1

Learning our way to better land care

International Forum on Soils, Society and Global

Change

Selfoss, Iceland 2 September 2007 Andrew Campbell

2

Outline • Introduction

• Reflections on landcare in Australia

• Knowledge and Sustainability

• Looking ahead

3

My perspectivesMy perspectives

• Farming background western Victoria

• Forestry & rural sociology training

• Extension officer

• National Landcare Facilitator 1989-92

• Post-grad studies, Holland & France

• Senior Executive, Australian Government

• 7 years as CEO of Land & Water Australia

• Triple Helix Consulting

– landscapes, lifestyles & livelihoods

4

Reflections on landcare

• In Australia, over twenty years, landcare has successfully engaged the community:– Involving 1/3 of farmers and many other volunteers

– Land Literacy (Water Watch, Birds Atlas, Salt Watch, Frog Watch etc) have involved >250,000 people

– changed social norms (the notion of the ‘good farmer’)

– shared public resources and services more efficiently

– helped in tackling problems (weeds, pests, wind erosion, salinity, restoring habitat) across farm boundaries

– building bridges from farmers to lifestylers & community groups

5

Reflections on landcare (2)

• In Australia, landcare has made a big difference, BUT

• in seeking to scale up, the community must not be left behind

• insufficient attention (in Oz at least) to know-how and

capacity - information base increasingly fragmented

• we let good elements (e.g. landcare in schools) lapse

• we added more professionals rather than boosting the

capacity of and rewarding the amateur/volunteer leaders

• the background decline in extension services

and core disciplines (e.g. soils) has

meant that gains have not been

consolidated, wheels are being reinvented

6

Why focus on soil (again)?

• Seemingly forgotten in moves to broader approaches

• The engine room of sustainability

• Essential for resilience

• Squeezed from all directions– Climate, energy, water, consumption (mutually reinforcing)

– Intensifying competition, increasingly leading to conflict

– Losers are the poor and the environment

• Soil knowledge and technical capacity

is eroding as fast as the soil itself

7

• highly variable spatial and temporal scales

• the possibility of absolute ecological limits

• irreversible impacts and related policy urgency

• complexity, connectivity, uncertainty & ambiguity

• cumulative rather than discrete impacts

• value-laden issues & new moral dimensions

• systemic problem causes

• contested methods and instruments

• ill-defined property rights and responsibilities

• expectation of stakeholder/citizen participation

Sustainability issues typically involve (after Dovers)

8

Engaging the community

• no magic bullets, most knowledge resides in the community

• we face major societal choices– Sustain what? For how long? Over what area? For whose

benefit? Measured by whom?

• sustainable NRM means widespread behaviour change

• economic & regulatory signals remain weak

• many responses need to be collective

• ‘trickle down’ adoption doesn’t work for sustainability

• Urban food shortages & price increases may present opportunities for a new discourse

– Linking climate, water, energy, food, land and soil

– With the aspirations and values of communities at all levels

9

Essential ingredients for sustainability

three pillars: – people need to want to change, to know what to do,

and have the means to do it

• commitment

– influenced by sense of place and of community (local & wider)

• know-how

– land use/management options need to be viable and adoptable

• capacity– can be helped at the margins with incentives

– equally important at institutional levels

10

The role of knowledge

• Knowledge (along with commitment and capacity) is one

of three essential conditions for the development of more

sustainable systems of resource use and management

• We need better knowledge for three reasons:– To help make better decisions

– To underpin the innovation process

– To learn as we go along (so that at least we make new mistakes)

11

Knowledge 101• Knowledge happens between the ears

• An individual cognitive process and highly contextual:– “I only know what I know when I need to know it”

• Revealed in artifacts (writing, art, formulae, products etc), skills,

experience, rules of thumb and natural talent (Dave Snowden)

• Across quite different domains: – Including local, Indigenous, scientific, strategic (organisational)

• And different sectors:– research, policy, management, planning, extension, education, monitoring

• people default to known, trusted, accessible sources:– credibility, dialogue, easy access & honesty all critical

– timing is crucial: knowledge is most useful when it is needed

12

Knowledge Systems

• At societal and professional levels, we must think about how the

knowledge system as a whole works to serve three key purposes:

– Better decision making

– Fomenting and supporting innovation

– Longer term evaluation, learning and adaptive management

• The SLM knowledge system is a classic ‘human activity system’ (‘soft’)

as opposed to natural or designed systems (‘hard’)

• No-one set out to design and build national or international SLM

knowledge systems

• But they exist, and we invest a lot of money in them

• There is value in analysing the whole system to

identify ways of helping it to work better

13

Analysing knowledge systems• Description

– Boundaries: defining the scope of analysis– Components: describing the elements within these boundaries

• Purpose– How well the system as a whole can be directed to serve

priorities at the relevant scale (sub-national, national, regional, international etc)

• Function (performance)– How well it serves the knowledge needs for more sustainable

management of natural resources: decisions, innovation, learning

• Cohesion– How well the various components of the system

work together in delivering intended functions towards a desired purpose

Some components of the Aust NRM Knowledge System

Universities

Knowledge Generation

and Management

Regional NRM

Bodies

Community Landcare groups

Hobby Farmers

Cooperative Research Centres

•E-Water•Plant based Management of Dryland Salinity•Irrigation Futures•Weed Management•Tropical Savannas Management•Australasian Invasive Animals•Coastal Zone, Estuary and Waterway Management•Cotton Catchment Communities•Desert Knowledge•Greenhouse Accounting•Sustainable Forest Landscapes•Landscape Environments and Mineral Exploration

Knowledge

Adoption

Policy and Programs

Department of Environment and

Heritage

Department of Agriculture Fisheries

and Forestry

Australian Govt NRM Facilitator

s

National Action Plan for Salinity and Water

Quality

Natural Heritage

Trust

Community Water Grants

Envirofund

National Landcare Program

Bushcare

Coastcare

R&D Corporations

•Cotton•Fisheries•Forest and Wood Products•Grains•Grape and Wine

•Land & Water Australia•Rural Industries•Sugar

Bureau of Rural

Sciences

CSIRO ANU

National Land and Water Resources

Audit

Geoscience

Australia

Indigenous Land

Corporation

LegendDepartments of State (FMA Act)

Statutory Agencies (FMA Act) within portfolios

Statutory Agencies (CAC Act) within portfolios

Corporatised R&D Corporations (Statutory Funding Agreement)

Funding Programs

National Water Commission

Australian Bureau

of Statistics

Horticulture Australia

Dairy Australia

Australian Wool

Innovation

Australian Pork Limited

Meat and Livestock Australia

Local Government

sState NRM & Ag Agencies

Productivity Commission

National Water

Initiative

Commercial Farmers

Water Authoriti

es

Rural residenti

al

Commercial Advisory Services

Australian Greenhouse

Office

Indigenous Communities

15

System ComponentsLots of players• ~200,000? rural and peri-urban landholder families

• ~80,000 farm businesses

• Several thousand landcare and other community groups

• 4000 extension FTEs (Coutts et al 2004); ~4000 NRM field workers

• ~700 local governments

• Several hundred agencies across 8 State and Territory governments

• 56 catchment management organisations

• 40 national bodies with core NRM knowledge system interests

• ~80 national bodies with significant NRM interests

How to get such a system working

purposefully and cohesively?

16

Adoption reality check

• Old adoptability rules still apply (Pannell et al 2006)

• Economic & regulatory signals remain weak

• On-ground change is more likely where innovations:

– Are not too complex

– Can be trialled, tested and evaluated

(preferably on a modest scale)

– “Fit” with the farmers’ outlook, capacity and farming system

– Offer good returns within a reasonable timeframe

– Offer relative advantage over existing systems/approaches

• Relative advantage can be defined in interesting ways…

17

A farmer perspective

Tom & Cynthia Dunbabin, “Bangor”Dunalley, Tasmania, Winners of the 15th McKell

Medal

Too many policies Too many policies remain prescriptiveremain prescriptive

Farmers have a strong sense Farmers have a strong sense of place, built on generations of place, built on generations of land managementof land management

Partnerships with Partnerships with landholders, based on trust, landholders, based on trust, and respectful of their sense and respectful of their sense of place are an essential of place are an essential precursor to more successful precursor to more successful approachesapproaches

18

The Dunbabin Sense of Place Model

Sense Sense of Placeof Place

Passion

ScienceShared

Actions

Responsibility

IntimateUnderstanding

• Landholders’ strong sense of Landholders’ strong sense of place drives environmental place drives environmental actions through responsibility actions through responsibility towards, and passion for the towards, and passion for the place (farm, beach, mine etc) place (farm, beach, mine etc)

• Shared knowledge (science, Shared knowledge (science, cultural history etc), and cultural history etc), and broader understanding of broader understanding of place, greatly helps in place, greatly helps in developing and implementing developing and implementing positive actionspositive actions

19

The Dunbabin Sense of Place Model (2)

•When legislation, or other forced change impacts on the SoP of the landholder, responsibility becomes accountability and passion becomes social stigma - driving a negative reaction

rather than a positive action •Measures such as stewardship

payments have to be tailored in a way that strengthens the passion and responsibility that drive the positive actions

Sense Sense of Placeof Place

Social Stigma

ScienceWithheld

Reactions

Accountability(Legislative obligation)

Fear

Figure 2

20

Sense Sense of Placeof Place

Passion

ScienceShared

Actions

Responsibility

IntimateUnderstanding

Stewardship $’sRecognitionRespect

Figure 3

The Dunbabin Sense of Place Model (3)

•well designed programs add to the effectiveness of the original model – not overturn it...

•There is no need to change the strong Sense of Place farmers or other resource users have. It is better to enhance that by adding additional values shared by the wider community

21

Sustainabilityanother form of relative advantage

• Still a useful term – won’t go away

• Needs to be grounded at farm and landscape scale

• Sustain what? Over what area? For how long? For whose

benefit? As measured by whom?

• SAGE farmers– leading farm businesses across diverse commodities

– Convened to look at farm sustainability performance & how to measure it

– developed a Farm Sustainability Dashboard

– An excellent example of a ‘knowledge product’developed in the users’ context

23

(Re)thinking soil management

• Note that farmers see soil in functional terms, not

pedological descriptive terms

• We need the information base to reflect that:– What information do we need to inform better decisions?

– How can we support innovation in soil management?

– What monitoring and assessment do we need to track progress and learn as we go along?

• We also need to join the dots for people. Soils:– are the engine room of productivity

– shape ecosystem & landscape resilience

• Scaling up, and out

24

Scaling up• Managing Managing wholewhole landscapes landscapes

- “where nature meets culture” (Schama) - “where nature meets culture” (Schama)

- landscapes are socially constructed- landscapes are socially constructed

- beyond ‘ecological apartheid’ - beyond ‘ecological apartheid’

- - sustainabilitysustainability means means peoplepeople management management- engage values, perceptions, aspirations, behaviour- engage values, perceptions, aspirations, behaviour

• IntegrationIntegration-across issues – e.g climate, energy & wateracross issues – e.g climate, energy & water-across scalesacross scales-across the triple helixacross the triple helix

-landscapes, lifestyles & livelihoodslandscapes, lifestyles & livelihoods

25

Australia’s regional NRM model: an integrated approach

• 56 Catchment Management Organisations 56 Catchment Management Organisations (A$392M to June 05)(A$392M to June 05)

• An ambitious effort to implement SLM at a landscape scale: An ambitious effort to implement SLM at a landscape scale:

it’sit’s also a grand experiment also a grand experiment

– Devolve decision making & resource allocation to appropriate scaleDevolve decision making & resource allocation to appropriate scale

– Tap into and build on deep local knowledge and connection to placeTap into and build on deep local knowledge and connection to place

– Work across issues and industries in an integrated wayWork across issues and industries in an integrated way

• integration means making wholeintegration means making whole

– across scales, issues, land tenures and land usesacross scales, issues, land tenures and land uses

– in the users’ contextin the users’ context

• Hard to scale up without losing energy at grassroots levelsHard to scale up without losing energy at grassroots levels

26

Ag. service providers

UDV

Factories

Consumer

Dairy Australia TAFE

Dairy farmers

Financial institutions

Private

consultants

Other govt. services

SRW DPI

West Vic. Dairy

University SWWA

EPA

DSE

Indigenous groups

Local govt.

LWA

CMA’s

Landcare / env’t

services

Information & Knowledge FlowsSouth-West Victorian dairy farmers

• Such analyses critical to target research and extension effort

• Note no direct connection between catchment body (CMA) and dairy farmers

• Milk factory, DPI and consultant connect is strongest

Research directory•Programs•Projects•Specialist contacts for advice

Publications•Reference books•Journal articles•Research reports•Pamphlets•Magazines•Conference proceedings

Spatial datasets

Research report

Conferenceproceedings

Journal articles

Magazines

Anecdotal evidence

Reference books (Guidelines and

manuals etc)

Decision support tools•Models•Decision frameworks•Spreadsheets

Knowledge assets of interest

Current research projects

Specialist advice

Models

Decision frameworks

Spreadsheets

Knowledge needs

Current research programs

Funding opportunities

NRM Toolbar interface

NRM searchGoogle AustraliaOrganisation assetsAdvanced

[Searches on selection]

Square icon indicates which search engine is selected

[Click to see current alerts plus access alert settings]

[Click name to see librarian services]

Includes form for requesting information from the librarian

[Click to logout or login as someone else]

[Click name to open My library]

Click dropdown to view list of folders (Playlists) that stays open to allow drag and drop from search results

R&D Directory

This Worked Here!

Knowledge needs

Events and funding

Decision tools

Knowledge market

reportAdd/Delete databases

My profileCustomise my toolbarUpdate toolbarUninstall toolbarHelpContact us

29

Looking Ahead• Map the intersections of climate, energy and water

– their implications for food production systems

– and the underpinning soils base

• Sort out the information base, drawing on best-practice

knowledge management insights & tools at a systems level

• Focus on viable, adoptable solutions, knowledge in context

• A toolkit with a plurality of methods and instruments

• Refocus on ways to engage the community at all levels

• Land care approaches still important

• International land care cooperation would help

30

for more info:for more info:www.lwa.gov.au