Whose bottom Line? Investigating the social dimensions of financial service withdrawal in rural Australia

There is a growing recognition amongst most sections of Australian society that traditional agricultural land and natural resource uses require reform in the face of the threats they pose to other parts of the ecosystem. Perhaps the most immediately pressing issues at present are native vegetation clearance and 'water sharing'. Both pose fundamental challenges to traditional beliefs regarding landowners' 'rights' to these environmental resources. As necessary as these reforms may be, they will have dramatic consequences for many farm operations, and the agricultural service centres that are largely dependent upon meeting the economic and social needs of the farming hinterlands. There is a growing concern in many rural communities that they will be sacrificed in policy makers' and environmentalists' drive to attain environmental sustainability. It is timely, then, to consider the relationships between the social, environmental and economic realms of sustainability in this context. The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) is the latest attempt to conceptualise, define and measure sustainability and its component elements and has gained popularity in Australian public and private sector policy-making circles recently.