This travel scholarship provided funded for the researcher to present the major findings from the researchers PhD to the European Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment 2015. Studies conducted between 2012 and 2015 researched rural communities and their struggles to effectively participate in environmental decision-making. A collection of case studies from the New England region that present empirical evidence of how community members and industry interact through the legal requirements of NRM planning and resource development was documented.

These in-depth case studies contribute important insights into the way that legal and policy frameworks promote and/or limit the opportunity for innovation in NRM decision-making.

Evidence from the Australian rural context is useful for other for other jurisdictions that also struggle with reducing government investment and the rising use of market instruments. Research findings offer a strong methodology for analysis of existing legal requirements for community engagement and suggests a number of possible reforms, as well as future research directions, that are of interest to the wider natural resource and socio-legal communities.