The approaches to natural resource management can be categorized according to the classes and rights of the interested parties "Interested party (companies)"):.

• - State ownership: ownership and control over the use of resources are in the hands of the State. Individuals or groups can only use the resources if they have permission from the State. Some American examples are national forests, national parks, and military reservations. In other countries, nature reserves.

• - Private property: any property of a natural or legal person. Both the benefits of the resources and the possible taxes with which they are levied correspond to the owner. Private land is the most common example.

• - Communal property: resources belong to a group of people. Groups with these properties can be of very varied sizes, natures or structures, for example those born in a town. An example of communal property is community forests.

• - Open access: there is no defined owner of the resources. Each potential user has the ability to use it as they wish. These resources are the most exploited. It is said that "What belongs to everyone belongs to no one." An example is fishing in a lake. Common land can exist without ownership, in which case in the UK it falls to a local authority.

• - Hybrid: many natural resource ownership regimes will contain parts of more than one of the described regimes, so natural resource managers must take into account the impact of hybrid regimes. An example of hybrid management is native vegetation management in New South Wales, Australia, where legislation recognizes a public interest in the preservation of native vegetation, but where the majority of this native vegetation grows on private land.[8]​.

Contenido

El análisis de actores (stakeholders, las diferentes partes que tienen intereses, a veces contrapuestos, en la gestión de los recursos) surgió en la administración empresarial y se ha incorporado a la gestión de recurso natural con cada vez más popularidad. Este análisis identifica los distintos grupos de intereses afectados por la utilización y conservación de estos recursos.[9]​.

No hay una definición clara de "actor", como se muestra en la tabla inferior. Especialmente en la gestión de recursos naturales, porque es difícil determinar quién tiene realmente un interés, y esto diferirá según cada potencial actor.[10]​.

Different approaches to who an actor is[10]​

Therefore, the definition used and, consequently, the theory, depends on the circumstances of the actors involved.

Billgrena and Holme listed the objectives of stakeholder analysis in natural resource management:[10]​.

• - Identify and categorize the actors who can influence.

• - Understand why changes occur.

• - Establish who can make those changes happen.

• - How to optimally manage natural resources.

This makes policy formulation clear and transparent, allowing actors to recognize their competing interests and come to solutions.[10]​[18]​ There are numerous theories about actors, such as that of Mitchell et al. However, Grimble created a stage framework for a stakeholder analysis in natural resource management.[19]​[18]​ Grimble designed this framework to ensure that the essential aspects of natural resource management are specifically analyzed.[18]​.

Stages in actor analysis[18]​

1. • Clarify the objectives of the analysis.

2. • Place the disputed elements in their context.

3. • Identify the actors and decision-makers.

4. • Investigate the interests and agendas of the actors.

5. • Investigate interaction and dependency patterns (e.g. conflicts and compatibilities, trade-offs and synergies).

Application

Grimble and Wellard established that actor analysis in natural resource management is most relevant in cases where the situation can be characterized by:[14]​.

• - The systems and the interests of the actors intersect.

• - Users and multiple uses of the resource.

• - Market failure.

• - Subtractability (the degree to which the use of the resource by one actor reduces the chances that it will be used by others) and temporary trade-offs.

• - Unclear property rights or open access.

• - Products and services that are not traded (for example, clean air).

• - Poverty and underrepresentation of the actors or a part of them[14]​[18]​.

Case studies

In the case of the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a broad stakeholder analysis would have been relevant and the Batwa people could have been recognized as stakeholders, preventing the loss of human life and the loss of this tribe's way of life.[14]​[18]​.

Community forestry in Nepal, Indonesia and South Korea is a successful example of how stakeholder analysis can be incorporated into natural resource management. This analysis made it possible to identify the needs of the actors and their level of involvement with the forests.

Reviews

• - Analysis tends to include too many actors, which can create problems in itself, as Clarkson suggests: "Actor theory should not be used to weave a basket big enough to hold the world's misery."[20]​.

• - Starik proposed that nature should be represented as an actor.[21]​ However this has been rejected by many scholars because it would be difficult to find the appropriate representation and furthermore other actors could claim this representation, which would further complicate the situation.[10]​.

• - Actor analysis can be used abusively to marginalize certain actors.[9]​.

• - It is complex to identify the relevant actors for participatory processes, since some groups of actors may have been excluded from previous decisions.[22]​.

• - The existing conflicts between the actors and the lack of trust between them can prevent agreements and solutions.[22]​.

Alternatives/complementary forms of analysis

• - Social network analysis.

• - Common resources.

La gestión de recursos naturales es intrínsecamente compleja. Implica ciclos ecológicos, hidrológicos, clima, animales, plantas y geografía, etc. Todos ellos son dinámicos y están interrelacionados. Un cambio en uno de ellos puede tener impactos de largo alcance o largo plazo, algunos incluso irreversibles. La gestión de estos recursos debe tener en cuenta, además de los sistemas naturales, a los diferentes actores y sus intereses, sus políticas, cuestiones políticas, fronteras geográficas, implicaciones económicas y demás. Es muy difícil satisfacer todos los aspectos a la vez. Esto resulta en situaciones conflictivas.

Después de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo (UNCED") por sus siglas en inglés) celebrada en Río de Janeiro en 1992, la mayoría de los países suscribieron nuevos principios para la gestión integrada de tierra, agua, y bosques. A pesar de que los nombres de los programas varían de país a país, todos expresan objetivos similares.

Los diferentes planteamientos aplicados a la gestión de recursos naturales incluyen:.

• - Enfoque de arriba abajo (ordeno y mando).

• - Gestión comunitaria.

• - Gestión adaptativa.

• - Principio de precaución.

• - Gestión integrada.

Community management of natural resources

Community-based management (CBNRM), also called "social resource management,"[3]​ combines conservation objectives with the generation of economic benefits for rural communities. The 3 key assumptions are: locals are in a better position to conserve natural resources, people will conserve a resource only if the benefits exceed the costs of conservation, and people will conserve a resource that is directly linked to their quality of life.[6] When the quality of life of locals is reinforced, their effort and commitment to ensure that the resource will continue to be available in the future in equal quantity and quality is also highlighted.[23] Regional and community-based management of natural resources is also based on the principle of subsidiarity.

The United Nations advocates CBNRM in the Convention on Biodiversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification. However, the decentralized management of these resources can result in an ambiguous legal and social environment in which local communities rapidly and unsustainably exploit resources for fear that this environment will change and they will no longer be able to do so. An example is the forest populations in central Kalimantan (Indonesia).[24]​ To avoid this the environment must be clearly defined.

A problem of the CBNRM is to reconcile and harmonize the objectives of socioeconomic development, protection of biodiversity and sustainable use of resources.[25]​ The competing interests show how the motives behind participation differ into: people-centered (active or participatory results that give authentic power to the population) and planner-centered (the population is only a passive recipient of the results).[26]​[27]​[28]​ Understanding power relations is fundamental to the success of the CBNRM. Locals may be reluctant to defy government recommendations for fear of losing promised benefits.

CBNRM is particularly advocated by NGOs working with local communities and groups, on the one hand, and by national and transnational organizations, on the other hand. They thus build and expand new versions of environmental and social activism that link social justice and environmental agendas with the direct and indirect benefits of resource exploitation, including income sharing, employment, economic diversification and promotion of identity and pride of locals.[29]​ The ecological and social successes and failures of the CBNRM have been documented.[30]​[31]​ The CBNRM poses new challenges because it introduces the concepts of community, territory, indigenous and conservation in politically varied plans and programs in various places. Warner and Jones discuss strategies to effectively manage conflicts in the CBNRM.[32]​.

The ability of indigenous communities to conserve natural resources has been recognized by the Australian Government with the Caring for Our Country program.[33]​ The Ministry (in Australia they are called departments) of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and the Ministry of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, jointly administer this program. They share responsibility for government sustainable agriculture and environmental programs, which have traditionally and generally been called "natural resource management." These programs have been processed regionally, through 56 local governments, successfully allowing regional communities to decide priorities in the management of their resources.[34]​.

More broadly, a study in Tanzania and the Pacific investigated what motivates communities to adopt CBNRM, and found that it is adopted by aspects of the specific program and by the socio-ecological context.[35] Overall the adoption of these programs appears to reflect the relative advantage and access to external technical assistance they provide to locals.[35] There has been socioeconomic criticism of CBNRM in Africa, but its ecological effectiveness, as measured by population densities of fauna and flora, has been repeatedly demonstrated in Africa. Tanzania.[36][37][38]​.

Governance is considered key to carrying out community or region-based natural resource management. In the Australian state of New South Wales, the 13 river basin management companies (CMAs) are overseen by the Natural Resources Commission (NRC), responsible for auditing the effectiveness of regional resource management programs.[39]​.

Adaptive management

The primary methodological approach of Australian river basin managers to manage regional natural resources is adaptive management.[7]​.

This view recognizes that adaptation occurs through a “plan-execute-check-act” process. It also recognizes 7 key components that should be considered in the practice of proper natural resource management:.

• - Determination of the scale.

• - Collection and use of knowledge.

• - Information management.

• - Control and evaluation.

• - Risk management.

• - Community commitment.

• - Collaboration opportunities.[7]​.

Integrated management of natural resources

Known as INRM, integrated natural resource management is a process that systematically manages these resources, including multiple aspects of resource use (biophysical, sociopolitical and economic), meeting the production objectives of producers and other direct users (e.g. food security, profitability or risk aversion) as well as broader community objectives (e.g. poverty reduction, well-being of future generations or environmental conservation). The INRM focuses on sustainability and at the same time tries to incorporate all possible parties from the same planning level, reducing possible future conflicts. The conceptual basis of INRM has evolved in recent years through the convergence of research in various areas such as sustainable land use, participatory planning, integrated watershed management and adaptive management.[40]​[41]​[41]​ INRM is being used extensively and successfully in community and regional natural resource management.[42]​.

Hay varios marcos y modelos de ordenador desarrollados para ayudar en la gestión de recursos naturales.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

GIS is a powerful analytical tool because it can overlay several layers of geographic data and allow relationships between them to be identified. For example, a bush regeneration program can overlay layers of rainfall, erosion and deforested areas, to determine the most favorable zones (deforested areas of high rainfall and low erosion).[43]​ In Australia, metadata directories such as NDAR provide data on Australian natural resources such as vegetation, fisheries, land and water.[44]​ The data is limited by potential subjective input and manipulation.

Natural resource management audit frameworks

The Australian state of New South Wales has published a natural resource management audit framework to support the establishment of an effectiveness audit function in regional natural resource governance.[45] This audit framework builds on other established audit methodologies such as performance audit, environmental audit and internal audit. The audits undertaken within this framework have provided confidence to actors, identified possibilities for improvement and described what public opinion expects from environmental policies.[46][47]​.

The Australian Government has established a framework for auditing energy and greenhouse gas emissions reporting, which closely follows Australian standards for assurance commitments. This same Government is also preparing an audit framework for water management, focused on the implementation of the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Biodiversity conservation

Biodiversity conservation is considered an important element in natural resource management. What is biodiversity? It is a broad concept that describes the degree of diversity of the flora and fauna of an area (number of species and relative abundance). Gaston and Spicer (p. 3) point out that biodiversity is "the variety of life" and refer to different kinds of "organization of biodiversity."[48] According to Gray (p. 154), the first widespread use of the definition of biodiversity was made by the United Nations in 1992, implying different aspects of biological diversity.[49]​.

Precautionary biodiversity management

Threats to biodiversity include: habitat fragmentation, which further strains already affected biological resources; forest degradation and deforestation; invasive species and global warming (p. 2).[50] As these threats receive increasing attention from environmentalists and the public, precautionary management of biodiversity becomes an important part of natural resource management. According to Cooney, there are material measures to carry out this precautionary management.

Concrete policy tools

Cooney argues that policymaking depends on “evidence,” relating to “highly revealing evidence,” prohibiting special “activities,” and “reporting and monitoring requirements.” Conclusive evidence is needed before formulating precautionary policies. When the potential threat of “activities” is considered critical and “irreversible”, these “activities” should be prohibited. For example, as explosives and toxics seriously endanger the human and natural environment, South Africa's Marine Living Resources Act completely prohibits fishing with explosives and toxics.

Administration and guidelines

According to Cooney, there are 4 methods to precautionarily manage biodiversity when managing natural resources:.

1. • "Ecosystem-based management" with a "more cautious and risk-averse" management, where "given the uncertainty that prevails about the structure of the ecosystem, its function and specific interactions, precaution requires an ecosystem approach rather than another aimed at protecting only one species."

2. • "Adaptive management" is "a management approach that expressly takes into account the uncertainty and dynamism of complex systems."

3. • The "environmental impact assessment" and exposure indices reduce the "uncertainties" of precaution, although they have deficiencies.

4. • The "conservationist approaches" that are "most frequently linked" to the conservation of biodiversity in the management of natural resources.

Land uses

To have a sustainable environment it is important to understand the appropriate management strategies and use them. In terms of understanding, Young highlights some important points in land uses:[51]​.

• - They take into account natural processes, such as ecosystem, water or soil.

• - They use appropriate management systems adapted to local situations.

• - There is cooperation between scientists with knowledge and equipment, and locals with knowledge and skills.

The study by Dale et al. (2000) showed that there are 5 fundamental ecological principles useful for the soil manager.[52] These ecological principles relate to time, place, species, disturbance and landscape, and interact in many ways. The study suggests that land managers could follow these guidelines:.

• - Examine the impacts of local decisions in a regional context, and the effects on natural resources.

• - Plan for long-term change and unexpected events.

• - Preserve unique elements of the landscape and associated species.

• - Avoid land uses that deplete natural resources.

• - Leave large contiguous or connected areas containing critical habitats intact.

• - Minimize the introduction and spread of non-native species.

• - Avoid or compensate for the effects of development on ecological processes.

• - Apply land uses and land management compatible with the natural potential of the area.

The approaches to natural resource management can be categorized according to the classes and rights of the interested parties "Interested party (companies)"):.

• - State ownership: ownership and control over the use of resources are in the hands of the State. Individuals or groups can only use the resources if they have permission from the State. Some American examples are national forests, national parks, and military reservations. In other countries, nature reserves.

• - Private property: any property of a natural or legal person. Both the benefits of the resources and the possible taxes with which they are levied correspond to the owner. Private land is the most common example.

• - Communal property: resources belong to a group of people. Groups with these properties can be of very varied sizes, natures or structures, for example those born in a town. An example of communal property is community forests.

• - Open access: there is no defined owner of the resources. Each potential user has the ability to use it as they wish. These resources are the most exploited. It is said that "What belongs to everyone belongs to no one." An example is fishing in a lake. Common land can exist without ownership, in which case in the UK it falls to a local authority.

• - Hybrid: many natural resource ownership regimes will contain parts of more than one of the described regimes, so natural resource managers must take into account the impact of hybrid regimes. An example of hybrid management is native vegetation management in New South Wales, Australia, where legislation recognizes a public interest in the preservation of native vegetation, but where the majority of this native vegetation grows on private land.[8]​.

Contenido

El análisis de actores (stakeholders, las diferentes partes que tienen intereses, a veces contrapuestos, en la gestión de los recursos) surgió en la administración empresarial y se ha incorporado a la gestión de recurso natural con cada vez más popularidad. Este análisis identifica los distintos grupos de intereses afectados por la utilización y conservación de estos recursos.[9]​.

No hay una definición clara de "actor", como se muestra en la tabla inferior. Especialmente en la gestión de recursos naturales, porque es difícil determinar quién tiene realmente un interés, y esto diferirá según cada potencial actor.[10]​.

Different approaches to who an actor is[10]​

Therefore, the definition used and, consequently, the theory, depends on the circumstances of the actors involved.

Billgrena and Holme listed the objectives of stakeholder analysis in natural resource management:[10]​.

• - Identify and categorize the actors who can influence.

• - Understand why changes occur.

• - Establish who can make those changes happen.

• - How to optimally manage natural resources.

This makes policy formulation clear and transparent, allowing actors to recognize their competing interests and come to solutions.[10]​[18]​ There are numerous theories about actors, such as that of Mitchell et al. However, Grimble created a stage framework for a stakeholder analysis in natural resource management.[19]​[18]​ Grimble designed this framework to ensure that the essential aspects of natural resource management are specifically analyzed.[18]​.

Stages in actor analysis[18]​

1. • Clarify the objectives of the analysis.

2. • Place the disputed elements in their context.

3. • Identify the actors and decision-makers.

4. • Investigate the interests and agendas of the actors.

5. • Investigate interaction and dependency patterns (e.g. conflicts and compatibilities, trade-offs and synergies).

Application

Grimble and Wellard established that actor analysis in natural resource management is most relevant in cases where the situation can be characterized by:[14]​.

• - The systems and the interests of the actors intersect.

• - Users and multiple uses of the resource.

• - Market failure.

• - Subtractability (the degree to which the use of the resource by one actor reduces the chances that it will be used by others) and temporary trade-offs.

• - Unclear property rights or open access.

• - Products and services that are not traded (for example, clean air).

• - Poverty and underrepresentation of the actors or a part of them[14]​[18]​.

Case studies

In the case of the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a broad stakeholder analysis would have been relevant and the Batwa people could have been recognized as stakeholders, preventing the loss of human life and the loss of this tribe's way of life.[14]​[18]​.

Community forestry in Nepal, Indonesia and South Korea is a successful example of how stakeholder analysis can be incorporated into natural resource management. This analysis made it possible to identify the needs of the actors and their level of involvement with the forests.

Reviews

• - Analysis tends to include too many actors, which can create problems in itself, as Clarkson suggests: "Actor theory should not be used to weave a basket big enough to hold the world's misery."[20]​.

• - Starik proposed that nature should be represented as an actor.[21]​ However this has been rejected by many scholars because it would be difficult to find the appropriate representation and furthermore other actors could claim this representation, which would further complicate the situation.[10]​.

• - Actor analysis can be used abusively to marginalize certain actors.[9]​.

• - It is complex to identify the relevant actors for participatory processes, since some groups of actors may have been excluded from previous decisions.[22]​.

• - The existing conflicts between the actors and the lack of trust between them can prevent agreements and solutions.[22]​.

Alternatives/complementary forms of analysis

• - Social network analysis.

• - Common resources.

La gestión de recursos naturales es intrínsecamente compleja. Implica ciclos ecológicos, hidrológicos, clima, animales, plantas y geografía, etc. Todos ellos son dinámicos y están interrelacionados. Un cambio en uno de ellos puede tener impactos de largo alcance o largo plazo, algunos incluso irreversibles. La gestión de estos recursos debe tener en cuenta, además de los sistemas naturales, a los diferentes actores y sus intereses, sus políticas, cuestiones políticas, fronteras geográficas, implicaciones económicas y demás. Es muy difícil satisfacer todos los aspectos a la vez. Esto resulta en situaciones conflictivas.

Después de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo (UNCED") por sus siglas en inglés) celebrada en Río de Janeiro en 1992, la mayoría de los países suscribieron nuevos principios para la gestión integrada de tierra, agua, y bosques. A pesar de que los nombres de los programas varían de país a país, todos expresan objetivos similares.

Los diferentes planteamientos aplicados a la gestión de recursos naturales incluyen:.

• - Enfoque de arriba abajo (ordeno y mando).

• - Gestión comunitaria.

• - Gestión adaptativa.

• - Principio de precaución.

• - Gestión integrada.

Community management of natural resources

Community-based management (CBNRM), also called "social resource management,"[3]​ combines conservation objectives with the generation of economic benefits for rural communities. The 3 key assumptions are: locals are in a better position to conserve natural resources, people will conserve a resource only if the benefits exceed the costs of conservation, and people will conserve a resource that is directly linked to their quality of life.[6] When the quality of life of locals is reinforced, their effort and commitment to ensure that the resource will continue to be available in the future in equal quantity and quality is also highlighted.[23] Regional and community-based management of natural resources is also based on the principle of subsidiarity.

The United Nations advocates CBNRM in the Convention on Biodiversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification. However, the decentralized management of these resources can result in an ambiguous legal and social environment in which local communities rapidly and unsustainably exploit resources for fear that this environment will change and they will no longer be able to do so. An example is the forest populations in central Kalimantan (Indonesia).[24]​ To avoid this the environment must be clearly defined.

A problem of the CBNRM is to reconcile and harmonize the objectives of socioeconomic development, protection of biodiversity and sustainable use of resources.[25]​ The competing interests show how the motives behind participation differ into: people-centered (active or participatory results that give authentic power to the population) and planner-centered (the population is only a passive recipient of the results).[26]​[27]​[28]​ Understanding power relations is fundamental to the success of the CBNRM. Locals may be reluctant to defy government recommendations for fear of losing promised benefits.

CBNRM is particularly advocated by NGOs working with local communities and groups, on the one hand, and by national and transnational organizations, on the other hand. They thus build and expand new versions of environmental and social activism that link social justice and environmental agendas with the direct and indirect benefits of resource exploitation, including income sharing, employment, economic diversification and promotion of identity and pride of locals.[29]​ The ecological and social successes and failures of the CBNRM have been documented.[30]​[31]​ The CBNRM poses new challenges because it introduces the concepts of community, territory, indigenous and conservation in politically varied plans and programs in various places. Warner and Jones discuss strategies to effectively manage conflicts in the CBNRM.[32]​.

The ability of indigenous communities to conserve natural resources has been recognized by the Australian Government with the Caring for Our Country program.[33]​ The Ministry (in Australia they are called departments) of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and the Ministry of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, jointly administer this program. They share responsibility for government sustainable agriculture and environmental programs, which have traditionally and generally been called "natural resource management." These programs have been processed regionally, through 56 local governments, successfully allowing regional communities to decide priorities in the management of their resources.[34]​.

More broadly, a study in Tanzania and the Pacific investigated what motivates communities to adopt CBNRM, and found that it is adopted by aspects of the specific program and by the socio-ecological context.[35] Overall the adoption of these programs appears to reflect the relative advantage and access to external technical assistance they provide to locals.[35] There has been socioeconomic criticism of CBNRM in Africa, but its ecological effectiveness, as measured by population densities of fauna and flora, has been repeatedly demonstrated in Africa. Tanzania.[36][37][38]​.

Governance is considered key to carrying out community or region-based natural resource management. In the Australian state of New South Wales, the 13 river basin management companies (CMAs) are overseen by the Natural Resources Commission (NRC), responsible for auditing the effectiveness of regional resource management programs.[39]​.

Adaptive management

The primary methodological approach of Australian river basin managers to manage regional natural resources is adaptive management.[7]​.

This view recognizes that adaptation occurs through a “plan-execute-check-act” process. It also recognizes 7 key components that should be considered in the practice of proper natural resource management:.

• - Determination of the scale.

• - Collection and use of knowledge.

• - Information management.

• - Control and evaluation.

• - Risk management.

• - Community commitment.

• - Collaboration opportunities.[7]​.

Integrated management of natural resources

Known as INRM, integrated natural resource management is a process that systematically manages these resources, including multiple aspects of resource use (biophysical, sociopolitical and economic), meeting the production objectives of producers and other direct users (e.g. food security, profitability or risk aversion) as well as broader community objectives (e.g. poverty reduction, well-being of future generations or environmental conservation). The INRM focuses on sustainability and at the same time tries to incorporate all possible parties from the same planning level, reducing possible future conflicts. The conceptual basis of INRM has evolved in recent years through the convergence of research in various areas such as sustainable land use, participatory planning, integrated watershed management and adaptive management.[40]​[41]​[41]​ INRM is being used extensively and successfully in community and regional natural resource management.[42]​.

Hay varios marcos y modelos de ordenador desarrollados para ayudar en la gestión de recursos naturales.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

GIS is a powerful analytical tool because it can overlay several layers of geographic data and allow relationships between them to be identified. For example, a bush regeneration program can overlay layers of rainfall, erosion and deforested areas, to determine the most favorable zones (deforested areas of high rainfall and low erosion).[43]​ In Australia, metadata directories such as NDAR provide data on Australian natural resources such as vegetation, fisheries, land and water.[44]​ The data is limited by potential subjective input and manipulation.

Natural resource management audit frameworks

The Australian state of New South Wales has published a natural resource management audit framework to support the establishment of an effectiveness audit function in regional natural resource governance.[45] This audit framework builds on other established audit methodologies such as performance audit, environmental audit and internal audit. The audits undertaken within this framework have provided confidence to actors, identified possibilities for improvement and described what public opinion expects from environmental policies.[46][47]​.

The Australian Government has established a framework for auditing energy and greenhouse gas emissions reporting, which closely follows Australian standards for assurance commitments. This same Government is also preparing an audit framework for water management, focused on the implementation of the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Biodiversity conservation

Biodiversity conservation is considered an important element in natural resource management. What is biodiversity? It is a broad concept that describes the degree of diversity of the flora and fauna of an area (number of species and relative abundance). Gaston and Spicer (p. 3) point out that biodiversity is "the variety of life" and refer to different kinds of "organization of biodiversity."[48] According to Gray (p. 154), the first widespread use of the definition of biodiversity was made by the United Nations in 1992, implying different aspects of biological diversity.[49]​.

Precautionary biodiversity management

Threats to biodiversity include: habitat fragmentation, which further strains already affected biological resources; forest degradation and deforestation; invasive species and global warming (p. 2).[50] As these threats receive increasing attention from environmentalists and the public, precautionary management of biodiversity becomes an important part of natural resource management. According to Cooney, there are material measures to carry out this precautionary management.

Concrete policy tools

Cooney argues that policymaking depends on “evidence,” relating to “highly revealing evidence,” prohibiting special “activities,” and “reporting and monitoring requirements.” Conclusive evidence is needed before formulating precautionary policies. When the potential threat of “activities” is considered critical and “irreversible”, these “activities” should be prohibited. For example, as explosives and toxics seriously endanger the human and natural environment, South Africa's Marine Living Resources Act completely prohibits fishing with explosives and toxics.

Administration and guidelines

According to Cooney, there are 4 methods to precautionarily manage biodiversity when managing natural resources:.

1. • "Ecosystem-based management" with a "more cautious and risk-averse" management, where "given the uncertainty that prevails about the structure of the ecosystem, its function and specific interactions, precaution requires an ecosystem approach rather than another aimed at protecting only one species."

2. • "Adaptive management" is "a management approach that expressly takes into account the uncertainty and dynamism of complex systems."

3. • The "environmental impact assessment" and exposure indices reduce the "uncertainties" of precaution, although they have deficiencies.

4. • The "conservationist approaches" that are "most frequently linked" to the conservation of biodiversity in the management of natural resources.

Land uses

To have a sustainable environment it is important to understand the appropriate management strategies and use them. In terms of understanding, Young highlights some important points in land uses:[51]​.

• - They take into account natural processes, such as ecosystem, water or soil.

• - They use appropriate management systems adapted to local situations.

• - There is cooperation between scientists with knowledge and equipment, and locals with knowledge and skills.

The study by Dale et al. (2000) showed that there are 5 fundamental ecological principles useful for the soil manager.[52] These ecological principles relate to time, place, species, disturbance and landscape, and interact in many ways. The study suggests that land managers could follow these guidelines:.

• - Examine the impacts of local decisions in a regional context, and the effects on natural resources.

• - Plan for long-term change and unexpected events.

• - Preserve unique elements of the landscape and associated species.

• - Avoid land uses that deplete natural resources.

• - Leave large contiguous or connected areas containing critical habitats intact.

• - Minimize the introduction and spread of non-native species.

• - Avoid or compensate for the effects of development on ecological processes.

• - Apply land uses and land management compatible with the natural potential of the area.