User:Landcare Australia

Since the mid 1980s, a nationwide movement for sustainable rural development and land management has evolved in Australia, enhancing participation and cooperation by concentrating on groups rather than individual landowners. Moreover, involving and informing the broader, especially urban, community, has greatly increased awareness of resource degradation and sustainability.

This program – Landcare – draws strong government support at all levels, encourages more sustainable resource management, tries to balance economics and ecology, productivity and resource protection, and promotes community development.

Established twenty years ago in Victoria, with sixteen years as a nationwide movement, Landcare now has around 5000 autonomous community groups, two-thirds comprised of farmers and other rural landowners, with the remainder in cities, towns, coastal regions and ‘lifestyle-farming’ zones.

Increasingly, Landcare members plan and work on whole catchments and regional or technical themes, rather than just on their own and neighbouring properties. Many groups amalgamate into loosely bound, but highly task-oriented, opportunistic regional networks.

Employing professional coordinators, involving as many landowners as possible, creating trust, emphasising local and regional planning and decision-making, developing fostering rather than leadership roles for government and promoting ready information-sharing between scientists and land managers, has initiated a highly productive era.

Workers from different disciplines – soil conservationists, foresters, geologists, hydrologists, biologists, economists and communicators – cooperate with communities on local, regional and national projects. Women play an equal role, and many schools participate.

Landcare’s wide acceptance across many sectors of Australian society has generated many creative partnerships with industry and media, especially through a commercial fundraising arm, Landcare Australia Limited.

Landcare activities influenced the introduction of 56 regional bodies covering all Australian states and mainland territories, most dating from the mid-late 1990s, which bring together community and government to plan, finance, oversee and monitor resource management. Titles and degree of government involvement vary; at least two states use the term ‘catchment management authority.’

The concept is spreading overseas. There are over 300 Landcare groups in New Zealand under the New Zealand Landcare Trust. The approach has been introduced to Canada, Great Britain, Iceland and the United States. South Africa launched its own Landcare initiative adapted from the Australian model in 1998, which led to a similar program in Uganda. Landcare is strong in the Philippines, with over 600 groups.

An explanation: Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary recognises the word ‘landcare’ (small ‘l’). Before it emerged, no succinct, community-friendly term for holistic land and water (catchment) management existed. ‘Capital L’ Landcare covers the broad community movement and its many initiatives and implications. Please note also the abbreviation NRM for ‘natural resource management.’