LANDCARE

What is Landcare?

International Landcare

Landcare Success Stories

WHAT IS LANDCARE

The search for more sustainable management of natural resources, coupled with improving profitability, will dominate this century, in Australia and around the world. Landcare is a significant Australian contribution to achieving an improved balance between environmental, social and economic goals.

Reconciling the need to sustain the productive capacity of natural resources for future generations, with the needs of current generations, is a challenge that cannot be driven by technical experts and policy makers alone. The environmental and natural resource problems we face are significant. Their sheer scale in space and time, technical complexity and the necessity to trade off competing values and interests, requires the involvement of a range of stakeholders in all stages of the process, if lasting solutions are to be found.

Environmental sustainability issues are as much about social technologies - how to engage people and organisations effectively - as they are about the technical aspects of, for example, catchment hydrology or bio-diversity conservation. It is rarely possible to clean up a river system or conserve the habitat of an endangered species without at least a basic level of understanding, commitment and involvement among the people, organisations and industries whose everyday decisions directly influence the management of that catchment or habitat.

The Australian Landcare movement, an amalgam of grassroots community groups and the institutional apparatus which has evolved to support them, is a ground-breaking, large scale example of how to involve relevant stakeholders in improving natural resource management, from the local to the national scale.

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INTERNATIONAL LANDCARE

International interest in Landcare is best served by showing people to Landcare and assisting them to interpret the principles of Landcare in their own contexts, rather than by trying to anticipate or second guess local conditions and market a discrete product. The principles of Landcare will travel well but not necessarily the practice. These principles are based on lessons learned through Landcare experiences, which teach us that lasting solutions to environmental problems are most likely to evolve where:

• Solutions are developed with full involvement of those expected to implement them;
• Conservation and production aspects are considered together;
• All relevant stakeholders (not just those who agree with each other) have an acknowledged seat at the table and an equal opportunity to contribute;
• Local communities have a fair degree of ownership of both problems and solutions;
• Constructive partnerships/balance are fostered between: scientists and non-scientists; government and non-government; 'top down' and 'bottom up' approaches; urban and rural; and between young people and adults;
• Problems are examined and solutions developed at a scale relevant to the issue at hand;
• The cost of any environmental and community investment is equitably shared among the beneficiaries of that investment.

SILC's International Landcare Services

SILC's International Landcare program involves bringing delegations to Australia from countries interested in experiencing Australian Landcare in its philosophical, structural, administrative and practical contexts. SILC training programs combine "hands on" case studies with theoretical training delivered in locations that reflect the geographic conditions of the client. Read details about our Services. Program,

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SUCCESS STORIES AND STARTERS

Landcare is now spreading across the world. SILC has played a part in the development of Landcare internationally. Countries which are showing interest, and those that are now developing Landcare programs include:

• Canada

• EAST AFRICA

• Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda

• Fiji

• Germany

• Iceland

• Indonesia

• Jamaica

• New Zealand

• Philipinnes

• Rawanda

• South Africa

• Sri Lanka

• Tanzania

• United States of America

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