Paper: TAKING CARE OF THE BUSH: NATIONAL FORUM ON NATURE CONSERVATION ON PRIVATE LAND

home page | contact us |  partners  |  clients |  papers

The ‘Taking Care of the Bush’ national forum hosted by the National Trust of WA was held in Subiaco, Perth from 21 – 23 March 2001. CSIRO Resource Economist Carl Binning worked with Judy Lambert to prepare the final overview of the forum and to place it in a bigger context. As Carl had to fly off to a resource economics conference in South America before the forum ended, Judy presented the overview.

CONTENTS:

What we know & what we are doing well: The ‘givens’

Areas needing more work

Expanding the boundaries of our work

The challenges

One Year From Now

Final plenary session: Bringing it all together – The big picture

What follows is a re-creation the final plenary presentation, based on Judy’s speaking notes and overheads used at the forum.

There were so many dynamic and exciting papers and workshop sessions presented during this forum that it is not possible to capture and refer to each of them in such a short summary presentation. Rather, I will try to give you an overview of the forum and its outcomes.

What the forum has done, apart from bringing together a rich diversity of key players who have differing roles and a range of creative approaches to ‘taking care of the bush’, is to

• Consolidate what we know and are doing well

• Clearly define areas that need more work

• Identify some new aspects that have expanded the boundaries of where we were before this forum.

What we know & what we are doing well: The ‘givens’

This forum has more strongly identified or defined a number of things that are fundamental to progress in ‘taking care of the bush’. While there may be a need for some fine tuning, these are ‘givens’ which provide a foundation on which participants can act and others can learn.

The first of these is the need for flexibility. Taking care of the bush will not be a ‘one size fits all’ process. As this forum amply demonstrates there are many approaches, each of which has an appeal to some who might contribute to nature conservation on private land. Differing landscape and biodiversity across the country will require differing approaches. The size of the remnants being conserved and the ecosystems within which they occur will influence what is best in any given situation. But so too will the people involved and their preferred approaches.

One of the things that makes this forum different from the others I have participated in during the past year or two is the extent to which it is accepted that we will need a diversity of approaches. So many speakers have referred to the ‘toolkit’ of mechanisms that it prompted one presenter to introduce some variety by referring to the ‘Esky’. But it is what we find in that Esky, or toolkit that is important. The work done by the ‘Reimbursing the Future’ team put together by Community Solutions, but headed up by CSIRO’s Mike Young back in 1996, still provides a useful picture of the tools in the toolkit.

Convenants through which landholders and managers can protect their native vegetation in perpetuity, Trusts to administer convenants and the funds that support them, and revolving funds as a significant aspect of the financing, have all gained their place in the toolkit. Each of these is in plae in one or more locations and we can all learn from their operation and fine-tune them as we go.

While each of these tools is in some respect voluntary, it is now widely accepted that there is also a need to underpin these tools with a regulatory safety-net to protect the most at-risk of what remains.

Partnerships will also play an important part in achieving our desired outcomes for the bush.

The participants in these partnerships will be varying combinations of

- Governments – Commonwealth, State and Territory, and also Local
- Rural landholders
- Research and extension staff
- Urban residents with a demonstrated interest in the environment
- The corporate sector, who are just beginning to become involved, and

As this conference has really begun to progress
- indigenous people

And as we all know, but sometimes fail to respect, effective partnerships are built on trust, equity, mutual respect and cooperation.

Communication is clearly an important elements of the partnerships we form. We need to think about the communication mechanisms that are relevant for all involved, and whether people prefer to communicate visually, orally or in writing, and the level of comfort that our project partners have in communicating electronically or in person is also important to the success of the project.

Because most of us have become somewhat entrenched in our own living and working environment, we each have our own use of language. How often do we hear government bureaucrats, politicians, scientists, or farmers each using a language which is common to others in their own situation, but might have different meaning for others from a different background. Whether we talk about ‘remaining bush’ or ‘biodiversity’, ‘grass and scrub’ or ‘understorey’ can make a difference to how well we relate to each other when working to take care of the bush.

And of course, there are issues of gender and age to consider when trying to build strong and effective partnerships. In some cases the seasoned male landholder may not respond well to a young female who is recent graduate advising him on how to manage his remnant bush, and the wife in a farm partnership often reacts very badly to the male farm adviser who wants to speak to ‘the boss’.

Then, of course, if we are to move ahead on a common pathway to ‘taking care of the bush’, we need to

• begin with a common vision of what the future landscape might look like

• develop shared pathways towards that vision

• agree roles and responsibilities, and

• respect the differing skills we each bring to the process.

Areas needing more work

Various presentations and workshop sessions during this forum have helped identify aspects of nature conservation that still require more work. Key among these are

• The need for government and non-government sectors each to better understand the priorities and perspectives of the other.

In particular, there is a need for governments and their agencies to recognise that community-based NGOs are not service providers and are not resourced or committed to fulfilling bureaucratic administrative requirements.

At the same time, there is also a need for NGOs to better acknowledge and respond to a need for accountability for public funds invested in their activities. While it is often difficult to match environmental achievements with the timeframes for environmental achievements, we must work together to identify useful short-term and longer-term indicators of progress, and we must learn together through adaptive management. But we must also learn to focus not just on the ecological outcome, but also to take account of, document and measure the people aspects of taking care of the bush.

• The importance of "champions" both within local communities and in government agencies.

These are people who are investing much of themselves in processes for which they are committed advocates. However that role places huge pressures on many who serve as champions for nature conservation on private land. If these people are to survive and continue their major contribution, they must be recognised and supported. In many cases the champions may be quiet achievers who seek little by way of public recognition or financial reward (and there are several such people participating in this forum). However, there are other ways in which we can all acknowledge and support them. One way is by us all sharing the load, rather than leaving it to the active leaders who champion what we are all trying to achieve.

• The impacts of external pressures working against ‘taking care of the bush’.

Not least among these are the institutional frameworks and processes within which we all work. The tools to assist us in taking care of the bush are largely in place. However, there are other factors still working against it.

• The ways in which bureaucracy traditionally works are alien and confronting to many in the community and are often stifling of creativity within.

• The legal system is in many ways not helpful – not least because of the influences of the tax system and planning laws.

• The policy frameworks which enable a rapid build-up of commitment to and action for the ‘public good’ are slow in growing.

Expanding the boundaries of our work

One of the exciting aspects of this forum has been the way in which, on some issues, it has taken us all beyond where we were in taking care of the bush.

• Indigenous participation has moved a step forward.

No longer are we merely talking about the need for indigenous participation. What has happened here is that indigenous culture and perspectives on taking care of the bush have been brought to a European audience in ways that demonstrate just how powerful that indigenous perspective really is and what it can contribute to the process overall. Many of us have some cultural learning to do, but the goodwill to share experiences and to achieve that learning have been reinforced at this forum.

• The need for a landscape approach to taking care of the bush is now accepted and respected.

We have acknowledged the need to look beyond the experimental plot, the paddock and the property, to the local landscape, and in some cases even to the whole continent. Each of these scales is recognised as a legitimate part of the puzzle and each is accepted as such. And at this forum we have moved beyond forests and woodlands (the current major focus of conservation efforts) to the whole diversity of landscapes, from the tropical north, to the arid lands and even to a transcontinental perspective.

• The acceptance of a need to develop a range of markets for taking care of the bush.

While the value of ‘bush blocks’ as a place for the committed and caring to live or enjoy their leisure time has been gaining momentum for some time, we have until this forum, made little progress in the areas of philanthropic and corporate involvement, or in the market aspects of environmental services.

• The level of energy, passion and commitment of those involved in this forum.

Many presenters and other participants demonstrated a high level of pride in what they are doing for the bush. Visions for the future of our landscape are positive and expansive and the emotional bonds that many have with the bush bodes well for the future. The momentum generated by this forum must be captured and maintained.

One important element in maintain what has begum here over the past two days will be in maintaining dialogue between the various parties involved. Just as indigenous and non-indigenous Australians need to better understand each other, so scientists, government agency staff, landholders and others in local communities need to help to come together and speak a common language which builds trust and real partnerships.

Community Solutions has a strong belief in the need for people with appropriate skills to facilitate this coming together, and my business partner Jane Elix has coined the term ‘cultural translators’ to describe this role. Cultural translators may be those in Landcare coordinator roles, they may include the national Bush for Wildlife coordinator or a host of existing regional coordinators, or they may be landholders with a diversity of training and experience.

The key aspects of a successful cultural translator are, in our view that they are people with a ‘foot in both camps’ when it comes to establishing and facilitating dialogue between other participants. They will be people who understand differing values and perceptions, are respected and trusted in their own communities, and who are articulate and versatile with language so that they are equally comfortable and able to communicate with farmers, scientists, environmentalists, government officers or others involved in taking care of the bush.

And it worth noting, that just as champions need resourcing and support, cultural translators will only be able to fulfil their role if they are adequately supported and resourced.

The challenges

It is our view that together we are not yet ready to provide precise Recommendations from this forum. Rather there are some clear challenges for the next 12 months. Key among these are

• Building on the real indigenous involvement established in this forum, based on respect for our different cultures and knowledge

• Discovering markets for ‘the bush’, whether for its value in the real estate market, the environmental services it provides or the opportunities for philanthropic or corporate investment. In meeting this challenge, we will need to do better in communicating a commonality of purpose, a desire to adopt a landscape approach to nature conservation, and a sense of the importaqnce and opportunities associated with ecosystem services, using both public and private land

• Expanding our networks beyond those who are present at this forum, so that we involve a greater diversity of people and spread our influences across the landscape as envisioned by some of the papers presented

• Establishing mechanisms to better address accountability for the funds invested in ‘taking care of the bush’, by recognising not only the need for accountability, but also the need for resourcing and skills-building to enable that accountability without stifling creativity in a flood of bureaucracy. ‘Triple bottom line’ reporting based on more specific data than is currently available is likely to play a key role in this

• Ensuring that reporting processes are in place to enable scientifically-based monitoring of both the human aspects of our work and the progress towards on-ground conservation

• Expanding both the role and the capacity of Local Government in ‘taking care of the bush’

• Having conservation trusts, covenants and revolving funds accepted as legitimate parts of the process of nature conservation on private land and putting model processes in place for others to become involved in.

One year from now

These are real challenges, but they are challenges which this group of forum participants is clearly equipped to deal with. Working together and in our own organisations and our own communities we must seek out ‘cultural translators’ to facilitate an expanded dialogue and we must all grasp opportunities to move ahead from what has happened here.

We therefore recommend that a further national gathering of people interested and involved in ‘taking care of the bush’ take place one year from now, with the main purpose of that forum being to assess progress made against these challenges.

Full details of the forum and its outcomes can be found at the National Trust of Western Australia website: www.ntwa.com.au