Abstract: The recent promotion of integrated natural resource management around Australia poses questions about how such regimes will interact with established statutory and strategic planning systems. Peri-urban regions surrounding Australian cities – which are increasingly attracting the attention of governments as critical locations for a range of sustainability and developmental themes – are where this evolving interaction offers some clear benefits but faces its greatest challenges. In South Australia there is an unambiguous expectation enshrined in legislation that natural resource management and planning systems will be aligned in policy terms and effectively linked on the ground.

Using examples from the peri-urban region around Adelaide, where a number of traditional planning themes coincide with emerging natural resource management concerns, this paper poses some questions about the fundamental nature and limits of this relationship: then presents an outline of how such an interaction might work. Drawing on the strengths of each sector – the planning system’s policy-making and decision-making processes and natural resource management’s capacity for environmental monitoring and working with concepts like thresholds – a scheme for integrated planning and natural resource management in peri-urban regions is conceptualised and outlined.