This collaborative research project was funded jointly by CSIRO, Land and Water Australia and the University of Queensland.

This project looked at integrated catchment management in the Herbert River catchment through its formative stages.

Conducted over five years, this study provides an evaluation framework relevant to broad range of natural resource management policy initiatives plus a comprehensive set of recommendations for planning and implementing community-based ICM policy initiatives in Australia.

The findings of this research will be relevant to policy makers, program managers, catchment and regional coordinators and community facilitators.

In this study we:

• investigated the social, institutional and economic factors that can influence the success or otherwise of integrated catchment management projects.
• developed a framework to assist catchment managers to evaluate the effectiveness of an ICM process. This framework will be an essential tool to improve development and management of policy initiatives in natural resource management and has been validated in six contrasting case studies.