.

Objectives This research explores the various perceptions and definitions of the TBL as they are applied in extension theory and practice. The study began with the following objectives:

1. to develop a critical perspective on the current use of the TBL in agricultural production systems, particularly in extension theory and practice:

a. to understand the production landscape context of extension and its implications for extension practice; and

b. to identify an alternative theoretical framework for the practice of extension that better enables the delivery of TBL outcomes

2. to develop a tool in the form of a framework that will facilitate understanding and managing the TBL indicators and outcomes.

Methodology There were two phases in the research methodology. The first phase consisted of a comprehensive review of the literature on agriculture, extension and related disciplines, the aim of which was to develop a critical perspective on how the TBL is currently being used in production systems. The literature review is provided as an appendix to this report. In the second phase, the findings of the literature review were used to develop a diagnostic framework to better inform the process of extension and to improve the capacity to identify and evaluate TBL outcomes.

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Literature Review Origins of the ‘triple bottom line’ The triple bottom line (TBL) has emerged in business, industry, extension and policy as a popular tool for conceptualising, measuring and reporting on sustainability. It focuses on and values the social, environmental and economic outcomes of practice. As a framework for planning and measuring progress in agriculture and natural resource management, the TBL is relatively new and is being applied and understood in ad hoc ways depending on the organisation and background of advocates within institutions and agencies.

In the rural context, TBL is being applied as a concept relevant to the pursuit of sustainability. As such, it has implications for the role and function of extension in production landscapes traditionally dominated by single-focus strategies and programs (e.g. commodity based extension programs like Target 10, Prograze, BeefCheque, etc.) that are developed and delivered mainly to increase productivity. In the past, the other factors that also influence local landscape practice outcomes, e.g., social arrangements/systems, environment and policy restrictions on water, have not been central to the extension program.

The Institute of Social and Ethical AccountAbility in the UK, an international, not-for-profit, professional institute that promotes social, ethical and overall organisational sustainability coined the phrase the ‘triple bottom line’ in the mid-1990s (www.accountability.org.uk). It developed an AA1000 series as a framework to help organisations build accountability and “social responsibility through quality social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting” (ibid). It was John Elkington, a leading strategy consultant to the business world, who is credited with popularising the phrase ‘triple bottom line’ in 1997 (Woodhill & Röling, 1998; Elkington, 1997; Corrs Chambers Westgarth, n. d.; McDonough & Braungart, 2002; Sarre & Treuren, 2001). He argued that businesses aiming for sustainability could no longer simply design and measure their performance against a single financial bottom line. Sustainable development could only be achieved by ‘the simultaneous pursuit of economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social equity’– the directing and measuring of performance against a triple bottom line (Elkington, 1997:397, our emphasis). With this focus on performance, the definition is people centric, and therefore a concept with potential to be administered both qualitatively and quantitatively; concerned with the interactions between people and their economic, environmental and social systems. Critics of the ‘triple bottom line’ rhetoric suggest, however, that while ‘a corporation’s ultimate success or health can and should be measured not just by the traditional financial bottom line, but also by its social/ethical and environmental performance’ it is very hard to weigh and ascribe ethical and social responsibility so that it can be measured in terms of social impact (Norman & MacDonald, 2004). And its origins in corporate accounting suggest that the TBL is expected to be a series of numbers for measurement, calculation and audit. This implies some sort of comparable data will emerge. But Norman and MacDonald (ibid) argue that there is no generic sense in which there is a ‘social bottom line’. Therefore the quality of the data associated with the TBL can be variable or whimsical, depending on the corporate intention and may ultimately sound like there is a significant change in the way things are done, without the ‘evidence’ to rigorously prove this is the case. Nonetheless, while a business ethics critique of the TBL is slowly emerging, the rhetoric of triple bottom line accountability has pervaded Australian and international policy and management planning in business. (Google returns about 25,200 web pages with the term (ibid)). These include many sectors such as health, agriculture, mining and natural resource management. The rhetoric and expectations of the TBL imply there is a complex relationship between social, environmental and economic issues. Governmnents’ adoption of the concept creates further expectations that these are reflected in their agencies’ program outcomes. In theory, the three bottom line outcomes need to be

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integrated and ‘inexorably linked’ (rather than necessarily balanced) in any change or decision-making process (Allen et al., 1998). In practice, they may be differently weighted in terms of perceived importance or priority by each sector or implementing agency or by public perception.

Drivers of TBL adoption The adoption of TBL terminology is a response to public demand for increased transparency and accountability of organisations and governments (Vandenberg, 2002; Deni Greene Consulting Services, 2001).

In the business sector, the ‘growing tension between emerging social values and traditional forms of value creation’ (Elkington, 2001:xi) has forced consideration of sustainability (including TBL), a concept Elkington describes as the ‘#1 global business challenge’ (2001:xi). Corporate and individual customers and members of the community, with their power to buy and boycott, have also exerted pressure on organisations to be more socially and environmentally responsible in their pursuit of profit (Deni Greene Consulting Services, 2001). Like businesses, local governments have adopted the TBL in response to widespread community concern about issues of environmental degradation and sustainability (Keating, 2002). In each case, the field of organisational accountability has broadened. Businesses can no longer simply be accountable to internal management and shareholders, and councils to their local ratepayers. Organisations must now consider the broader impacts of their practices on other local, regional, national and even global stakeholders (Sarre & Treuren, 2001). While this may be a reversion to previous cycles of neo-liberalism and public good, the opportunity that the TBL concept presents is fortuitous for those in public sector management at a time of economic rationalism; as well as conceivably beneficial for those at the grassroots level of community engagement.

Growing government interest in corporate social and environmental responsibility is expressed in policy at local, State and federal levels, and has altered the expression of the role of government in regulating private businesses and industries. Government approaches to focus corporate attention on sustainability have extended from ‘command and control’ regulation of environmental performance to promotion of market-based triggers to improve it (Deni Greene Consulting Services, 2001:7). With its integrated focus on social, environmental and economic outcomes of practice, the TBL has come to typify good public relations in business. BP Australia report that a TBL approach to business not only ‘makes good business sense’, it also provides them with ‘a sustainable competitive advantage’ (BP Australia, 2001:5). It demonstrates to stakeholders the integrity of a business or industry, and so improves its reputation, increases investor confidence and enhances marketing and profit opportunities (Deni Greene Consulting Services, 2001).

In rural production industries, increasing realisation of environmental degradation and its implications for traditional modes of production and rural communities has led policy makers, researchers, extension practitioners, producers and other stakeholders to consider and try to apply the TBL. ‘Urban communities via governments’ have put particular pressure on rural landowners to solve environmental problems by managing their natural resources in more conservative and restorative ways (Scott-Orr, 2002:9). As some commentators have observed, however, such environment-focused ‘solutions’ do not also perceive and address the social and economic values and imperatives that characterise production landscapes (Scott-Orr, 2002; Beilin, 1998).

Changing social values and their subsequent market implications have largely driven the organisational shift towards the triple bottom line, in the process inspiring critique and revision of conventional ways of defining and measuring value. In this context, the TBL has emerged as a new tool for articulating progress in the pursuit of sustainability.

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Applications of the TBL: TBL reporting The main application of the TBL, particularly in business, has been in performance reporting, where outcomes of organisational practice are measured and reported to stakeholders. A number of frameworks have emerged as popular tools for measuring TBL success. Among them is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which was established in 1997 by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Its purpose was to develop a framework for reporting on the social, environmental and economic performance of companies, governments and non-government organisations (NGOs) (Connelly, 2002). While conceding that a global, consensual approach to sustainability reporting may be important and necessary, Mallen Baker, an organisation concerned with corporate social responsibility, argues that the GRI has not yet managed to identify the type of ‘core data’ required to report on social and environmental performance, as well as the interactions between these and economic outcomes of practice (Mallen Baker, 2002). Notably, this criticism of an absence of ‘core data’ itself implies that the search is still for simple categories rather than interactions between complex ideas like TBL.

While there is much enthusiasm for standardised frameworks and indicators for measuring and reporting progress along the TBL, Higgins (2001) argues that they may be understood simplistically. In a study of stakeholder perceptions of a TBL report produced by New Zealand company, Hubbard Foods, Higgins found that while the report failed to ‘live up to emerging characteristics of quality reporting’ (as represented by the intricacies of accounting for interactions associated with the TBL), stakeholders found its simplicity to be adequate (ibid:76). He concludes that,

…producing a Triple Bottom Line report is consistent with good corporate citizenship, but it may be that the consistency of behaviour across a range of actions is more important than the reporting per se (Higgins, 2001:76).

His findings suggest that actions that are positive and consistent in their effects on economy, environment and society have much greater potential to convince stakeholders of ‘good corporate citizenship’ than any amount of reporting (Higgins, 2001).

The challenges of reporting on complex relationships and interactions evident in TBL reporting, surface in particular with social reporting. The Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) suggests that social reporting ‘involves the measurement of social performance against societal and stakeholder expectations’ (Natural Heritage Trust, 2000). The complex inter-relationship between society and individuals is apparent in this definition. It is hard, however, to ‘capture the complexity’ when using a standardised evaluation form.

Doane (2000:4) focusing on the social aspect within TBL reporting, suggests it can indicate an organisation’s transparency, accountability and ‘willingness to dialogue with the public’. She argues, however, that the nature and process of this kind of reporting is difficult. It is written by the organisation about the organisation (our emphasis) and creates an imbalance of power within the dialogue relationship (Doane, 2000). Potentially at risk is authentic accountability and deliberation between stakeholders, and so the opportunity for social values and organisational behaviour to be aligned. Doane reports that stakeholders are now exerting increasing pressure, through markets and political arenas, on organisations to demonstrate how such processes of social reporting actually change organisational policy, practice and performance (Doane, 2000).

Within the private business sector in particular, the TBL is a measure (rather than a planning tool) to record the social, environmental and economic impacts of organisational activity (Doane, 2000). McDonough and Braungart (2002), both concerned with industrial design and production, assert that TBL is associated with compromise. They argue that current applications of TBL show it to be ‘a balancing act, a series of compromises between competing interests played out in product and process design’ (McDonough & Braungart, 2002:253). Notably, McDonough and Braungart’s highlight the detrimental aspects of competition. Contrary to Elkington’s intentions, McDonough and Braungart (2002:252) assert that the TBL ‘often becomes a measure of the degree to which a company has minimised a liability’. They therefore abandon the TBL as a mechanism for product and process

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design and performance assessment in favour of the ‘triple top line’ (TTL). Growth along the TTL occurs with products and processes that ‘enhance the well being of nature and culture while generating economic value’ (McDonough & Braungart, 2002:251). The TTL is represented conceptually by the ‘fractal triangle’ (Figure 1).

Figure 1 The Fractal Triangle (inset), showing ‘ecotones’ (McDonough & Braungart, 2002:253-254)

Despite representing a common understanding of TBL concepts and having a supposed ‘ecosystem view’ of the relationships between the social, environmental and economic, the fractal triangle model compartmentalises and reduces each interaction to an economic one: ‘In the fractal, the ecotones are ripe with business opportunities’ (McDonough & Braungart, 2002:254). Schilizzi (2002) implies a similar meaning when he says of the TBL,

What initially started out as a philosophy of social duty must now be seen as a technical challenge. Currently, there is no easy way to translate environmental and social liabilities into financial terms. And yet, such liabilities are as real as any other. All that is needed is to pin a number on them (Schilizzi, 2002).

The social, environmental and economic are not perceived to be of commensurate value and importance, and Schilizzi indicates that ways of measuring ‘value’ are mainly in monetary terms.

A 2002 forum in Melbourne, Victoria explored innovative TBL applications within corporate Australian organisations. The forum concluded that corporate Australia is ‘still intent on [a] single bottom line’ (Kendall, 2002). This emphasis on economic value indicates that TBL values have not yet been integrated in meaningful ways into the decision-making processes of corporations. The ramifications of this are profound. By neglecting to address all aspects of the TBL, corporations risk alienation from consumer markets increasingly concerned with TBL priorities that the public assume will include non-economic values. Moreover, commodity markets that are dominated by ‘single bottom line’ corporations will continue to reinforce current, economically-driven production regimes, thereby frustrating attempts to promote more sustainable social and landscape change.

At a State Government level, integrative frameworks for directing and measuring social, environmental and economic outcomes of practice are current. ‘Tasmania Together’ (TT) is a long-term, triple bottom line framework designed to direct and assess Tasmania’s development over a 20-

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year period. Design, monitoring and promotion of the ‘Tasmania Together’ plan have been the tasks of the ‘Tasmania Together’ Progress Board, an independent statutory authority, which consulted extensively with Tasmanian communities to gauge their views and visions for the future. Based on the outcomes of this consultation process, 212 social, environmental and economic benchmarks were developed ‘to help shape future government policy, service delivery and budgets’ (Tasmania Together Progress Board, 2002b).

The benchmarks are prescribed according to five goals: ‘Our Community’, ‘Our Culture’, ‘Our Democracy’, ‘Our Economy’ and ‘Our Environment’. Notably, the goals emphasise social power, equity and capacity. They promote equitable access to and responsibility for physical resources (food and shelter), educational and communicative opportunities, ‘meaningful work opportunities’ and sustainable natural resources (Tasmania Together Progress Board, 2002a). Together, the goals stress the need for ‘a balance between environmental protection and economic and social development’ (Tasmania Together Progress Board, 2002a). This articulation of a need for balance infers and reinforces a presumed conflict between these purposes—and suggests that previous policy has not been balanced. It can be anecdotally understood as the expectation of economic domination of social and environmental development based on previous perceptions and experience; or conversely, the concern of the economic bottom line advocates that ‘soft systems’ may dominate goal setting (pers.comm. R. Epps, 2002). The ‘Tasmania Together’ Progress Board articulates a large range of indices for measuring progress, including:

• ‘literacy rates against national benchmark; • participation of people under 29 in community groups; • political awareness within the community; • a greater incidence of [environmental] restoration, against a decline in incidences of

degradation; • number of cooperative programs between levels of government; • number of regional community forums’

(Tasmania Together Progress Board, 2002a).

Only a few indicators implicitly relate to the reform of production systems:

• primary industry exports; • level of Aboriginal satisfaction with processes and outcomes in natural resource

management; resources available to the Aboriginal community for undertaking conservation and sustainable resource development on their land;

• level of organic agricultural production in Tasmania; • amount of land in productive natural resource management

(Tasmania Together Progress Board, 2002a).

The Tasmania Together benchmarks seek to address a range – though notably, there is no indication as to how comprehensive and representative a range it is – of social, environmental and economic priorities. Progress against these goals is not reduced to units of economic cost or gain. In many cases, progress is measurable in more qualitative ways, for example, via community survey questions to measure:

• satisfaction with comprehensiveness of information • confidence in being able to deal with authorities and bureaucrats • opportunities to influence decision making

(Tasmania Together Progress Board, 2002a).

The Tasmania Together example follows a pre-TBL convention that maintains the social, environmental and economic as intrinsically separate and able to be ‘balanced’ like items on a ledger. The Western Australia Sustainability Strategy recognises the isolationism of this position in its assessment that most existing indicators are inadequate because they fail to integrate the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability (Government of Western Australia, 2002).

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Adequate indicators (not measures) will ‘reflect the definition of sustainability’ – they will be achieved ‘simultaneously through economic development, community action and government activity’ (Government of Western Australia, 2002:32).

Recently, a number of agricultural and NRM agencies and groups have tried to use the TBL to plan and direct simultaneous and beneficial social, environmental and economic outcomes of policy and practice. These initiatives offer insights into changing extension practice.

Examples of TBL in agricultural and NRM extension Programs such as the Murray-Darling Basin Initiative and Sustainable Grazing Systems (SGS) have incorporated the TBL in their design and reporting on extension (Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council, 2001; Meat & Livestock Australia, 2002). In each case, the impetus for the program is decline: in the case of the Murray-Darling, degradation of natural resources; in the case of SGS, diminishing farm profitability.

The aims however, are not simply sustainable environment or sustainable economy. They are sustainable environment, economy and society. For instance, the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council (2001:5) states that while the specific outcomes of the Initiative may vary from catchment to catchment, they will nevertheless relate to the increased protection of ‘assets at risk from continuing degradation’. These ‘assets’ are environmental (e.g. water bodies, flora and fauna), economic (e.g. productive land, infrastructure, tourism) and social (eg. rural communities, cultural/heritage sites and values) (Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council, 2001). Similarly, SGS has adopted TBL objectives: to build financial capital, social capital and natural capital in the high rainfall grazing industries (Meat & Livestock Australia, 2002). These objectives are about:

• improving on-farm practice to increase productivity and profitability; • contributing to personal growth of participants to encourage them (as individuals and

networks) to be confident and motivated to make more sustainable changes to their practice; and

• impacting on the ‘environmental consciousness, behaviour and performance’ of participants (Meat & Livestock Australia, 2002:11).

These examples indicate the TBL approach is relevant and applicable to extension in rural landscapes. However, a lack of critical literature about the effectiveness of TBL extension approaches over time points not only to the emergent nature of TBL extension, but also to an absence of suitably comprehensive frameworks (i.e. that include some description of integrated indicators) that can be used to plan, evaluate and report on TBL progress as well as to reconceptualise the role of extension.

TBL and sustainability As critics of the initial TBL corporate concept, such as Norman and MacDonald (2004) indicate, a major flaw in linking the TBL to new and more complex outcomes is the tendency to use the same tools for measuring economic benefit for auditing a social bottom line; and developing ‘in house indicators’ that are unlikely to allow social and environmental outcomes to be compared over time either internally or externally. They state that “the concept of a Triple Bottom Line in fact turns out to be a Good old-fashioned Single Bottom Line plus Vague Commitments to Social and Environmental Concerns” (ibid).

The work of Elkington (1997) and others suggests that the TBL is useful in defining the concept of sustainability, seeing the two as inextricably linked. (This is an attractive proposition for business and government, faced with defining sustainability in a way that implies if not actually ensures accountability.) However, Norman and MacDonald’s (2004) accountability concerns echo Lee and Gill (2001), who, from a different discipline perspective, note that the concept of sustainability – associated with ideas of ‘holism, systems approaches, integration and partnership’ – currently

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pervades agricultural and natural resource policy. They argue that despite widespread popularity at policy level, its application to Australian agriculture and natural resource management practice has proved the TBL to be another ‘buzz-word’ with little effect on practice (van der Lee & Gill, 2001).

Gray and Lawrence suggest that including a TBL in policy has failed to advance sustainability because of its positivist tendency to ‘compartmentalise “economy”, “environment” and “society”, rather than understanding the complex linkages between all three’ (Gray & Lawrence, 2001:155). Giddings et al. (2002) are equally disapproving of sectoral models of society, environment and economy such as that presented by McDonough and Braungart (2002). They argue that such models, separate the three ‘equal’ parts while also describing a ‘symmetrical interconnection’ between them, and are not an adequate approach to sustainability. These separative approaches distract attention from the ‘fundamental connections between the economy, society and the environment’, and so simplify what are essentially complex relationships (Giddings, Hopwood & O'Brien, 2002:189).

Giddings et al. (2002) present an alternative model for understanding the relationships. They represent the ideas behind TBL in Figure 2.

Figure 2 An alternative model for conceptualising the relationships between environment, economy and society (Giddings, Hopwood & O'Brien, 2002:193).

This model sees the economic (a sphere of human activity) merged with the social and set within the context of environment. Importantly,

… the boundary between the environment and human activity is itself not neat and sharp; rather it is fuzzy. There is a constant flow of materials and energy between human activities and the environment and both constantly interact with each other (Giddings, Hopwood & O'Brien, 2002:193).

This model is useful as a way of understanding the reality of policy and decision-making processes as they occur everyday in production landscapes because it illustrates the complexity and connectivity of economic, environmental and social issues and considerations. It is an alternative to the compartmentalised approaches to TBL ideas. This alternative model assumes ideas and meanings are constructed according to individuals’ motives and life experiences. Hence, ideas and meanings are relative and changeable. Ways of seeing and doing, i.e. social constructions, are elicited and developed by interactions between different people and cultures.

The intersection of policy and practice may appear tenuous, but ideas about sustainability and TBL reporting that currently pervade centralised macro level policy have directed practice at the micro or ‘grass roots’ level.

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TBL decision making in action The management decisions that farmers make each day about the landscape (e.g. to plant a shelterbelt) are influenced not simply by considerations of profitability (i.e. that the shade and wind protection will make for better quality stock and eventually, an increase in profit), but also by ideas of stewardship (i.e. that the land and its resources are innately valuable and warrant looking after) and even family (i.e. that this decision will have TBL benefits for the generations that follow).

These are TBL decisions, steeped in the ethos of sustainability; of managing the landscape in a way that delivers TBL outcomes for present and future generations.

This process of local decision making highlights two characteristics of the TBL that appear to be fundamental to the way that the concept is defined and deployed in planning and evaluative contexts:

• simultaneity – a product of simultaneous consideration of the economic, environmental and social in decision or policy making

• complexity – an effect of simultaneity and the inextricable interactions between the three dimensions of TBL that occur in local everyday life and practice.

Recognising the importance of simultaneity and integrating complexity is vital to the communicative processes that direct rural TBL policy and extension.

In line with the example above, there are many micro level policy makers in the rural landscape, e.g., farmers as they undertake daily management of the landscape and extension practitioners as they interpret and apply the policies they’re charged to implement. This is a key to redefining the interaction between the policy and the processes by which landscape management is designed and delivered. As such it is a way of recognising capacity for social change in a new and radical way where local individuals, households and communities can direct, redesign and implement policy in their landscapes.

This has implications not only for government policy-making processes, but also for future approaches to extension. From this perspective, the recipients of extension’s traditional ‘knowledge-technology transfer’ activity are seen as parallel sources of knowledge, with as much to contribute to the policy discourse as extension practitioners and researchers. This notion of policy derived at the micro level, rather than at the traditional macro level of centralised planning, raises critical questions for extension practitioners. Some of these questions are:

• What is our role in production landscapes, or what does it need to become? • Do extension practitioners need to be facilitation, and if so, facilitation of what? • Do extension practitioners need to facilitate social and landscape change according to a TBL

framework that prescribes standards of social, environmental and economic progress? Such frameworks may prove useful in the business sector, e.g., for comparing and regulating competition, even though there is a need to ensure that these TBL frameworks are integrative. The second part of this research project considered the relevance of a TBL framework to rural communities and landscapes characterised by diversity and complexity.

Currently, extension represents a significant community of practice that is well placed with networks to bring stakeholders together. The TBL frameworks are relevant to rural communities and landscapes because there is a need to ensure decisions of policy and practice that affect rural community and landscape are based on integrated and simultaneous consideration of social, environmental and economic factors, mirroring those described in local decision making on farm, for example. (This need is perhaps stronger in a diverse and complex rural environment than in a market-oriented business context.) As well, we suggest that social, environmental and economic outcomes of rural policy and practice need to be designed collaboratively by the whole range of stakeholders, rather than simply by

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extension or any other individual stakeholder group. Given farmers and other stakeholders in the rural landscape are making TBL ‘policy’ (or ‘plan of action’ (Collins Concise Dictionary, 1999:1143)) decisions, then the task of articulating TBL visions for that landscape is to be shared. More to the point, the role of extension changes greatly in this scenario.

The role of extension needs to be multi-faceted. Acknowledging that, in an effort to negotiate the meaning of sustainability through the TBL, extension practitioners are no longer working with just agricultural production, but with communities, landscape managers and resource stakeholders in general, is a first step forward as practitioners and for their institutions. Here is part of the impetus to reconceptualise extension because these practitioners need to understand and function as both facilitators of representative social learning processes that enable stakeholders to develop, implement and evaluate TBL landscape visions and outcomes, and as participants, themselves, in these social learning processes.

Towards an invigorated conceptual framework for extension The characteristics of TBL underpin how TBL benefits contribute to improving sustainable outcomes. These characteristics are as follows:

• integrate complexity • consider simultaneously the implications of social, economic and environmental benefits • be people-centric.

The next task is to identify the mechanisms, processes and social contingencies needed to integrate simultaneity and complexity with planning and evaluation methods to achieve a more inclusive and realistic sustainable practice.

Historically, the role of extension practitioners has changed from that of technology transfer agents to advisors and facilitators (in practice, go-betweens for community and government). The challenge to extension practitioners is extensive. Process and practice need to be identified, with extension practitioners acting as a conduit for changing policy to practice behaviour, and vice versa.

Recognising local land managers, extension practitioners and other stakeholders to be practitioners, strategists and makers of policy, radicalises extension. Extension must both participate in and facilitate social learning processes that will lead to TBL landscape visions and outcomes. It expands to host a new platform for discourse between groups of stakeholders or practitioners, that is, between ‘communities of practice’. Extension’s role is one of facilitating co-learning and the development of shared meaning and language between discourse (or conversation) partners. It is this discourse that stimulates change and also makes way for the development of solutions to land management issues (Robertson et al., 2000; Meppem, 2000).

(The relationship between discourse and change is described in the next chapter.)

The ‘discursive community’ The ‘discursive community’ is comprised of the stakeholders who come together to understand each others’ different practice, reflect on their practice and then work together to address sustainability issues (Meppem, 2000). Importantly, participants in the discourse come together as equal contributors in the landscape. As such, the discursive community is,

… an attempt to disrupt the self-reinforcing cycle of hegemonic planning, to disturb the ‘harmonious’ inequality of power relations and to do this by attempting to disentangle the veneer of ‘affirmative’ progress by promoting alternative styles of communicative interaction in planning for sustainability (Meppem, 2000:50).

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Meppem’s point can be referenced against the experience of a landcare community in Gippsland in the mid-90s. It shows how on-ground, in the subtlety of social interplay, communicative interaction shifts a community towards a more sustainable landscape.

A Landcare story The Landcare group had developed from a previous existence as a Trees on Farm group. The first president of the Landcare group was an inter-generational farmer who was not particularly interested in ‘conservation of private land’ (the banner for Landcare at field days). As a good citizen however, he could see the issues around the management of the local creeks, the need for willow cleanup and revegetation in the creek area, and so on. As a well-known local farmer and a key person in the local footy club, he brought a number of neighbours and colleagues to the Landcare group who would not otherwise have been involved.

The Vice President of the Landcare group was the ex-President of the Trees on Farm group. He was known as an ‘outsider’ to the local farming community because, as the magistrate’s son, he had never had to farm. Locals largely ignored his dedication to revegetation and fencing the creeks. The small number of members in the Trees on Farm group attested to the difficulties in recruiting other locals to the work. However within the regional department, he is a ‘champion’ and when the local extension personnel were setting up the Landcare group, they approached him to be President. From their perspective he represented the ideal productive farmer with conservation values needed to accomplish their objective of setting up Landcare groups in the area. However, he said he couldn’t be first President of the Landcare group if it was to succeed because he came with the wrong set of credentials to gain acceptance for the ideas of conservation outside of nature reserves.

Within this community the ‘inequality of power relations’ were the subtle fabric of landscape history. An outsider couldn’t do the job. However the ‘communicative interaction’ that fostered a friendship between the ‘outsider’ and the inter-generational farmer made them community co-conspirators. One had the acceptance and social power to bring the community into Landcare, and one had the ideas about sustainable production systems that were to change the landscape in which they both farm.

Ideally, ‘communicative interaction’ is democratic and accessible to all stakeholders. In reality, however, bringing all stakeholders together is hard. The very nature of the discursive community interaction, which centres on appreciation, critical self-inquiry and collaboration, may need agency support so that some stakeholders are not discouraged from participating. Establishing a discursive community does not automatically mean that the quality of the discourse will be positive. Issues to be aware of include the potential to be an exclusive, self-selecting community rather than an inclusive, participatory one. An exclusive group would limit how ‘democratic’ the outcomes of the interaction are, for example they might be democratic within the group but may not recognise the rights of those outside the group who are nonetheless neighbours in landscape.

These factors do not imply that the discursive community is without merit. On the contrary, the desktop research to date indicates that there is an opportunity to encourage a richness and quality of communication and learning in building group and stakeholder capacity in this way. Nevertheless, in the current ideological climate, processes of social learning and change are likely to be gradual. Given the diversity of individuals and communities of practices in the rural landscape, it would be unrealistic to expect all stakeholders to become involved in the discursive community at once. It is reasonable, however, to assume that in the longer term, the dialogical learning that takes place within the discursive community will permeate the broader community and so involve and/or affect those stakeholders presently not involved in the interaction.

Rather than a 'trickle down effect', this is a 'ripple effect' as extension moves out into the community from within particular groups, via the group members themselves (Beilin & Andreata, 2001). Landcare exemplifies this phenomenon of social change. Not only has it encouraged (and provoked) practice change among landcare members, it has raised awareness among those farmers in the wider local

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community, ‘the ones that ‘poke the fence’ and observe the beneficial effects of landcare for themselves’ (Pryor, 2002:96).

The discursive community is the space for genuine engagement between different communities of practice. It is able to expand and encompass multi-disciplinary attributes from the surrounding communities and their practices. It recognises that each discipline or community of practice is characterised by its own set of values and guidelines for understanding, communicating and doing (Paine & Beilin, 2002). A discursive community not only enables difference (which may be perceived as conflict) to be acknowledged, ‘it works ritualistically to re-build relationships and to prepare the social basis for future practical action’ (Forester in Meppem & Bourke, 1999:401).

The function of discursive community is similar to Friedman’s ‘community of inquiry’, made up of a diversity of communities of practice who engage in self-reflective, iterative critical inquiry and evaluation of their and others’ practices and ‘languages of practice’ (Friedman, 2001). It is also similar to ‘cooperative inquiry’ (Heron & Reason, 2001) and ‘appreciative inquiry’ (Ludema, Cooperrider & Barrett, 2001; Checkland & Casar, 1986). All are communicative and collaborative mechanisms for social learning. However, the discursive community approach differs from the others in that the dialogue doesn’t have to end in consensus. Meppem says,

An issue of paramount importance in the planning and sustainable development agenda, therefore, is to deconstruct this naïve, ideologically loaded and utopian view of ‘community’ and reconstruct a more sophisticated understanding of the need to work together while recognising our differences. These conditions call forth the ‘discursive community’ (2000:52).

In this sense, the discursive community does not have to compromise or even negotiate with communities of practice engaged in the discourse. Rather, it seeks to determine ‘collectively what the issues are and how they are related, through communicative practices that recognise and celebrate diversity’ (Meppem, 2000:53). Meppem argues that this is ‘the ‘productive’ change-making process’ from which more sustainable policy and development strategies eventually emerge (2000:53).

Inquiring, questioning, debating – discursive communities engage with the issues that face their practice. Their investment of 'self' is both in 'owning' the group outcomes and in pursuing ideas that challenge the future management of their landscapes. They can legitimately question the accepted 'wisdom' from the 'experts', whether this is a departmental advisor or a local producer. The story of the landcare farmer who didn't plant trees is an example of a missed opportunity for a hills Landcare group, and a failure of extension to explore the experiences and diversity of practice within local communities. Integrating real life decision making, the weight of production on small farm size, had implications for this farmer at a social and environmental level, and he acknowledged this in his assessment.

The difference between an extension idea that is focused on one outcome and one that integrates and tests ideas is significant. In the story above, the farmer does not share his experience nor does he expect anyone to be interested or accepting of his practice because it does not conform to 'expert expectation' of land management in this area. This is despite the irony of other extension commodity programs using this farm as a demonstration of excellent pasture and quality dairy production. The two extension program desk officers were in the same regional office but apparently never integrated their messages and the communities involved never connected their interests to challenge the department’s extension practice.

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Passive resistance The Landcare farmer in the steep hillside area of south Gippsland went faithfully to every meeting of the local Landcare group and he was President of that group for four years. A common message at the Landcare meetings in the region was the importance of planting trees in the recharge area of the catchment (at the top of the hills) to avert runoff and erosion that usually emerged lower down on the slopes.

A visit to this farmer ended with a tour of his property. He was expecting a dairy extension program bus tour from a nearby region because as a local dairy farmer he carried twice the herd per hectare of farmers in the area, was a top producer and his pasture was exemplary. As we toured about it was clear that this farmer had not planted a single tree and that in effect there were no trees anywhere on his steep land except in one paddock. These few trees were Mountain Ash--remnants of the once Great Southern Forest. They were on the top of the hill but not fenced out and suffering from cow pressure in the area. The farmer pointed down the slope to a stark white tree that stood dead in the paddock. It was a huge old thing. And he said, ‘That tree haunts me. It says this landscape was probably all forested and this is what is left. But I can't plant trees. It doesn't make sense on this amount of land and with my production targets. And I don't think that trees are the only answer here. I maintain good pasture cover and I have never had a slip and the water's taken up. The Landcare message about trees isn't the only answer for these hills but it is the only one you hear about and it won't work for me.’

In the years the farmer lived on this farm and attended the Landcare meetings there was no discussion of pasture cover as an alternative to tree planting at the meetings. The farmer's fame as a good producer made his election as President a surety. He was well respected among the local land managers because of his production record. The Landcare members and the extension practitioners all ignored the fact that he didn't plant trees and they didn't publicly explore the way he did manage his land. His quiet resistance to the tree planting mantra and his experience of pasture management represent a lost opportunity in collective discourse. His practice didn't match the extension message and the learning opportunity for that community was lost.

Examples of discursive community While discursive communities are not identified in the literature, there are several that illustrate multi-disciplinary approaches to extension that encourage communication and learning through interaction and discussion.

The Living Landscapes project focuses on improving management of ‘ecological richness’ in Western Australia’s agrarian landscape (Booth et al., 2000). Its objectives and multi-disciplinary method recognise that natural resource management issues are complex and interconnected, and that solutions – revisions of policy and practice – need also to integrate social, environmental and economic factors. The project functioned as a kind of discursive community. It brought people from different disciplines (communities of practice) together to understand one another’s language. It allowed them to redefine their intentions about nature conservation. This interaction was the stimulus for discussing and planning future strategies and actions, now based on ‘shared visions and broad goals’ (Booth et al., 2000:26). It also strengthened the capacity of stakeholders to identify, address and evaluate future natural resource management issues.

The Benelux Middle Area Water Conservation Project followed a similar transdisciplinary approach when it brought stakeholders together from Belgium and the Netherlands to address water management issues. The project represented a social space for learning and facilitated dialogue between the ‘agency partners’, among them, farmer groups, water boards, soil research and advisory services and technical and social university-based researchers (Jiggins, 2002). This example suggests that the characteristically multi-disciplinary discursive community has potential to be a significant mechanism for managing and stimulating social change. The potential is realised ‘when

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complementarity is sought between specialist technical knowledge and management, politically responsive and adaptive management, and empowered farmers’ (Jiggins, 2002:94).

In each case, the success of the discursive community depends on not recognising existing power structures that ordinarily hinder stakeholders from coming together, which then enables stakeholders to work as partners in the pursuit of more sustainable policy and practice.

TBL outcomes emerging from discursive communities The discursive community, like other systems approaches, is messy and complex. In this context, the role of extension is not to reduce or simplify this complexity. Rather, it is to enable communities of practice to recognise and appreciate their differences to assume a common ‘orientation for action’. In this invigorated extension framework, the dialogue that occurs within the discursive community is the interaction that stirs stakeholders, including extension practitioners, to articulate what the TBL will look like in their landscape.

Resource management extension, especially with a focus on water resources, is a strategic starting point for promoting a discursive community in most production landscapes. The concept of Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) has already helped to disguise property boundaries and extend landscape visions from local farm to ‘global farming system’ (Beilin, 2001:7). Many stakeholders are realising that their landscape (and perception of it) is one part of a complex ecological system. In Australia, Landcare has been pivotal in facilitating this. Nevertheless, extension practitioners must now build on this self awareness by encouraging stakeholders (all those affected by the catchment) to realise that the catchment landscape (of which their immediate ecosystem is a part) has also a complex social system. The imminent task for extension is to ‘set the round table’ for discursive community – to ‘take a seat’ as it were and facilitate engagement between dialogue partners so that social learning and social dreaming about landscape futures can occur.

The discursive community is presented as a way of stimulating TBL outcomes in production landscapes. It represents a reconceptualised view of social change (a necessary prerequisite to landscape change) and the role of extension. The literature review indicates that few extension programs currently aim to develop this kind of social space for multi-disciplinary learning or use it as way of encouraging stakeholders to define and communicate their TBL visions for the landscape. The literature also suggests that reporting tools such as GRI inadequately recognise and account for social indicators of TBL performance, hence a need to explore new, more integrative ways of understanding TBL outcomes. Additionally, this review highlights a need for current and future examples of discursive community (as a model of extension that stimulates TBL outcomes) to be evaluated and reported on in the literature.

Conclusion

TBL is not just an outcome but a process The authors of this report acknowledge that the use of the TBL as an outcome based target is common, and that there is no one definition, intention or purpose in using the phrase the TBL. Recognising that there are multiple intentions and idiosyncratic uses can be interpreted negatively as: the TBL lacking validity; or not being rigorous in the scientifically ‘tested’ sense; or being too vague. However, because the phrase ‘the TBL’ continues to to be used, despite its lack of apparent scientific or social scientific academic grounding, it is a good idea to actually develop a framework for its use. In the areas of resource management and agricultural production, rural development and environmental change, the TBL has come to be associated with defining sustainability through its social, environmental and economic target outcomes.

The ways the TBL is applied currently suggest it needs both local and institutional definition to be effective. The literature indicates that considering the social, environmental and economic together (simultaneity) is critical in the pursuit of sustainability. Theoretically, simultaneity will occur implicitly because each outcome affects the others. This leads us to emphasise not only the endpoints

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but also the process leading to these social, environmental and economic outcomes. The TBL is not just a set of indicators nor an outcome. As McDonough and Braungart (2002) indicated, it is a process rather than an endpoint. The process involved in creating TBL outcomes needs to be transparent so, for example, the implications for the environment when an economic or social decision is taken, are clearly targeted or understood. This deliberate action of making the connections between the three aspects of the TBL explicit creates a theoretical expectation that the process will be ‘deeper’ than just coordinating or juggling or balancing three independent outcomes. The TBL outcomes will effectively be part of each other in recognition that policy or practice takes all three into account with each decision process.

These considerations are integral to the role of extension in production landscapes, and to stakeholders at the farm and land manager level, who make everyday TBL decisions that affect the social, environmental and economic wellbeing of both community and catchment. It allows sustainability to be articulated. Therefore reconceptualising extension to deliver TBL outcomes is in the first instance, about reconceptualising the TBL as a process rather than just program outcomes that extension practitioners must achieve.

Integrated extension practice The role of extension has been fragmented partly because public extension providers have largely been focused on single goal outcomes before the TBL rhetoric was introduced. When the TBL emerged within public policy programs and percolated down to community engagement, the ability to interpret its meaning and to broaden the spectrum of outcomes to incorporate TBL targets depended on individuals and communities rather than institutional guidance. In many cases, the literature indicates that rather than a holistic approach to sustainability, organisations continue to interpret the TBL from a commodity or production first basis.

At a basic level this report argues there is a place for both production values and sustainable landscape futures in the same practice. However, a reconceptualised, invigorated model of extension is a challenge to the role of extension and the definition of extension itself: it could be much larger than the production mandate. Extension practitioners can be in the vanguard of integrating currently fragmented approaches to commodity and community based resource management. In a reconceptualised model, extension practitioners may manage the interfaces between participating stakeholders. The platform for this interaction is the discursive community, where stakeholders come together to learn of each others’ knowledge, experience and landscape vision. Importantly, consensus about ‘next steps’ towards sustainability need not occur within a discursive community. The discourse itself, with its many voices, will orientate people (in small or large ways) to the ways that individuals and communities of practice can think and act within the landscape. The TBL process is a vehicle for integrating the ideas of public policy administration with the on-ground reality of living in the wider landscape. Extension is both an internal and external function of this process—central to the messages being derived and transmitted within organisations; and as a conduit between the communities and the organisations. Integrating extension practice is about building capacity within organisations and external communities.

Extension is the cornerstone of discursive communities

The discursive community represents a new way of facilitating social change towards more sustainable rural communities and landscapes. It also provides a context for simultaneously considering social, environmental and economic outcomes of rural policy and practice and, as such, stimulates the design of TBL outcomes by local people and their communities of practice with government. Additionally, research needs to investigate and identify new or improved modes of operation and training so extension practitioners are able to ensure that discursive communities perceive production systems as connected parts of a whole of landscape, just as internally, the TBL process reflects a whole of government approach. In the past there has been a tendency to manage extension programs as isolates. This literature review and analysis highlights the need to identify a framework to guide extension in

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recognising complexity and facilitating simultaneous integrated TBL outcomes within each of the social, environmental and economic areas.

Discursive communities are made not found

Extension is the catalyst in ‘setting the round table’ for a discursive community. Extension practitioners are both active as stakeholders in the changes for a future landscape; and facilitate engagement between dialogue partners so that social learning and social dreaming about landscape futures can occur. Additionally, this review highlights a need for current and future examples of discursive community (as a model of extension that stimulates TBL outcomes) to be evaluated and reported on in the literature. In this expanded extension framework, the dialogue that takes place within the discursive community is the interaction that stirs stakeholders (including extension practitioners) to articulate their practice and to initiate change. In each case, the success of the discursive community is empowered and supported by agency, government, NGO, or similar institutions, to overcome existing structures that ordinarily hinder stakeholders from coming together. To effectively support discursive communities requires linking of macro and micro policies through their decision making processes. This enables stakeholders to work as partners in the pursuit of more sustainable policy and practice.

Further research is needed to explore and develop the processes that engage stakeholders with one another in a discursive community.

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Discussion of results Diagnosing the context of extension practice Currently, extension practice requires practitioners to deliver TBL outcomes without deliberately aligning local goals with institutional goals, which are expressed as program outcomes. This project offers a framework to help all stakeholders understand the TBL as a process. The framework diagnoses the potential of an extension policy or program to deliver TBL outcomes by making clear the links between all aspects of the process. This framework was developed from the findings of a literature review and from existing information about the TBL, extension, practice, landscape, change and policy as they relate to rural industries.

The framework is a tool that can be used to make explicit the ‘everyday’ context in which extension operates. Its key elements represent the three strands of the TBL, i.e., the economic, environmental and social objectives and outcomes of practice. Through modelling the interactions between the these three factors when dealing with an issue, project or policy, the social process that underlies the framework is mapped and the interconnection, synergies or opportunities between stakeholders is made explicit. Because we emphasise the process, this framework focuses on the social aspects of the TBL as process is, by definition, a social interaction.

Social processes depend on communication. Through communication and learning, the economic, environmental and social considerations that happen implicitly in everyday life are made explicit. As such, communication and learning are central to identifying and achieving TBL outcomes in rural areas that are characterised by complexity and multiple stakeholders. The characteristics that determine the ability of communication and learning activities to stimulate TBL outcomes are:

Discourse. Conversations between different stakeholders about an issue or issues that concern them.

Social cohesion. The degree to which there is agreement , or at least a willingness to negotiate, amongst that group of stakeholders about the importance, values and possible solutions to the issue(s)

Social equity. Acknowledgment of the potential contribution of all stakeholders to best practice knowledge, and the degree of access they have to communication and learning opportunities and associated resources

Social capacity. The ability of stakeholders as individuals and/or as a collective, to be self-reflective and critical of their own knowledge and practice, and therefore to be resilient, especially when the economic, environmental and social systems in and with which they interact face change or risk

There are two key elements of communication and learning if it is to help develop social cohesion, social equity and social capacity and effect change in a region. These elements are:

• it must stem from social interaction

• it must take place in the local and regional context.

We propose that the idea of ‘civic space’ is a useful theoretical tool for ensuring that stakeholders in the discursive community take this landscape context into account.

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Civic space as the venue for discourse ‘Civic space’ is where discourse takes place. It is both physical and ideological: physical in that it is where people from different communities of practice within the catchment landscape gather, e.g. dairy farmers, cropping farmers, researchers, extension agents, etc. to one geographic or cyber. e.g. via the internet location; and ideological in that it enables stakeholders to (i) freely share knowledge, (ii) reflect on their knowledge and practice in light of others’ and (iii) potentially generate new, purposeful visions for the landscape. In terms of rural production, the local landscape represents the physical links between people such as in terms of the wider catchment, and also provides ideological links by providing a common focus.

The civic space is the place where implicit local TBL decisions and processes can be made explicit. Civic space has great potential as a way of stimulating policy change at the macro and micro levels. The discursive community that engages in the civic space discourse involves and inevitably affects all participants from a variety of communities of practice who are traditionally involved in various levels of policy making. Within civic space, the traditional vested interests associated with policy conflicts are made transparent and, in the process, the meaning and values behind them are made clear for all stakeholders to understand. Ideally this offers the opportunity for shared, more equitable approaches. In the long term, this democratic discourse enables common purposes for landscape and social change. Extension practitioners participate as stakeholders in constructing these visions, and are also well placed, because of their conventional extension relationships with other stakeholders, to take a role in facilitating the discourse to ensure that all perspectives on economic, environmental and social systems are heard and understood.

Social cohesion, equity and capacity In the process of enabling policy and practice to be reformulated, the civic space discourse also enables social cohesion by promoting social networks across the catchment.

The usefulness of social networks is illustrated by the following quote is from a landcare facilitator who sees local people connected enough to come together to address issues of common concern.

I’ll know that social change has occurred when people can get together, or when they have a gripe about something – about weeds or rabbits or something – they’ll be happy to talk about it amongst themselves…When they actually don’t need someone to come in and tell them what they should do about it. When they can say, ‘We can do this. We can go and approach whoever and we can think of an idea and we can tackle this… with some support from outside’(Pryor, 2002).

She acknowledges that ‘support from outside’ – interaction with traditional, centralised levels of policy – is essential to the discourse. It is this collaborative, interdisciplinary discourse that enables social cohesion, in turn developing equity, or fairness, amongst stakeholders and building the capacity of communities to be resilient even through experiences of vulnerability and risk.

Social cohesion does not necessarily equal consensus in the civic space. Rather, its effect is to enable different individuals and communities of practice to appreciate their differences and the complexities of the social, environmental and economic interactions around them. Social cohesion therefore enables the TBL to be defined or worked out conceptually and practically in communities of practice and everyday life. Ultimately, it enables local landscape and practice to be understood in new ways. More importantly, social cohesion empowers TBL outcomes to be developed and implemented at the micro and macro levels.

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A framework for re-configuring TBL outcomes and the potential of extension to achieve them Figure 3 (page 20) depicts the dynamic and ongoing process for identifying the economic, environmental and social landscape context in which extension programs operate.

The three solid blue lines depicted in the framework indicate the social, environmental and economic strands of the TBL. Notably, they are not linear and they only intersect at certain points. This reflects the reality of conventional policies, which are generally derived in isolation from each other. Even when the TBL is included, the accounting practices within institutions tend to separate out TBL outcomes for audit purposes.

In this model, the three strands of the TBL are connected in civic space discourse by a number of dimensions: time across generations; and space through the physical landscape. For example, a social policy on equitable rural water provision would need to include a long-term perspective on changing water payment and water rights allocations to ensure that the resource is also available to future generations of land users. Similarly, the environmental argument about maintaining or returning water to wetland areas would need to be addressed in relation to economic arguments that equate lost production with unused water in the dam and social issues to do with non-agricultural uses of water.

The circles denote ‘connectors’. These are sites where processes such as interruption, interaction and reflection enable stakeholders to come together as a discursive community in the civic space to focus on a particular issue. The connectors work at a variety of economic, environmental and social levels and enable ideas to be conveyed between the macro and micro levels. When this intersection between diverse stakeholders leads to the interaction between people participating in a common process, such as negotiating natural resource management priorities in a catchment area, individuals and their communities of practice can engage in civic space discourse. As such, these connector nodes represent potential opportunities for policy reform.

The dashed line represents the TBL policy that emerges from interdisciplinary and simultaneous consideration of the three strands of the TBL

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Figure 3 The framework for identifying the context of extension and the process for delivering TBL policy and practice outcomes processes.

emerging TBL policy and programs

triple bottom line

dynamic & iterative

connectors: potentially sites of interruption, interrogation and

interaction

conventional policy

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In the framework, connectors help us to understand production landscapes as social landscapes. The following anecdotal example illustrates this idea.

Opportunities for making TBL policies and programs According to the framework, each connector node provides an opportunity for interruption, interaction, reflection and change of policy and practice, although these processes may not all happen at the same time or in the same place. For example, the connectors from which TBL policy, shown by the dashed line, does not emerge indicate events where policy makers might only consider the economic aspects of an issue, or perhaps only the social. We argue that these policies, and their related programs, fail to stimulate radical change because they ignore complexity and the associated values of social cohesion, and do not create opportunities for ongoing communication between the range of stakeholders.

Sites for negotiating meaning Initially, the connectors will be sites where communities of practice (COP), for example, commodity groups, landcare, CMA, or water boards, negotiate meaning fundamental to learning. At the same time as providing opportunities to negotiate with other COP, connector sites give individual COP an opportunity to negotiate meaning within their own practice, that is, to revise their own group language and meaning. Once a COP opens itself up to the possibility of redefining itself according to its interactions with other COP, there is opportunity for discourse and knowledge to flow across existing social boundaries, and so, multi-disciplinary communication and learning.

A local roadside conservation group in the western district of Victoria was the beginning of a campaign to change the production practice of farmers in the area who had been consistently ploughing and planting pasture outside their fence lines on the two- and three-chain-wide road verges. Farmers were afraid of the naturalised areas burning and had pre-empted this by planting them. Realising that these roadsides were full of endemic wildflowers in September, the local naturalists were able to convince the Country Fire Authority (CFA) to manage the roadsides differently. CFA plans to control burn were tied into the seasonal splendour of the local native flowers, and management regimes were negotiated to change local practice.

This was the first step for the local farmers in thinking about biodiversity outside the fence. In this catchment, it has led to a very active community both because of the incessant debate about how to manage the landscape and because that debate has triggered many local landcare and community group projects.

In 2002, the local catchment council was asked to consider the reality of the biodiversity within their area by defining and mapping key sites. The participants worked steadily on the project over many days. In the final hours of the project they suddenly realised that the areas they had mapped were their special places. These were sites that had meaning to them as locals and as members of this catchment group. They had mapped their social landscapes and the biodiversity policies that would be derived from these as a consequence would reflect that social and environmental relationship.

This kind of cohesion suggests that while the indicators of biodiversity in the area will undoubtedly evolve, the social relationship will be continually meaningful and emerge in relation to the site, not outside of its boundaries. The long-term sustainability of the values associated with this mutual process will be integral to the landscape and its people.

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Sites for documenting TBL indicators The connector nodes are also sites for documenting TBL indicators, which inevitably must be derived among the communities of practice. According to the TBL, these indicators will reflect the connections between the economic, environmental and social. For example, changing systems in one strand of the TBL automatically results in systems changing in the other strands. For example, such indicators may record changes in farm practice, which also have implications for changes in environmental practice and changes in associated social arrangements such as labour and extension requirements. Hence, the indicators of TBL are likely to be simultaneous.

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Implications

TBL outcomes are defined and made achievable when the fabric of social interaction that overlays production landscapes is made clear. The model we have presented depends on a simultaneous, people-centric and complex triple bottom line, and landscape as the site of everyday practice and the context of TBL policy and decision making. The model uses the notion of civic space discourse that promotes social cohesion and enables individuals and their communities of practice to define together TBL purposes and outcomes in the landscape. As well, change is integral to our model because each connector site provides new opportunities for people to make sense of their environment and, in doing so, create that environment.

The framework is a tool that enables extension policy and program processes to integrate economic, environmental and social aspects active in the local landscape with their objective of sustainability. It is this multi-dimensional purpose that differentiates our framework for extension policy and programs from conventional single-focus approaches that consider the three strands of the TBL in isolation from each other; and neglect to link the micro and macro levels of policy and practice activity.

What we propose in the framework is that the micro level sets the policy direction and the macro policy level, where extension initiatives are conventionally designed, is derived from it. The main challenge for this process is to ensure representativeness at the micro level and receptiveness at the macro level. This represents a critical opportunity for extension, as the conventional facilitator of communication and learning in production landscapes, to promote and initiate discursive communities that involve a wide variety of stakeholders, from local farmers to government policy makers, and their communities of practice in negotiating practice priorities and responses to common landscape issues. As a result, serious consideration needs to be given to developing a new form of extension designed to specifically address and manage the issues of complexity implicit in landscape contexts.

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Recommendations

This research into the purpose and function of extension has identified several key factors that influence the capacity of extension initiatives and practitioners to affect TBL outcomes in the context of production.

The first is that, apart from being a tool for evaluating the sustainability of extension practice outcomes, the TBL is an important process for recognising and defining the economic, environmental and social factors that affect everyday practice and the construction and enactment of policy at the micro level.

Secondly, these factors are mostly implicit, which means that uptake of the alternative practices and ideals promoted by extension initiatives is limited and the differences between locally defined and institutionally defined best practice are exacerbated. The literature suggests that extension practitioners, with their focus on communication and learning processes, could manage the interface between multiple stakeholders. The challenge in facilitating the integration of the TBL concept and making it explicit is making sure there is stakeholder support for collaborative design, delivery and continuous evaluation of integrated, rather than fragmented, extension strategies and programs.

The third critical factor with potential to affect TBL extension outcomes relates to the nature of the interface between stakeholders. The discursive community has been identified as the ideal context in which this interaction takes place because it requires multi-directional communication, rather than the conventional top-down flow of knowledge and information. As well, the discourse enables a variety of perspectives on an issue to be put forward and in the process reconnects practice, the focus of extension and policy as integrated parts of the production system.

Fourthly, TBL extension outcomes depend on the ability of extension practitioners, who are themselves stakeholders in the landscape, to contribute to the discursive community as equal participants in the multi-disciplinary interaction as well as facilitators of it.

Recommendations for extension practice The literature review and analysis, together with the framework, have identified many ideas and actions with potential to make extension practice more effective in delivering TBL outcomes and developing sustainable rural industries and landscapes. These recommendations are as follows:

• Consider the economic, environmental and social aspects of issues simultaneously during both planning and evaluation phases.

• Recognise and involve the range of stakeholders and their potential various contributions to communication and learning and to the definition of best practice.

• Recognise the many different ways that stakeholders communicate and learn, and provide a range of mechanisms for relating economic, environmental and social information to landscape practice.

• Make sure that there are opportunities for multi-directional communication and learning between stakeholders, particularly local and institutional stakeholders, by providing or facilitating events and networks such as forums, representative committees and newsletters.

• Use case examples about issues of local concern that illustrate the connections between the economic, environmental and social aspects of those issues and link these with practice outcomes.

• Recognising the importance of ‘the social’ in the TBL is an acknowledgment of the importance of social research as a component of extension practice. This can be highlighted by using the framework to identify TBL issues that affect the rate and quality of local

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participation in extension initiatives, to inform the development of more realistic extension goals.

• Use collaboration between extension practitioners and program participants to define and continuously evaluate what best practice is, according to local TBL contexts.

• Involve and potentially affect a number of different communities of practice, including practitioners from difference local industries and commodity groups, by establishing ongoing or temporary networks that focus on particular and common geographic locations or resource issues.

• Facilitate participative methods that enable stakeholders to identify TBL indicators that could be used to evaluate the success and impact of their practice as well as the related extension processes and programs.

• Encourage continuous dialogue about best practice between institutional stakeholders, e.g. researchers, policy advisors, and those more localised stakeholders who practice at the landscape level.

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Glossary

best practice. Collectively defined in a TBL framework by the range of stakeholders; represented by actions that aim to contribute positive economic, environmental and social outcomes to achieve the landscape ideal of sustainability.

civic space. The location of democratic, communicative interaction between a range of stakeholders. It is both physical and ideological space: physical in its gathering of people from different communities of practice within the catchment landscape, e.g. dairy farmers, cropping farmers, researchers, extension agents, etc., to one geographic or internet location; and ideological in its enabling of stakeholders to (i) freely share knowledge, (ii) reflect on their knowledge and practice in light of others’ and (iii) potentially generate new, purposeful visions for the landscape.

community of practice. A group of people characterised by a unique set of values and guidelines for understanding, communicating and doing (Paine & Beilin, 2002), e.g. dairy farmers, extension practitioners, technical researchers, etc.

connectors. Sites (i.e. occasions, events, social processes) where stakeholders come together as a discursive community in the civic space to focus on a particular issue. Stakeholders’ openness to this kind of collective action is triggered by an interruption event, and provides opportunities for interaction between a variety of stakeholders, and reflection of their practice. The connectors act at a variety of economic, environmental and social levels and enable ideas to be conveyed between macro and micro level stakeholders.

‘conventional’ policy. Policy derived from single-focus approaches that consider the three strands of the TBL – the economic, environmental and social aspects of an issue – in isolation or competing with each other, as demonstrated in practice. In this report, the ‘conventional’ is used as a synonym for ‘traditional’ approaches to agricultural extension in particular.

Framework. In this report the ‘framework’ refers to the model developed by Beilin, Paine and Pryor (2003) (see page 4) to show how the three strands of the Triple Bottom Line interconnect. to indicate the sites of connection between macro (central policy) and micro (‘grassroots’or ‘local’) level decision making and to identify the key factors in invigorating the connections through social policy indicators.

Discourse. Ways of developing and representing knowledge and the social practices and power relations between the variety of stakeholders that are inherent in its construction.

discursive community. Comprises the stakeholders who come together to understand each others’ different practice, reflect on their practice and then work together to address sustainability issues (Meppem, 2000).

emergent TBL policy. Policy derived from integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches (such as that represented by the framework) that consider the three strands of the TBL – the economic, environmental and social aspects of an issue – simultaneously and in terms of each other. Because each time the TBL framework is used, the outcomes will be dependent on all the landscape and project variables, we cannot use a formulaic approach to the TBL. Therefore, we expect and recognise novelty and uniqueness as a part of the ‘local’ and actions and events that inform both theory and practice will ‘emerge’.

extension. van den Ban and Hawkins (1996:9) define extension as that which ‘…involves the conscious use of communication of information to help people form sound opinions and make good decisions.’ The Australasia Pacific Extensions Network states that extension is the ‘… use of communication and adult education processes to help people and communities identify potential improvements to their practices, and then provides them with the skills and resources to effect these improvements’ (APEN 1999, in Black 2000: 493). As authors, we add that extension contributes to and facilitates the communication of and learning between multiple stakeholders. Extension practice

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has conventionally followed a technology transfer model which facilitates the flow of scientific knowledge and technology from institutional stakeholders (e.g. researchers, policy advisors) to local stakeholders (e.g. farmers and other land managers).

Goulburn Valley. A region located in the northeast of Victoria, stretching from close to the outskirts of Melbourne in the south to the Murray River in the north, including the regional centres of Shepparton and Seymour and Lake Eildon and the Goulburn and Broken river systems. The region is renowned as ‘the food bowl of Australia’ because of its major food production industries including irrigated dairying and horticulture (including viticulture) as well as dryland grazing and cropping. The main NRM issues in the Goulburn Valley relate to the relationship between the quality and sustainability of natural resources. especially water, and agricultural production and regional development.

interruption event. A physical event like a drought or fire that signals a breakdown in the system of production, lifestyle, landscape appearance/health, etc.

macro level policy. Policy set by policy advisors and researchers at the centralised institutional level (i.e. the conventional site of policy construction). The term is used in this report to separate the idea of locally derived policy formulation from that generated at the centre. In a sector-based government department system, economic, environmental and social policies are typically developed in isolation from each other at this level.

micro level policy. Policy (or ‘plan of action’ decisions) initiated from local experience and with relevance to this report, usually implicitly made by land managers at the local household or farm level. At this level of landscape practice, economic, environmental and social policies tend to be integrated and implicitly are made simultaneously (i.e. in terms of each other).

multi-disciplinary. Involving a diverse range of stakeholders and their various communities of practice, which are characteristically unique in their knowledge of, approaches to and perspectives on practice.

resilience. Characteristically ‘dynamic, flexible, renewable, adaptive, self-organising and resistant to shock in an environment of change’ (Pryor, Beilin & Paine, 2003).

social capacity. The ability of stakeholders as individuals or as a collective or both, to be self-reflective and critical of their own knowledge and practice, and therefore to be resilient, especially when the economic, environmental and social systems in and with which they interact face change or risk.

social cohesion. The degree to which there is agreement (or at least a willingness to negotiate) among that group of stakeholders about the importance, values and possible solutions to the issue(s).

social equity. Fair and equal access of all stakeholders to communication and learning opportunities (and associated resources). The product of acknowledging the potential contribution of all stakeholders to best practice knowledge.

social policy. A social policy is a policy (a line of argument rationalising the course of action of a government) that deals with social issues (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/policy). As an example of social policy relating to equitable rural water provision, there would be a need to include a long-term perspective on changing water payment and water rights allocations to ensure that the resource is also available to future generations of land users.

stakeholders. All those people and institutions who have an interest in the subject and upon whom the activities and decisions will impact. In this study, they include farmers and other communities dependent on the local landscape, extension practitioners, researchers, industry associations, catchment management authorities and government departments. The stakeholder concept (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Stakeholder%20concept) suggests that there is mutual

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responsibility in being included as people or institutions who will be affected and affect the issues under discussion.

Sustainability. An economic, social, and ecological concept. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilisation and human activity so that society and its members are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals indefinitely. Sustainability affects every level of organisation, from the local neighborhood to the entire globe (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/sustainability ).

triple bottom line. A tool for understanding and identifying sustainability. The triple bottom line (TBL) focuses on the economic, environmental and social outcomes of practice, rather than just the single economic bottom line conventionally used to measure the success and sustainability of practice. A TBL approach to understanding, planning and evaluating practice or issue considers the economic, environmental and social impacts and aspects of the practice or issue simultaneously, that is, in terms of each other rather than in isolation. For example, when considering the economic consequences of changed practice (e.g. increased intensification of the farming operation to yield an increase in farm profitability), a TBL approach requires that the environmental impacts (e.g. effect on water quality and river health) and the social impacts (e.g. increased labour requirements and subsequent impacts on workers’ family interactions) be considered at the same time. The TBL focuses on the critique and transformation of practice and is therefore ‘people-centric’ (i.e. concerned with the way that people construct and make sense of the economic, environmental and social systems that involve and affect them). As such, the TBL exposes the complex nature of practice and policy making at the micro level.

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