Disaster Risk Reduction in Bushfire Prone Areas: Challenges for an Integrated Land Use Planning Policy Regime

Abstract

The need for an integrated approach to disaster risk reduction (DRR) is widely promoted across the contemporary disaster literature and policy discourse. In Australia, the importance of integrating bushfire management and land use planning systems is a growing priority as bushfire risk in urbanized areas increases. This paper examines the changing policy landscape towards an integrated DRR regime for land use planning and bushfire management in south-west Western Australia. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of policy documents and in-depth interviews with policy actors associated with this regime. The results identify several challenges of policy integration for an integrated land use planning and bushfire management DRR regime, including incompatible worldviews, sectorial objectives and knowledge sets. A lack of cross-sectoral understanding, different risk tolerances and instrument preferences also constrained integration efforts. Based on our findings, we argue that rule-based mechanisms, which establish a legal framework for integration, are necessary when different policy goals and worldviews prevail between policy sectors. However, we conclude by emphasizing the value of actor-based mechanisms for integrated DRR policy regimes, which enable ongoing cross-sectoral communication and policy learning and facilitate a systems-oriented perspective of disaster resilience in the built environment.