Lines on Maps: Defining Resource Governance Regions from the 'Bottom-Up'

River catchments have been the dominant form of regionalisation for natural resource management in many countries since the 1980s. Local governments play a considerable role in planning with ever increasing responsibilities for sustainable environmental management, planning and development controls. There has also been an increasing emphasis on community participation in resource management, which emphasises the need to re-examine the requirements for spatial definition of resource governance regions. This paper proposes three principles. Firstly, the nature and reach of environmental externalities of resource use should determine the size and nesting of resource management regions. Secondly, the boundaries of resource governance regions should enclose areas of greatest interest and importance to local residents. Thirdly, the biophysical characteristics of a resource governance region should be as homogenous as possible, which provides resource planning and management efficiencies. The paper describes a range of concepts and empirical techniques used to apply these principles to the derivation of a resource governance regionalisation of the State of New South Wales, Australia.