Researchers, NRM managers and farmers need trusting relations for effective NRM research on private lands: what’s common, what’s not?

Complex socio-ecological issues in natural resource management highlight the importance of building and maintaining trust in human interactions when dealing with highly variable landscapes subject to multiple pressures. We investigated how trust can help establish and maintain relationships in research teams that included private landholders in southeast Australia. Using constructivist grounded theory methodology, interviews with members of a university research institute, a government agency and a farmer group in the Murray River Valley were analysed to identify commonly held and differing attitudes between these groups towards research collaborations. Interviewees demonstrated common attitudes towards the needs for
mutual trust and respect to be developed over time, for developing personal networks, and for project
flexibility. However, Interviewees from different groups expressed varying attitudes towards and experiences
of ‘centrist’, top-down national or state-based NRM research and implementation, local versus scientific
knowledge, and the importance of local relationships and personal communication skills and attributes. The
authors examined the implications for research managers and multidisciplinary groups, including the
potential of long-term damage to relations, in undertaking impactful NRM research in highly contested
socio-ecological spaces on agricultural lands. Much of this may have been said before, but the negatives still
exist – are we improving awareness among researchers about how to approach and engage farmers and
other local people?