LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT IN THIS MILLENNIUM Securing more enduring relationships between community and country through more inclusive conversations, more innovative choices and more collaborative action

P C Davey, Landscape and Ecosystems Management, University of Western Sydney (Hawkesbury) P S Cornish Landscape and Ecosystems Management, University of Western Sydney (Hawkesbury) R Muston Quality Environmental Management

Abstract

This paper develops the theme of the 2001 Fenner Conference, 'Visions of Future Landscapes', by seeking to understand what a 'landscape approach' to natural resource management might mean in the Australian context.

We argue that, for progress in natural resource management to be achieved, the participants in landscape change must move away from subjugation of the natural environment through top down homogenous solutions, and embrace new 'ecocivic' concepts that empower communities to envisage and pursue shared sustainable futures. This will require improved transdisciplinary learning across traditionally narrow professional domains and more effective integration of community knowledge and values. It will require managers to look beyond traditional cadastral constraints (farms, local government boundaries, etc) and traditional subdivisions of the natural environment (soil, water, vegetation, biodiversity). Real progress will reflect more holistic understandings of landscapes as ecological and economic entities, natural and modified entities and cultural and social entities. New planning processes are required that enable informed and adaptive management to retain critical ecological processes within natural areas and mimic them in modified areas; to enable development of enduring economic and social capital without externalising costs and reducing options for future generations.

We conclude that landscape management is a process based on a philosophy that sees all landscapes as human constructions: mirrors on society reflecting their history, knowledge and values. Effective landscape management is a transdisciplinary process that better enables communities (society) to:

· project forward and envisage desired environmental futures, · "back-cast" the incremental steps needed to achieve those futures and

· become more empowered to act appropriately in pursuit of those futures.

To achieve sustainable agriculture within landscapes will require research in four key areas:

(i) ecosystems structure and function of particular landscapes and associated ecosystems and their inter-relationships;

(ii) tools and processes for planning,

(iii) development of more innovative economic and policy instruments

(iv) development of social capital to pursue sustainability, and

(v) management to improve enterprise practices and their capacity to mimic (where necessary) natural ecosystem functions. Suggestions will be made for the advancement of the new professional domain of 'landscape management'.

Introduction

The 2001 Fenner Conference introduced the idea of 'visioning' for future Australian landscapes. But what is 'landscape? This paper takes forward the idea that 'landscapes' are 'constructions', the living interplay between humans and their environment. Australians do not like some of the outcomes of this interplay, in particular the unintended and largely unexpected environmental effects that can largely be sheeted home to land clearing and agriculture. Thus we now seek to re-design agriculture to suit the unique Australian landscape. There is at this moment a broad national and international movement seeking new conversations, new understandings and new products and services to transform the way we perceive and manage our landscapes. Whilst there is yet no consensus as to the definition of 'Landscape Management', the movement is coming together out of a common interest in advancing landscape management as a unifying philosophy within which to:

· develop more comprehensive understandings of the inseparable relationship between 'community' and 'country';

· develop more informed and innovative choices as to the types, patterns and conduct of human enterprises and their capacity to sustain both community and country;

· develop community governance processes more accountable to the diversity of values and services we ascribe to and derive from country.

This paper is founded on the principle that, for new plans for agriculture in the Australian environment to deliver real progress, a landscape approach will be needed. We elaborate on what a landscape approach might mean in the unique Australian context and suggest ways to take forward the new professional domain of 'landscape management'.

Landscape- A comprehensive and enduring concept of community and country

The terms 'landscape ecology' and 'landscape management' convey many different meanings to different people, but a strong theme emerging from Europe is that landscapes are human constructions that are as strongly rooted in history and culture as they are in ecology, agriculture and economics. Therefore making effective new constructions must be a transdisciplinary process. While the notion of 'landscape' has roots in the 14th Century, its unifying philosophy may offer new approaches to pursuing sustainable development of community and country in this millennium. With greater community consciousness of, and concern for, their visible surroundings (natural and constructed), and with greater appreciation of how profoundly we have altered and irreversibly damaged the ecological functioning of many of our natural environments, (including those which support our food and fibre production), there is a pressing need for new approaches. These new approaches must:

· move away from subjugation of the natural environment through top down homogenous solutions and embrace new 'ecocivic' concepts that better empower communities to envisage and pursue shared sustainable futures;

· provide more transdisciplinary learning across traditionally narrow professional domains and more effective integration of community knowledge and values;

· look beyond traditional cadastral constraints (farms, local government boundaries, etc) and traditional subdivisions of the natural environment (soil, water, vegetation, biodiversity);

· reflect more holistic understandings of landscapes as ecological and economic entities, natural and modified entities and cultural and social entities;

· enable informed and adaptive management to retain critical ecological processes within natural areas and mimic them in modified areas;

· enable development of enduring economic and social capital without externalising costs and reducing options for future generations.

Landscapes are a mirror on society, reflecting its history, knowledge and values. Importantly, landscapes reflect the nature of the relationship between community and country and the extent to which that relationship is likely to impede or enhance the pursuit of sustainability. Resilient, enduring landscapes reflect a co-evolutionary, mutually dependent partnership between community and country. Country is a partner that allows community to develop by using its natural resources and ecological services; in return, community includes country in that development, toward a common future. The development of such partnerships must be at the core of landscape management in this millennium. Achieving such partnerships is not without its challenges. However, with a commitment to open communication and collaboration and a sharing of knowledge, values and experiences, communities at all different scales can develop more sustainable landscape futures. In any landscape context it is critically important to explore embrace, and harness the multiplicity of understandings and values local communities, other stakeholders and experts bring to bare on that landscape. 'Landscape' is ultimately a construct generated by what we see and what is in our heads. For any group of people a landscape might be simultaneously seen as:

· nature, imagining what the area was really like before man came along; · habitat, a blend of man and nature with man as the steward;

· a system, a complex of interacting natural processes and human activities which need to be dissected and analysed through discipline based scientific inquiry;

· a problem, reflecting the ills of society through its degradation or requiring alteration or re-design in some way;

· wealth, an asset to be assigned a monetary value;

· an artefact, a representation of human values realised in landscape design;

· history, a record of the work and evolution of nature and man;

· aesthetic, a scenery of artistic qualities to be sensed, painted, drawn and written about; and

· a place, a locality to be planned, a home, a sacred area.

Each perspective has its own unique contribution to make in the development of more sustainable landscape futures. Further, these perspectives are not exhaustive; there may be others that can contribute to the rich texture of landscape understanding. What they do serve to highlight is the need for wider, more inclusive and more systemic conversations about the ways we know and make sense of the landscapes we share. Out of these will flow new insights and opportunities and a broader community commitment to collaboratively pursue them. The collective perspectives we bring to bear on any landscape are not static or frozen in time; they are transitional; they evolve over time. Importantly, some assume greater importance and require more attention than others at a particular time and in particular landscape contexts. The need to develop scientific and economic understandings of landscapes has rightly assumed greater priority in the past 75 to 100 years and will undoubtedly need continuing attention in this new millennium. The drivers for these endeavours have been many and varied; the desire to ensure secure supplies of food and fibre; the desire for wealth creation and nation building; our growing commitment to the pursuit of sustainable development with our scientific and economic understandings of landscapes we now recognise that:

· the more we intervene in the critical ecological functioning of landscapes in pursuit of our human enterprises, the greater the risk of malfunction;

· the more malfunctional the relationship is between human enterprises and nature the greater the likelihood that the costs of the malfunction will be externalised;

· the more scientific understanding we develop about the critical ecological functioning of landscapes the greater our capacity to protect, restore or mimic them;

· the more economic understanding we build on this scientific platform the greater our capacity to put in place 'ecocivic' governance processes which better define and allocate rights, responsibilities, costs and benefits.

Over the past 50 years, land use planning has also assumed a dominant role in determining landscape futures and accommodating major social and economic changes including the massive population movement to cities, regional centres and the coastal seaboard. Many rural areas, particularly those adjacent to major population centres are becoming 'hinterlands'; places which primarily serve the ecological, economic and social interests of city residents including: the provision of water, the provision of sand and gravel and other materials for the construction industry, the disposal of waste and the provision of land for eco-recreation and rural residential pursuits. As the 'footprint' of the cities increase, so do the challenges of developing land use plans in these areas which take account of 'local' interests and perspectives and reflect some true uniqueness about 'place'. Landscape management may offer new insights and approaches to address these challenges. Similarly, landscape management may offer new insights in designing appropriate agricultural systems which build on our undoubted ingenuity as a food producer but better reflect the unique Australian ecosystems. It could generate new ways of harnessing the depth and diversity of scientific, professional and community knowledge in any given landscape context and new approaches to build upon and bridge traditional scientific and professional boundaries. What the landscape approach to planning, design and management offers Landscape management offers the prospect of better enabling communities to:

· project forward and envisage desired environmental futures

· "back-cast" the incremental steps needed to achieve those futures

· become more empowered to act appropriately in pursuit of those futures

The fundamentally human act of envisaging desirable futures and designing processes to pursue them is now more important than at any time in human history. With the power of science, technology and information we can now conceive the planet as 'spaceship earth', we have some appreciation of the total dynamics of the biosphere and our place in it. That same power of science, technology and information has also given us unprecedented capacities to fundamentally modify natural environments for better or for worse. Our natural environments are now essentially 'artefacts' of our own creation. There will be very few if any humanly neutral landscapes. Nature and culture will be more inextricably entwined and our future landscapes will be artefacts whatever we do. Many of the landscapes we have created are not all that attractive and we need to choose others. In a complex and turbulent world where the consequences of our choices and actions are profound, we therefore need to develop new ways of harnessing our values, perspectives, science, technology and information so that in any landscape context, we can:

· more effectively explore a range of possible designed futures;

· make more informed choices between those futures;

· develop processes which enable us to incrementally work back from the chosen futures to determine what needs to be done and what trade-offs need to be made to realise our choices.

In pursuing designed futures, landscape management provides an integrative vehicle for more sustainable regional development. It can harness new and emerging approaches to collaborative inquiry which enable experts and communities to systemically consider the resilience and adaptiveness of regions from an ecological, economic and social/institutional perspective.

The approach considers how resilient and adaptive are these domains when considered singularly and as a 'regional system', and what transformations might be necessary to improve their individual and collective resilience.

Landscape management offers the opportunity to embrace these inclusive, empowering and participatory approaches and make wiser choices in favour of both community and country.

An invitation to help secure more enduring relationships between community and country

The perspective we have outlined above provides a brief framework of ideas to invite wider debate and a platform for proposing a range of collaborative opportunities to advance landscape management and help secure more enduring relationships between community and country. What might now be done?

1. Establishing a distributed professional support network

A broad national and international movement is developing with a focus on seeking new conversations, new understandings and new products and services to advance the concept and practice of landscape management. Unfortunately in Australia, this movement has no formal, recognisable structure. As a starting point, we propose the establishment of a distributed support network to bring together professionals, practitioners and others with interests and responsibilities related to landscape management. Initially the network might act as a 'virtual forum' to assist understanding of 'who is doing what', facilitate the interchange of information and ideas and identify ways to value add to current or emerging projects. With sufficient support and some limited capital, the network could evolve into a Landscape Management Institute, with linkages to the International Association for Landscape Ecology and other similar professional bodies. As an initial step toward establishing a distributed network, a series of 'Roundtables' could be convened across Australia. Their purpose would be to:

· explore and build on the ideas and opportunities offered by the philosophy and approach of landscape management;

· scope out the role of the distributed network in more detail;

· develop an action plan for establishing the network (including partners and responsibilities).

2. Consultancy brokerage

With the development of a support network, significant opportunities exist to use such a forum to broker delivery of innovative landscape management consultancy services. There is a pressing need to make available landscape services to local and regional community groups including in particular, catchment and water management committees and groups of Landcare groups. A register of landscape specialists willing to provide such services could be established through the support network from which transdisciplinary teams could develop.

3. Codes of conduct and best practice

As landscape management generates greater legitimacy and strategic importance, there will be a need to develop codes or standards which benchmark and communicate best practice and instil greater community confidence in the profession of landscape management. We recognise the pressing need for a range of user-friendly publications to promote the concept and practice of landscape management. Such publications would provide a useful first step toward the development of codes and standards.

4. A centre of excellence for landscape management

We propose the establishment of a national Centre of Excellence for Landscape Management within the next 3-5 years. Models for establishing a Centre of Excellence should be explored, including a CRC. In this respect the European Academy of the Culture of Landscape may offer some useful leads.

5. Landscape research priorities

Significant opportunities exist to advance landscape management and related research. We suggest four key areas:

· ecosystems research - to improve understanding of the structure and function of particular landscapes and associated ecosystems and their inter-relationships;

· analysis and planning research - to improve innovative application of spatial analysis and planning tools at appropriate scales and timeframes;

· economic and social research - to inform development of more innovative economic and policy instruments and the development of social capital to pursue sustainability;

· management research - to improve enterprise practices and their capacity to mimic (where necessary) natural ecosystem functions.

While recognising the need for ecosystems research in those landscapes under greatest pressure, we suggest similar research now needs to be undertaken in those areas of rural Australia which are emerging as major new food bowls. One such area is north-western NSW, thus explaining our support for this regional workshop at the 2002 Fenner Conferene.. In terms of analysis and planning research we recognise the pressing need for user-friendly spatial analysis tools to support planning and audit processes at a variety of scales (national, state, river basin, regional, landscape and ecosystem). In terms of economic and social research three areas warrant greater attention:

· broader development of ecosystem service regimes;

· broader development of environmental trading regimes such as nutrient emissions trading;

· development of social enquiry processes to facilitate the assimilation of our multiplicity of landscape understandings and values.

In terms of management research, we suggest greater attention to the development of innovative enterprises which might replace those in areas where there is a demonstrably malfunctional relationship between the natural environment and current enterprises. Consistent with the unifying philosophy of landscape management, the research priorities identified above need to be addressed through broader transdisciplinary approaches. Beyond these priorities, new and emerging systemic approaches to investigating the 'resilience' of landscapes as inter-related ecological, social and economic systems, need to be encouraged and more broadly debated within and across scientific and professional disciplines.

Where to from here?

In Australia there is much to celebrate in terms of the magnitude and diversity of local, regional and national effort now being directed toward securing more sustainable futures. The current levels of political will, capital investment and technical innovation, are also good reasons for confidence. However there are equally compelling reasons to avoid complacency, including doing more things but in the same old way. Landscape management offers new insights and provides opportunities to identify new choices and pursue more informed collaborative action in securing more enduring relationships between community and country. To that end, it is hoped this paper makes a small but useful contribution!

Acknowledgments

Ideas for ways to advance the profession of 'landscape management' arose from a workshop in December 2001 to explore options for the advancement of landscape management. We acknowledge the many contributions to that workshop. Prof David Kemp provided valued feed back on this paper.