Community-based Landcare
A cornerstone of resilient communities
Seven long years of drought, a changing climate, a global financial crisis: the challenges to rural communities have been relentless. Community-based landcare has been a cornerstone for rural communities. Landcare provides for community ownership of environmental problems and their solutions. It is the land and local environment which supports and sustains the community, and in which the community as a whole has an investment: an investment which reaches beyond property boundaries. Landcare incorporates sharing knowledge about sustainable agriculture, revegetating the local reserve, maintaining the primary school nursery, collectively addressing feral pest problems, dealing with erosion across multiple landholdings, remediating wetlands, monitoring waterways.
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An additional challenge for the landcare movement has been the vagaries of government policy and funding in support of community-based NRM. The implementation of the regional NRM structure across Australia has been hailed by the Landcare movement as a step forward, bringing planning and investment closer to the community and land managers who steward the natural environment and productive agricultural lands. However, the focus of regional organisations to deliver environmental incentives to individual property holders, bypassing the community groups, has taken a toll. There are many in the Landcare movement who have not felt adequately recognised or valued for their community stewardship and the community infrastructure they have helped to build and maintain.
The landcare experience has confirmed: a resilient landscape goes hand in hand with a resilient community.
In this project we propose to identify, map and document the trials and tribulations of community-based landcare groups in the Murrumbidgee catchment. There are 15 Landcare Networks in the Murrumbidgee catchment. It is estimated that there are 140 landcare groups and over 2000 landcare volunteers.
The primary goals of the project are to:
- Identify and document all the landcare groups and their networks in the catchment.
- Map the geographical spread of community-based NRM.
- Map the community & communications networks landcare has created.
- Identify the features of this community infrastructure which have increased community resilience.
- Identify the factors which have challenged and diminished resilience.
Can you help out?
Please contact:
Janey Adams
GIS Officer
ph. 0416 220 527
jadams@murrumbidgeelandcare.asn.au
Marion Benjamin
Executive Officer
Murrumbidgee Landcare Inc.
ph.02-6925 7718
mbenjamin@murrumbidgeelandcare.asn.au
