An Agnostic View on Regionalism, Decentralisation and other Silver Bullets: A Response to Thom

摘要

We welcome Bruce Thorn's response to our paper on The Wentworth Group's (TWG) proposals for reforming environmental management in Australia (Lane et al., 2004). We are also pleased that he has responded to our essay in the spirit in which it was written: in the cause of healthy, rigorous academic debate about the great challenge of our time. Since the paper was published, we have been delighted by the large number of responses we have received from land managers (especially), public servants and academics from around the country. We take this less as a compliment on our work and more of an indicator of the thirst for vigorous debate about how best to respond to the failings of current approaches to environmental governance and the pressing problems of environmental degradation.