The National Landcare Network are driving a proposal to Government for a commitment to invest in Community Landcare.

Speaking after a full-day Workshop with the National Landcare Network board and staff in April, NLN Chair Dr Patrick O'Connor launched the Australian Community Landcare Futures Framework.

"This simple document lays out where we think Landcare needs to go next. 

I think one of the things that came up today is how do we respond to what we see in the changing sensibility amongst our friends and neighbours and landholders and urban populations about how we live with the planet, how we deal with all the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, how we deal with our intensive pressure on our natural systems and Landcare as an expression for that. The Futures Framework seeks to pick some things out of the future and say, these are areas that we need to be able to take Landcare into and be strong in the way that we advocate for Landcare as leaders in the national Landcare space.

There are three important things that we have to look to:

Landcare Futures Innovation

We have to look to the changes that are occurring around us and respond to the opportunity that innovation is providing. And I see this in my life and in my other organisations that I'm involved in -- how younger people are getting involved and how they are using technology, how they're using ideas differently than we did.

Landcare Futures Environmental Markets Leadership 

We see the changing markets for all kinds of agricultural production in Australia and the supplementation of those markets with ecosystem service markets as a really important space for Landcare, and for people who are involved in Landcare. Supply chains are changing and are expecting the footprint of production to respond to the changing consumer interest and the environmental markets that are supplementing our traditional commodity markets are really important spaces for Landcare to be involved in helping people to understand , adjust, adapt and select the right approaches for them as they move their production systems to be resilient, to be sustainable.

One off the platforms of the framework is to really stretch into that market space as an advocate, as a broker of knowledge rather than a broker of credits to help people to engage through Landcare in what the possibilities are for a more rapid necessary change to the sustainable production.

Landcare Futures Community Investment Program

Look at what we have seen recently experienced in the floods and bushfires. These events are very challenging to our lives and livelihoods, but also to those things that we love about our natural spaces and production systems. These challenges come with greater frequency under climate change. And what we see when they occur is a very natural response from communities through self-organising structures that pre-exist the catastrophic events and the perturbation. These preexisting structures are able to respond often faster and more effectively than top-down approaches.

What the Landcare Futures Framework sets out is a vision for Landcare being part of a surge capacity to respond to these challenges.

A call to Government

We are presenting this to government. So tonight is a way for us as a kind of an in-group to connect with what this is saying and what has come out of the deep rich conversations that have occurred across the network to form these ideas to go forward.

"I want to thank the staff from the National Landcare Network for driving the conversations and the rich engagement that is behind this. Particularly Kirstin and Jess and Jim has been fundamental in that. And there's a lot more to do to bring this to be a reality, but, I think previously Landcare lacked a vision. It lacked a statement into the world that says, this is where we need to go. This is where our community says we have to go. So this document sets a vision for that and sets it by listening, not by talking down, and that's been really important. So thank you to all involved. We're here to celebrate having a dinner together and our great conversation today"But please take this away to your groups and promote it in those conversations that you have. And hopefully what we've met with tonight has been the start of a really great step forward in the current vision

Download the Australian Community Landcare Futures Framework