Community environmental management? Landcare in Australia

Lockie, Stewart

Abstract

[Extract] As previous chapters have demonstrated, the environmental, social and economic challenges confronting rural Australia are immense. But in the face of all the 'bad news' that seems to now characterise rural communities and industries, one 'good news' story has emerged -'landcare'. Landcare is cred¬ited with not only doing something positive about rural land and water degradation, but also with doing much to revitalise rural communities and economies along the way. With bipar¬tisan political support and unexpectedly high rates of partici¬pation, Landcare is seen by many to be an undeniably 'good thing'. The actual impact of Landcare on the Australian landscape is a controversial topic, but there can be little doubt that Landcare groups and members have participated in thousands of field days and other training activities; planted many hundreds of thousands of trees; erected thousands of kilometres of fencing; developed a substantial number of catchment-scale natural resource management plans and re-oriented indi¬vidual farming practices accordingly; established a multitude of signposted demonstration sites; and so on. To date, members of almost a third of Australian farm businesses have joined a Landcare group. As Campbell reminds us, the involvement of nearly a third of the population in voluntary community environmental groups could be expected to have potentially profound implications for the management of all sorts of environmental issues.In economically stressed communities, where many people feel socially and profession¬ally isolated, the ability of Landcare to bring people together to work on a common task has been remarkable.

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Rurality Bites: the social and environmental transformation of rural Australia

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978-1-86403-169-0

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Pluto Press

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Annandale, NSW, Australia

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