Australia sets standards for sustainable land use
Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network
December 29, 2000
By Jenny Goldie
Collaboration between farming communities and environmentalists have spawned sustainable land-use practices in Australia.
In 1989, two men went to Australia’s Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke and asked for several hundred million dollars over 10 years to address the chronic decline in Australia’s land and waterways. Hawke said yes on the spot.
“Damn!” said one of the solicitors as they left the prime minister’s Office. “I knew we should have asked for a billion.”
The two men represented leading farm and environmental lobby groups. Rick Farley spoke for the National Farmers Federation (NFF) and Phillip Toyne represented the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF).
Farley and Toyne are the architects of Australia's National Landcare Program and the "Decade of Landcare" through the 1990s. It is a movement that has mobilized a third of the country's farmers and led to significant progress toward sustainable land-use practices.
The program is now finding its way to Africa and America.
“In our view,” said Farley, “the land care movement has created new community norms and attitudes about sustainable use of resources and what it is to be a good farmer.”
The original target of the program was far more ambitious than resources alone. The goal was ecologically sustainable development on all agricultural and pastoral lands in 10 years.
In retrospect, given that European farming practices have been wholly inappropriate for Australia’s fragile soils and erratic climate, the target was unrealistic.
In fact, Farley acknowledged that, despite good intentions and best efforts, environmental problems across Australia have increased in severity and scale since the "Decade of Landcare" project started.
“Salinity is spreading,” he said. “Another 7 to 11 million acres of land will be infected in the Murray Darling Basin alone over the next 50 years.”
The Murray Darling Basin is Australia's breadbasket. A salinity audit last year predicted that many of the basin’s rivers and streams would have salinity levels too high for drinking or agriculture in 20 to 50 years.
“There is not enough water in some of our major river systems to meet the combined demands of agriculture, human consumption and environmental flows,” said Farley.
In addition, soil fertility continues to fall and biodiversity continues to be lost.
“After 10 years and a huge investment of public and private funds, Australia has only started to crawl down the road to sustainable resource use,” said Farley.
Soil salinity continues to be a crucial water issue in Australia.
Some lessons have been learned, Farley allows. More need to be heeded. Environmental capital, for example, needs to be factored into economic policy.
“There needs to be greater cooperation between states and commonwealth,” says Farley. During the "Decade of Landcare," states reduced their funding as the commonwealth kicked in more money.
Farley also suggested that agriculture and environment departments need to work better together to provide more integrated approaches to programs. “They have different constituencies and cultures,” he says.
Aboriginal people are significant landholders, yet they receive only a fraction of land-care funding. “There has been insufficient effort to bring indigenous landholders into the land-care fold,” says Farley.
“We must be prepared to move beyond the comfort zone of conventional wisdom and entrenched land and water use practice,” said Toyne. “These methods have so obviously failed in this Australian landscape, and threaten the future economic and ecological viability of our nation.”
Toyne called for a program of ‘mutual obligation’ to be extended to landholders who receive public money for land restoration.
“If a land manager is to receive a private benefit from public expenditure on this scale, he or she must accept the goal of sustainable land use and accept independent verification of progress toward it,” said Toyne.
Toyne also called for partnerships with business to assist in the repair of Australia’s land and rivers.
“This would harness mechanisms such as the greenhouse emissions trade to drive commercial vegetation plantings and water markets to bring full commercial value to water use,” he said.
“One thing is certain,” said Toyne. “Another billion dollars for the next 'Decade of Landcare' is simply not enough.”