Options for understanding regional dynamics in Northern Australia

A scoping study of the regional dynamics of northern Australia explored the justifications for investigating savanna regions as dynamic systems and considered the characteristics of savanna regions that make them behaviourally different from more densely settled regions. The implications of those differences for methods of exploring regional dynamics in northern Australia were also examined. In particular, the study explored the tensions between 'productivist' and post productivist perspectives of savanna regions and the structural issues that lie at the interface, including intrinsic biophysical and socio-economic structural constraints, extrinsic forces which limit options, tendencies towards agglomeration, and political trends towards decentralisation and local empowerment. The research suggests that any approach used to assess regional dynamics in the savannas needs to address population dynamics in lightly populated areas, multiple values, the diversity of stakeholders and the effects of agglomerating influences of globalisation in financial, institutional and social terms.