Abstract:
Insights and understandings pertaining to pursuit of the objective of regional sustainable land management for the pastoral high country are generable by way of clarification of the long-run implications, for future generations, of the current generation of land managers' choices. Answers are required for the triple questions of what to sustain, for whom to sustain that what, and how to sustain that what for that whom. Methods of systematic evaluation, compatible with the latter objective, are reviewed and extensions proposed, particularly with respect to joint accommodation of quantitative and qualitative data. Modifications to game-theoretic methods of analytically portraying the dynamic socioeconomic ramifications of trust, in a context of land managers, effectively, 'all in the same boat', are proposed and synthesised. Mutual cooperation, and therefore socioeconomic effectiveness, can be sustained at high levels, provided that attention to the necessary ingredients of motivation, information, and trust, can be complemented by attention to ongoing investments in socialisation, and to ongoing investments in skills that enhance communicated-information exchange. A case is made that the more ethically committed and communicatively skilled the region's land managers, the better their prospects in pursuit of the objective of regional sustainable land management.
