Bringing landscapes, lifestyles and livelihoods together to assess and engage in improving natural

resource condition.

Andrew Campbell

Knowledgefor managing Australian landscapes

Andrew Campbell

Place & Purpose Symposium, Adelaide

30 September 2009

www.triplehelix.com.au

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My perspectives

• Farming background Cavendish (SW Vic)

• Forestry (Creswick & Melbourne)

• Extension officer, Shepparton, Bendigo &

Stawell

• Manager, Potter Farmland Plan

• National Landcare Facilitator

• Post-grad studies, Holland & France

• Senior Executive, Australian Government

• 7 years CEO of Land & Water Australia

• Triple Helix Consulting

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Outline

1. Context

2. Imperative

3. Knowledge needs

4. Implications for landscape science

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1. CONTEXT

• Climate

• Water

• Energy

• Soil & land

• Food

• Human health & animal welfare

• Natural Resource Management

Source: WBCSD & IUCN 2008; Harvard Medical School 2008

Population & carbon emissions

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Water

• Every calorie takes one litre of

water to produce, on average*

• Like the Murray Darling Basin,

all the world‘s major food

producing basins are

effectively ‗closed‘ or already

over-committed

* IWMI 2007

Energy & nutrients

• The era of abundant, cheap fossil fuels is over

• Rising energy costs = rising fertiliser costs

Remaining reserves (billions of barrels) of crude oil (EWG 2007)7

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Feeding the world

• The world needs to almost double food production by

2050, & improve distribution

• We have done this in the past, mainly through

clearing, cultivating and irrigating more land

– and to a lesser extent better varieties, more fertiliser etc

• Climate change is narrowing those options, with limits

to water, land, energy & nutrients

• Concern among rich consumers about modern

industrial food systems

– human health, animal welfare, environment

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But maybe we ain‘t seen nothin yet….

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Land & soil

• The FAO recently assessed trends in land condition (measured

by net primary productivity) from 1981-2004

• Land degradation is increasing in severity and extent:

– >20 percent of all cultivated areas

>30 percent of forests

>10 percent of grasslands

• 1.5 billion people depend directly on land that is being degraded

• Land degradation is cumulative. Limited overlap between 24% of

the land surface identified as degraded now and the 15% classified in

1991,

because NPP has flatlined near zero in flogged areas

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000874/index.html

2. THE IMPERATIVEPROFOUND TECHNICAL CHALLENGES:1. To decouple economic growth from carbon emissions

2. To increase water productivity

decoupling the every calorie = 1 litre relationship

3. To increase energy productivity– more food energy out per unit of energy in

– while shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy

4. To develop more sustainable food systems– while conserving biodiversity

– and improving landscape amenity

5. To achieve all of the above simultaneously

– If you are in the water business, you are in the energy business,

and if you are in the energy business, you will soon be in the carbon

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3 Pillars of Sustainability

KNOWLEDGE: Sustainable systems and practices must exist, and the know-how

for people to implement them

CAPACITY: People must have the wherewithal to be

able to implement more sustainable systems and

practices at sufficient scale

COMMITMENT: People must

want it

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3. KNOWLEDGE

From a public policy perspective, there are

three main reasons to invest in knowledge:

1.To help us make better decisions & policy

2.To underpin the innovation process

3.So that we can learn as we go along

— in the words of Peter Cullen:

“at least we should be making new mistakes”

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Knowledge 101

• Knowledge happens between the ears

• An individual cognitive process and highly contextual:

– “I only know what I know when I need to know it”

– knowledge is most useful when it is needed

• Revealed in artifacts (writing, art, formulae, products etc), skills,

experience, rules of thumb and natural talent (Dave Snowden)

• Across quite different domains:

– Including local, Indigenous, scientific, strategic (organisational)

• And different sectors:

– research, policy, management, planning, extension, education, monitoring

• People default to known, trusted, accessible sources

The Cynefin knowledge framework*

• Climate change spans all of these domains

• If temp increase > 2ºC, then disorder & chaos will reign

• The challenge is to handle the necessary range of simultaneous responses

– to work in all of these domains at once

– to develop a system-wide perspective

– & the knowledge systems and learning strategies to underpin

that perspective

* David Snowden & Mary Boone (2007)

“Leader's Framework for Decision Making” Harvard Business Review16

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Observations on the current situation

• Community concern exceeds political will

• Knowledge at all levels is patchy

– “De Nile ain’t just a river in Egypt…”

• The overall NRM/Ag knowledge system lacks cohesion

– Research investment is concentrated in a few big players

– Alternative technologies/approaches struggle for funds

– Cross-system learning is poor

– Especially across climate-carbon-water-energy-food system

boundaries

• Climate chaos/water/energy literacy is far too low

– in the wider community

– in the bureaucracy

– in corporate boardrooms & management

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Response

Options

We need to be

operating in each of

these quadrants

Develop research

partnerships +/or

link into existing

collaborations

Source: FFI CRC EverCrop

Lyndoch

Nurioopta

Eden Valley

N

Beware of

generalising

Source: Peter Hayman

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We need a third agricultural revolution— what might it look like?

• Closed loop farming systems (water, energy, nutrients, carbon)

• Farming systems producing renewable bioenergy

• Smart metering, sensing, telemetry, robotics, guidance

• Understanding & use of soil microbial activity (&GM)

• Urban food production (roofs etc), recycling waste streams & urban

water and nutrients

• Detailed product specification (e.g. Tesco)

• ‗Carbon plus‘ offsets and incentives

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A detour: woody biomass

energy• Learning from the Vikings:

– Finland: same area and population as Victoria, tougher

climate, shorter growing season, slower growth rates

– Private forestry thinnings etc produce 23% of Finland‘s

primary energy, over 75% of thermal energy needs, and

20% of Finland‘s electricity

– In Sweden it is 20% with a target of 40%

• Foran et al suggest woody biomass energy can fuel

Australia

• WA already has a pilot plant using mallees

– Verve Energy at Narrogin

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Transition to carbon-neutral,

energy-positive rural landscapes

• We should market ‗carbon plus‘ grass-fed, rain-fed, red

meat

– Which means significant offsets built-in to grazing systems

– Potential benefits for habitat, micro-climate, aesthetics, water

quality, shelter, bioenergy and carbon

• BUT: MIS schemes show that, without good planning &

controls, the market will default to large monoculture plantations

replacing agriculture, not integrated into farming (sub-prime

carbon!)

•

•

―Carbon plus‖ wool, beef and sheep meat

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Forestry integrated with farming

vs replacing farming

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Forestry integrated with farming

vs replacing farming

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The temporal dimension

E. Nitens harvested from riparian revegetation after 16 years

Rowan Reid, Bambra Agroforestry Farm

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The temporal dimension (2)

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John Marriott direct-seeding a shelterbelt

on the Potter Farmland Plan ―Helm

View‖ demonstration farm 1985

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The shelterbelt from previous slide in 2005 (20 years on)

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NRM: sequential vs parallel evolution

Three major developments in NRM over the last 20

years:

1. Community landcare

2. The regional model

3. Assets-based approach — evidence-based targeting

• There is a tendency to see these developments as

sequential: each supplanting the previous approach

• In fact they should be implemented in parallel

– They are complementary, mutually reinforcing

– Synergistic with good planning & delivery

The human dimension

• Managing whole landscapes

- landscapes: ―where nature meets culture‖ (Simon Schama)

- landscapes are socially constructed

- beyond ‗ecological apartheid‘

- sustainability means people management

- engage values, perceptions, aspirations, behaviour

- build knowledge grounded in a sense of place

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An engaged community base is crucial

• Rapid, often surprising, on-going environmental change will

challenge governments and industries, and stress communities.

• Many responses (proactive and reactive) will need to be worked out

at regional and local levels. Successful implementation of tough

decisions depends on community support.

• This requires environmentally literate and capable delivery

frameworks at regional scale, involving community leaders and

engaging grassroots volunteers.

• Convergence in climate, energy, water and food mandates an

integrated planning & delivery framework

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A Prime Ministerial Mandate

Kevin Rudd, Westminster Abbey, 31 March 2009:

suggesting that the free market needs a moral compass:

“To these values of security, liberty and prosperity

must also be grafted the values of

equity, of sustainability and community.”

• Equity, Sustainability, Community…

• Sounds like Landcare values to me

– Revisit community engagement & empowerment models

– Most adaptation knowledge will come from

the community, not from experts

– web 2.0 is ideally suited here - social tools critical

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4. IMPLICATIONS FOR LANDSCAPE SCIENCE

• Consideration of whole landscapes is more crucial than ever

• We need tools that can handle the convergence of carbon, water,

energy, food and health

– how these interactions play out in rural landscapes

– and regional economies

• Make sure the portfolio is well weighted

– From ‗modify‘ and ‗adapt‘ to ‗innovate‘ and ‗create‘

• Be pluralistic in disciplines and methodologies

• Pay attention to the whole knowledge system

– For decisions, for innovation, and for long term learning

• Seek to engage and work with community science

– Invest in understanding the knowledge need

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Policy - putting it all together

• ―Joined-up Government‖ has to be more than a slogan

• New alliances, platforms, networks are needed

• Climate chaos is both a row and a column

• Planning for carbon, energy, transport, water, waste, fires,

health, food and demographics needs integration

• This requires a solid and extensive evidence base in the ‗known‘,

‗knowable‘ and ‗complex‘ domains

• Chaotic domains demand good adaptive tools

– e.g. real-time monitoring, environmental literacy, scenarios

– resilience attributes (flexibility, redundancy, buffering etc)

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A 7 point plan for renovating agriculture

and natural resources

1. Rejuvenate Landcare and Re-engage the Community

2. Reinforce the Regional/Catchment Model

3. Rewire Environmental Information Systems

4. Revolutionise Agricultural Research, Extension and Education(rebrand agriculture around food, carbon, landscapes & energy)

5. Reform Drought Policy & Rural & Regional Services

6. Re-unite the Carbon, Water, Energy, Food & Farming agendas

7. Redesign the Institutional Architecture

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Underpinning principles

• Building Resilience

• Balancing centralism and subsidiarity

• Re-engaging stakeholders and devolving responsibility

• Taking the time necessary to sort through complex,

contested, connected issues

• Building, sustaining and using a comprehensive evidence

base

• Investing in skills, knowledge, innovation and leadership

• Budgeting for longer term stability

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Take home messages

• We are in a period of rapid environmental change

– Not all predictable, often bewildering

• This is not a blip. Normal service will not be resumed

• Business as usual is not a viable trajectory

– Not in business, not in policy and not in science

• These are exciting days for landscape science

• Food, carbon, water, energy, biodiversity & landscape

amenity

– A compelling big picture agenda needs fleshing out

GO FOR IT!

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For more info

www.triplehelix.com.au

The Environment Institute