Dr Max Kelly and Ms Gabrielle Stannus

RMIT University

Summary: This paper critically evaluates the role of Landcare in achieving natural resource conservation and sustainable rural livelihoods, focusing particularly on Victoria.  Landcare has evolved over time to become a generic concept that has multiple meanings.  This paper examines the concepts and purposes of Landcare from two different perspectives.  The first perspective is Landcare as a social philosophy and community movement strongly focused on community participation and development from the “bottom up”.  The philosophy of community participation encompasses local people defining local priorities, and identifying locally relevant solutions.  The second perspective is Landcare as a government policy mechanism tackling rural environmental problems.  This paper questions the ability of the Landcare movement to respond effectively to both scenarios.  It suggests that solutions or on ground actions are being driven from the “top down”, a situation that is exacerbated by the increasing bureaucratisation of Landcare.  This paper suggests that the outcome of pursuing these sometimes conflicting aims, particularly from a participatory perspective can lead to the disempowerment of the local communities and long term disillusionment with the ideals of Landcare.   A possible alternative to the current model may be to separate these two “faces” of Landcare, providing funding under a different umbrella to tackle issues of national importance, leaving the Landcare movement to respond directly to local priorities, driven by the local community or individual and which may or may not directly relate to issues of national importance.

Pathways to knowledge in agriculture and environmental management

Roger Johnson

The Regional Institute Ltd

Agriculture and the environment present inextricably linked and increasingly complex challenges for natural resource managers. Meeting these challenges will require unprecedented access to knowledge in a range of disciplines hitherto at the periphery of popular understanding. Ecological, hyrological and sociological systems will aggregate as knowledge systems in which pre-existing concepts of extension and life-long learning will change.

The decade of landcare has been instrumental in shifting public awareness and understanding of the need for change. In the wake of this enormously successful campaign a latent groundswell of popular support exists for the cause of sustainable agriculture. Overlapping the decade of landcare has been the emergence and phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web as a universal information and communication medium. It connects us all.

How do we use this tool to communicate the theoretical knowledge acquired by few scientists and the practical knowledge accumulated by few land holders through intergenerational time and space? How does a salinity researcher in 2002 in Victoria communicate his or her knowledge to a landcare volunteer in Western Australia in 2020?

This paper reviews the decade of the Web and examines those factors that can accelerate its universal application as a medium to enable the sharing of knowledge for the benefit of agricultural and environmental management.

Conclusion: The Web can provide universal access to the knowledge required to understand and manage complex systems. Through the adoption of existing standards and guidelines for managing information in electronic format, the task of building the required knowledge base can be largely automated and widely shared.

Regional scale adaptive management: lessons from the North East Salinity Strategy

Catherine Allan (a)  and Allan Curtis (b)

(a) Johnstone Centre, Charles Sturt University and (b) Bureau of Rural Sciences

Summary: Adaptive management- the use of policy to accelerate learning- should allow managers to strategically accumulate knowledge about complex ecosystems as they manage them, meet the needs of multiple stakeholders, and facilitate continued management despite uncertainty. However, it appears that adaptive management is such a novel approach to natural resource management that social norms, institutions and organisations find it difficult to accommodate.

A regional focus on natural resource planning and management in Australia has the potential to empower regional communities, but only if investment is made in ways that encourage and enable learning to occur, both within and between regions.

We reflect on our recent evaluation of a Victorian regional program, the North East Salinity Strategy (NESS). Specifically, we explore the extent to which adaptive management informed the program. With the large investment planned through the National Action Plan lessons from our evaluation are timely, and have wide relevance.

NESS was prepared in the mid 1990s to “control” salinity in the region. A dearth of biophysical information, limited budgets and high community expectations created challenges and produced some novel program approaches. Adaptive management was not conspicuously one of them. Research informed program implementation, but implementation was not used systematically as a research tool. The imperative to build community awareness and implement on-ground works left little time for evaluation. “Learning from doing” did occur, but not as quickly as it might have with a more flexible approach, increased multi-stakeholder input and a community expectation of continual evaluation rather than program auditing.

Sustaining local organisations: reflecting on the Landcare experience

Dr Allan Curtis (a), Ian Byron (b) and Dr Bruce Shindler (c)

(a) Bureau of Rural Sciences; (b) Johnstone Centre, Charles Sturt University; and (c) Oregon State University, USA

Summary: Local watershed organisations, including Landcare groups in Australia, are an important element of efforts to better manage our natural resources. Much has been written documenting the activities and outcomes of Landcare groups. Notwithstanding these important efforts, there has been little attention given to the important issue of how to sustain these organisations over time. In this paper we address this gap and identify five principles for sustaining effective watershed groups. In developing these principles we hoped to strengthen the conceptual foundation of these initiatives; help structure citizen-agency interactions; and provide a framework for the evaluation of watershed programs. Although we have examined local watershed groups in other countries, we have largely drawn upon our research and experience with Landcare. Our research included state-wide and regional studies exploring program logic and effectiveness, agency-community partnerships, volunteer motivations, the role of coordinators, the experience of women in Landcare, the impact of networks on social capital, and burnout amongst participants and coordinators. 

Conclusions: Our first principle is that these groups must be established at a local scale using social as well as biophysical boundaries. It is also critical that these organisations are embedded within a supportive institutional framework that identifies realistic roles for private landowners, local organisations and regional planning bodies. Our third principle is that without broad stakeholder representation, the perceived benefits of participation are quickly forfeited. It is also unrealistic to expect an effective network of local groups to be sustained without substantial investment by government to provide for program management, group coordination and cost-sharing for on-ground work. Our final principle is that there must be the commitment and skills within a program to establish processes that build trust and competency amongst citizens and agencies. 

Food and Agriculture in the Classroom – Awareness and Action for Agriculture

Tracey White

Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Victoria

Summary: Educating our youth is the key to a sustainable future. It is essential that students develop a knowledge and understanding of where their food and fibre comes from, the value and importance of Victoria's agriculture and the need for our whole community to use and care for the land in a responsible, sustainable way. 

There is currently increasing discussion about environment education in schools - what does it mean?  What should be included?  How is the concept of sustainability addressed?  Invariably this discussion does not include reference to agriculture, to production as a use of our natural resources, as a legitimate and valued part of the environment.  It is essential that we engage in this discussion, to debate the issues and influence education policy and decision-makers.  We need the concept of sustainability to be thought of and taught in a way that includes food and fibre production. 

The poster will explore how the education program 'Food & Agriculture in the Classroom addresses this issue.  It aims to have studies focussed on ecologically sustainable agriculture, natural resource management and food production entrenched in schools' curricula - particularly targeting science and environmental subjects.  The program is supported by the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment and has links to similar programs in other Australian states and in other countries.  It offers an innovative, curriculum-linked education program to primary and secondary schools to encourage and support teaching about these issues.

Heather J Aslin (a) and Valerie A Brown (b)

No system of resource use or resource management can be re-designed without the cooperation and active engagement of current players. This applies to re-designing Australian agriculture and addressing all the issues associated with developing agricultural systems more suited to the Australian environment. This paper suggests that applying experiential learning theory and systems thinking can help engage stakeholders in the processes needed to resolve land and water use issues, and in addressing address their social and economic consequences. Through better-designed engagement processes, stakeholders can participate in shared decision-making that they are more likely to ‘own’ and be prepared to act upon. 

The paper outlines an approach to designing community engagement processes, and selecting appropriate tools and techniques for them, based on considering the experiential learning cycle and the range of knowledge cultures existing in Australian society. The approach was developed for the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. In previous work (Brown 1999), the experiential learning cycle was modified to form what has been termed the ‘P4D4’ decision-making framework, summarised as follows:
 
 

ACTION:	DECIDE	DESCRIBE	DESIGN	DO
KNOWLEDGE	PRINCIPLES	PLACE	POTENTIAL	PRACTICE

This framework links the stages of the experiential learning cycle with the type of knowledge needed to make decisions at that stage. The P4D4 cycle is one that is readily understood by a wide range of stakeholders and can be applied to any kind of decision-making. The P4D4 cycle can be applied to community engagement by suggesting that different engagement tools and techniques have particular relevance to different stages of the cycle. Therefore, applying the cycle can help guide selection of tools and techniques that are appropriate for each stage. Together with a set of principles for best practice community engagement, using the P4D4 framework can help design better, more inclusive engagement processes. The paper outlines this approach with reference to a range of possible engagement tools and techniques.

(a) Bureau of Rural Sciences
(b) Australian National University

Through the looking glass: Organisational alignment for sustainable communities

Ruth Beilin (a), Lucia Boxelaar (a), Heather Shaw (b) and Katie Warner (b)

(a) University of Melbourne; (b) Department of Natural Resources and Environment

Agricultural policy has shifted from a principal focus on production to an emphasis on the development of sustainable production systems.  Current policy initiatives encompass principles of economic, environmental and social sustainability, the ‘triple bottom line’. This holistic approach to natural resource management and the concomitant emergence of community-based approaches to extension, suggest new directions for natural resource management agencies.    It requires a synergy of purpose between communities and their supporting agencies.  However there are significant tensions and contradictions between the economic, social and environmental objectives of current policy and they have traditionally been dealt with separately.   The integrative approach that is to be implemented to achieve triple bottom line outcomes has serious implications for prevailing organizational cultures and structures within government.  This paper will argue that it is important to address these issues by building organizational capacity to implement an holistic approach to natural resource management.   A number of change management approaches that aim to build organizational capacity will be explored with reference to two natural resource management projects.

The literature on organizational change management reveals a continuum of approaches that range from the planned and top down, through to more emergent methods to build organizational capacity.  This paper will argue that top down and planned change management processes that conceptualise change as a linear process are inadequate.  It will argue that an action research approach to change management more adequately reflects the emergent nature of social change processes and facilitates direct ownership at various levels of engagement within an organisation. 

Educating for a sustainable farming future

Fiona Martin and Dory Russell

Primary Industries and Natural Resources Division, TAFE NSW

Summary: Education and training has a vital role to play in leading Australia towards more sustainable farming practices. In order to be effective, training programs must be accessible and relevant. More importantly, programs must enhance employment outcomes by providing the knowledge and skills demanded by an industry genuinely committed to sustainable agricultural practice.

In order to produce a workforce with the capacity to practice sustainable agriculture, training will need to raise awareness of both historical and current unsustainable practices and their resultant environmental impacts. Most critical, however, is the need to provide skills in sustainable land use practices focussed on minimising further harm and restoring the environment.

Provision of agricultural training in Australia is currently shared between the universities, the vocational education and training sector, and informal training programs. This paper will question the adequacy with which current agricultural training addresses sustainability principles, particularly within the vocational education and training sector. Barriers to inclusion of these principles will also be discussed.

A new direction in education and training, with broad support and input from agriculturalists, environmentalists, government and other stakeholders, is required to ensure that we can substantiate Australia’s market claim to “clean, green” agriculture.

Finding the links between regional NRM planning and sustainable agriculture

Gordon Brown and Phil McCullough

Landcare Section, Department of Natural Resources and Mines

Natural resource planning is being strengthened at the regional scale with the advent of the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality and the extension of the Natural Heritage Trust.  There appears an expectation that the 'new' regional natural resource management (NRM) plans will factor in social and economic elements with the aim of achieving an 'integrated' regional plan.

However, there is growing evidence that regional NRM plans cannot effectively cater for, and reflect, the diversity of demographics of the rural and farming communities (Barr, Australian Landcare, December, p. 52. 1998).  ABARE in their background report to the Natural Resource Management Taskforce  (Alternative Policy Approaches to Natural Resource Management, background report to the Natural Resource Management Taskforce, AFFA, Canberra,2001) stated that it is extremely difficult to develop policy instruments that will provide the best level of incentives for individuals to use their natural resources in a socially optimal manner.  Essentially, the “policy instrument” at the regional scale is the NRM plan; a plan that is designed to influence investment in natural resource management and take into account the economic, environmental and social context in which the plan will be implemented (Integrated Catchment Management in the Murray-Darling Basin 2001-2010, MDBMC, Canberra.2001).

The basic concepts of sustainable agriculture, which incorporate social, economic and ecological elements at the property and local levels, appear too defined and distinct for a regional scale approach.  Richard Price, Manager of the National Dryland Salinity Program, is reported as saying that “You can have nice elegant strategies at the national, state and catchment levels, but at the end of the day most of the decisions are made by private producers.” (Williams, The Australian, 6/6/2002, p.4).

Conclusions: For our agricultural industries to reach a more sustainable level, integration of environmental, social and economic elements into regional scale plans will require a much more inclusive and comprehensive planning process at both the local and property levels.  Of equal importance, the implementation of regional or catchment scale plans at the local level will require more innovative approaches to ensure the linkages needed to achieve sustainable agricultural outcomes.

Living Landscapes: a process for linking local actions and regional outcomes

Tricia Gowdie and Robert Lambeck

Greening Australia (WA)

Summary: The challenge for Australian agriculture is to move from a ‘position’ where nature conservation is an ‘add-on’ to where nature conservation is managed as a part of landscape systems in which decisions are underpinned by the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD). 

While many agriculturally based catchment groups in Australia have developed and are implementing more sustainable farm and catchment-scale management plans, their primary focus is on protecting agricultural capacity.  However, there is increasing recognition that the planning context must be extended to consider broader landscape issues such as nature conservation and ecological health.  The challenge now, is to link locally based ‘landscape’ plans to regional plans to deliver outcomes required by both the local and regional planning processes: ie to create a situation where the aggregation of site responses supports a regional plan and a regional plan that supports site works. 

Living Landscapes is a project that is underpinned by a planning process for integrating conservation and production outcomes.  The project is focused on people working together to rehabilitate their local landscape so that the ecological needs of the landscape can be maximised within the constraints of the agricultural production system.  The long-term challenge is to realign our planning and management processes to a stage where we can meet our social and economic demands within the context of the ecological needs. 

Living Landscapes links science and community through a simple framework for learning, planning, doing and reviewing.  It provides opportunities for land managers to learn about their local ecology, through their own experience and through the eyes of others, and then to apply ‘new’ knowledge at the local level whilst contributing to landscape-scale outcomes.  It provides a mechanism for linking local actions to regional outcomes.

Living Landscapes is a partnership between local and regional communities, and the non-government, corporate and research sectors.  The project is one example of the co-ordinated and integrated approach required to support the effective implementation of regional NRM plans. 

Changing Moods, Changing Focus – Perception of farm chemical use in the Central Queensland region

Sandy Paton and Janet Norton

Institute for Sustainable Regional Development, Central Queensland University

For producers in Central Queensland, the last decade has been a time of increasing stress. The pressure of a multiplicity of new legislation, environmental expectations placed on them by the wider community, the economic drivers of globalisation and free trade and the impact of climatic conditions that have been far from kind to most of them. The pain of staying where they were has become greater than the discomfort of moving forward. Changes in focus and mood related to farm management are occurring at the grass roots level and are reflected in a variety of attitudes to the use of on farm chemical. 

During the Decade of Landcare, the necessary shifts in thinking, greater amounts of information and data available to landholders, the increasing incorporation of monitoring and evaluation into farming processes and some financial incentives, created and supported new insights for many primary producers about the relationship between their properties and landscape and catchment issues. A more holistic approach to land management, factoring in the “cliché” triple bottom line is now becoming increasingly evident across a broad range of agricultural practices.

Drawing on 15 years rural industry experience, this paper focuses on three distinct trends in chemical use practice, (zero till, organics and integrated approaches) within Central Queensland.  Additionally it examines a catalytic fourth trend, the move towards holistic management.  It calls for grower driven research substantiating the local sustainability of the methodologies; support for “learning” producer organizations and information sharing across industries, agencies and techniques, to underpin a secure future for agriculture.

Social principles to inform agriculture

Professor Frank Vanclay

Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research, University of Tasmania

Summary: The presentation will outline the social principles that are need to develop agriculture in the future to develop sustainability in its triple bottom line conceptualisation. Awareness of farming as a social activity, of diversity in agriculture, of the social drivers in agriculture, and the socio-cultural basis of adoption will be promoted. The implications for extension, particularly in relation to natural resource management will be highlighted.

Conclusions: 

• Farming is a socio-cultural practice.
• Farmers are not all the same.
• Adoption is a socio-cultural process.
• Farmers have legitimate reasons for non-adoption.
• NRM extension agencies need to understand better the social dimensions of farming if they are to be more effective in promotion adoption of environmental management practices.

Educating Natural Resource Professionals for the 21st Century

Professor Peter Cullen

CRC for Freshwater Ecology, University of Canberra

Agricultural education has been a triumph at the paddock scale but a disaster at the landscape scale.  The emphasis on short-term production, and a preparedness to ignore all externalities and longer term impacts has led to a number of serious land degradation problems that appear beyond the capacity of agriculture to resolve.  We need to develop a much stronger predictive capacity at a landscape scale and over periods of decades.  Every action on the ground leads to chains of impacts that make prediction difficult.  The clearing of native vegetation leads to a loss of biodiversity, accelerated soil erosion and hence dust, and to dryland salinity.  These chains of impacts make prediction difficult.  The simplification of our natural ecosystems to meet human needs leads to loss of habitat and makes them vulnerable to invasive species.  It is clear that the education of agricultural scientists and other natural resource professionals will need more emphasis on systems thinking at a landscape scale.

Restoring the balance: Supporting change in land management practices through innovative education programs

Peter Cregan and Daryll Richardson

Cooperative Research Centre for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity

Aim: To increase the capacity of communities to implement land management change through innovative education and knowledge exchange programs

Conclusion: Education and knowledge exchange programs are critical to the adoption of outcomes of the research programs of the CRC.

'Through an improved understanding of the way natural and agricultural ecosystems work, the CRC will provide new plant-based land use systems that lessen the economic, environmental and social impacts of dryland salinity and thereby help to sustain rural communities'. (Mission of the CRC for Plant~Based Management of Dryland Salinity)

The education program of this CRC is critical to the achievement of the CRC's mission because of the extent, urgency and seriousness of salinity. Education and technology transfer will:

• assist the development of new enterprises and technologies sympathetic to salinity management;
• attract young scientists into the field of natural resource science specialising in salinity management, and
• promote the extension of new and existing information and skills to farmers.

• education programs for emerging and existing scientists at participating universities;
• workshop programs, including commercially sponsored workshops by Wesfarmers Landmark, that promote the understanding of practices that cause dryland salinity; and
• the establishment of knowledge exchange networks that enhance the generation and adoption of plant~based management of salinity.

This poster outlines the approaches to salinity education to be adopted by the CRC.

Geoff Park

North Central CMA

Summary: Biodiversity Action Planning is a structured approach to identifying priorities and mapping significant areas for native biodiversity conservation at the landscape and bioregional scales. It is based on the application of sound scientific and ecological principles for landscape conservation of biodiversity - it is about planning, visualising and creating future landscapes. In the North Central region of Victoria, Biodiversity Action Planning is being implemented as a strong partnership between landholders, community groups and agencies. In particular the "community" is challenging the fundamental ways that agencies plan and implement NRM programs. A range of community development models are being trialed through the implementation of Biodiversity Action Planning. Early feedback from this work is profoundly influencing future directions for community involvement in landscape planning. 

Nick Stephens, Mellissa Wood, Claire Howell

National Forest Inventory, Bureau of Rural Sciences
 

Title: 

In Australia almost all of the cleared land available for forest expansion is privately owned and managed by farmers and landholders. In 1999, ninety per cent of new plantations established were on private land and by private tree owners. The level of forest expansion in Australia therefore depends, to a large extent, on the decisions of private landholders to integrate forestry into current landuse practices, or in some cases, to instigate a change in lifestyle and landuse through the outright sale or lease of their land to commercial forest companies.

Until now, limited knowledge has existed on the extent to which farmers have adopted farm forestry, or contributed to forest development at the national level. This has resulted in limited recognition of the important role farmers have had in plantation development in Australia and the contribution of small-scale grower resources to the overall plantation estate.

In 1998 the Commonwealth Farm Forestry Program committed 3 years funding to BRS to establish the National Farm Forest Inventory (NFFI) - to facilitate the collection of farm forest resource information and report on the extent of farm forest resources across Australia. After working for two years in coordination with a national network of regional farm forestry groups, the NFFI, in November 2000, requested from the network statistics on farm forest resources. In response the NFFI received over 40 disparate datasets, detailing the species, age, size and location of individual farm forest stands, totaling over 65,000 hectares. Key findings were that a significant upward trend in farm forest establishment has occurred over the past 5 years and that plantation companies have also formed agreements with individual landholders to secure land for development of larger scale commercial plantations.