It’s a clear indication of the importance of climate change to the community that international and local conversations are going on at the same time.
In the last blog I referred to the CSIRO and BOM State of the Climate Report 2012 and also noted the visit of Professor Ottmar Edenhofer (Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the IPCC Working Group 3) but even more commentary has since been published.
The Climate Commission published its report The science behind south east Australia’s wet, cool summer - http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Climate-Commission-rainfall-final.pdf. This report is an easy read and an accessible discussion of the connection between climate change and recent flooding events. The La Nina weather pattern is explained in a clear and compelling graphic representation.
The IPCC report Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation was released on 28 March and can be found at http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/. This report is more complex but persistence will pay off.
The Planet under Pressure Conference, just concluded, convened to feed the expertise of the scientific community into Rio+20, brought together 3000 scientists and was addressed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. The conference was co-chaired by Dr Lidia Brito the Director of Science Policy and Natural Sciences, UNESCO, and Dr Mark Stafford-Smith, Science Director, Climate Adaptation Flagship, CSIRO.
The Conference Declaration states in part –
‘Research now demonstrates that the continued functioning of the earth system as it has supported the well-being of human civilisation in recent centuries is at risk.’
This conference of scientists concluded that we are now positioned in the anthropocene – where humans drive planetary change – and we must not delay in taking large-scale action.
A number of recommendations were made. These include - more open access to scientific knowledge is necessary; the value of the environment beyond GDP needs to be better understood; and, new ideas and practical solutions should be actively sought.
One of the pivotal conclusions of the conference was that better communication, actively associated with public participatory processes will promote more rapid inventive solutions to the problems we have now cast for ourselves.
It has long been the view of community development and other thinkers and practitioners that public participation drives better local understandings and promotes the sharing of insights and inventive possibilities while actively building resourcefulness. For this reason and over many years the international community has been concerned to encourage participatory processes in disaster management and planning.
Recognising the importance of public participation, a lot of the work of this Office is based on listening to people in the community about their environmental interests and action. The blog often reflects this. My report on public participation, which is now available on the website, called, Many Publics. Participation, Inventiveness and Change, also provides a very clear illustration of the importance of people’s involvement in environmental efforts.
If I just concentrate on one day in the life of the Shire of Strathbogie - Celebrating our environment - the expansiveness of community action and interest in the environment, across generations and sectors becomes really clear.
On Friday, the last day of March I planted myself in Ecocentre in Violet Town to MC the celebration.
Violet Town is a small township which has punched above its weight in sustainability issues for a number of years.
The Shire of Strathbogie auspiced the day but community members organised it and filled it with conversation, collaborations and good will, wanting to celebrate environmental successes and explore challenges.
Success stories crossed generations and sectors, drew upon the intellectual and practical resources of the community, and pivoted on locally based work.
The ‘audience’ comprised practitioners and other interested parties; a bunch of primary school students, all seated cross legged on the floor in front of the stage; locals from all over the district; some government staffers and a few academics. (I have not used the photos of the school students here as parental permission takes time to obtain.)
The deputy mayor, Neil Murray, started the day with some brief comments. The community commentary out of the day would feed back into the work of the Shire of Strathbogie Environmental Advisory Committee and the work being done on the Roadside Management Plan, Strengthening Strathbogie in a Changing Climate and the Shire Environmental Strategy and sustainable water use.
Uncle Larry Walsh, Taungurong elder welcomed us to country. He talked about the need to take care of our waterways and about sharing that responsibility. Students were riveted. He spoke directly to them, gently and encouragingly. He drew them into an understanding of the things which were important to him. He told them that his own children had gone to the Violet Town school.
Standing next to him throughout was Neville Atkinson, Yorta Yorta senior man and contributor to the work of the Goulburn Broken Catchment Authority.
Neville started his comments with a respectful reference to Uncle Larry’s opening words. He also talked about collaborations and caring for the environment. As they both stood there talking about places of importance to Aboriginal people it was clear that the message was not lost on those assembled.
We moved from these wise words about environmental, cultural and social interconnections from these Aboriginal senior men to the work of the young students of the Violet Town school through the Violet Town Community Puppeteers. They presented “A child’s eye view of sustainability issues’ - two puppet shows of complexity and humour, beautifully staged and costumed. Firstly we were drawn light-heartedly into a short comedy sketch about the lives and adventures of frogs.
Then the main puppet story unfolded - the story of Indigenous prior occupation, biodiversity, connectivity and of rupture as non-Indigenous people arrived with the ‘wheel of progress’.
Ultimately we were presented with the possibility of reconciliation. It was clear that a great deal of thought, preparation and prop and costume work had gone into this show. A special thanks was extended to Helen Keighery who organised the work, but the costumier was also present.
We moved from this presentation into the rest of the day’s work - a very ambitious program which ranged firstly across the successes in the region and which then sought to explore the challenges from water sustainability to climate change. A public question and answer forum followed and, like everything on the day, ran over time, as things do when there is a lot to be said and a little time in which to say it. The program was set to run from 930 am to 1 pm and with only one short break we didn’t stop until about 145pm and could have gone on for much longer.
Stories about environmental successes began with the young people of the region - the Peranbin College Strathbogie Campus primary school students. Confident presentations unfolded about the school’s sustainability efforts, from waste and gardening, to ‘water beastie’ work. I recalled that I had seen where the students have planted trees along the creek verge up on the plateau. A table display with exhibits, models and commentary was set up in the foyer of the ecocentre.
Chateau Tahbilk presented on the business case for a carbon neutral winery. The business is now in the hands of the 5th generation of the Purbrick family and Hayley Purbrick talked with pride and enthusiasm about all the efforts they made to reduce their carbon footprint. Hayley spoke about best practice work in soil structure, water use, pest management, air quality, noise levels and energy use. She is a deeply committed advocate for others taking up the challenge on these matters.
David Arnold, a master tree cultivator and sustainability practitioner of long standing in the region took us through the environmental credentials of the Ecocentre, the place where we were meeting. We heard about the modifications which will produce the co-benefits of making a building work better, save money and reduce carbon emissions. The benefits of the big fan were extolled, as was the window shading. All of this work on the building had resulted in the community having a valuable community hub – previously absent. Environmental work also promoted community cohesion and development.
The Euroa Arboretum presentation started with the roots of the project – a highway wayside reserve which was effectively a waste land. As is always the case it helps to have the pictorial evidence and the photo library illustrated just how desolate the place had been and showed the chain of pools and plantings which were transformative. The achievements of the Arboretum are considerable. Very recently the efforts of the team there brought the endangered timbertop wattle back from the edge. As always the team and the commitment of others was celebrated by the presenter Cath Olive.
A report about the efforts over 20 years of the local community to rehabilitate the Grey Crowned Babbler followed, illustrated by some fantastic photographs of this bright bird.
The Babbler project is a partnership – as are so many good efforts – between Birds Australia and the Longwood Plains Biodiversity Project. Again, Dr Doug Robinson took us through the project and explained the power of community participation. This private public partnership, covering 1000 acres, is an example of the sort of environmental efforts which can be seen all over the state.
A presentation was made about the weed eradication project (WONS CFOC) operating in the Shire.
This project involves local Taungurung people, technical officers and private landowners. It is remarkable for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as intended, it impacts introduced weeds, including blackberry. Secondly, it has its own cultural and reconciliation attributes, creating relationships between private landholders and the Taungurung. The unintended, positive, consequence of this is that people have been gifting back their collections of Indigenous stone tools, often acquired over generations of farming. Additionally, numerous ‘new’ Aboriginal sites have been found all along the creeks and across previously weed infested terrain. So, a weed-busting project is enhancing our cultural understanding and building on our cultural fabric in ways which were not envisaged.
Once we had finished hearing about these intensely local successes we heard from Dr Greg Moore, formerly the head of the Burnley Horticultural College in Melbourne (attached to the University of Melbourne) about the importance of trees and tree cover and of the significance of roadside vegetation (see VEAC’s report Remnant Native Vegetation Final report www.veac.vic.gov.au for a discussion of the interconnection of public and private lands and also the value of road and rail reserves). Greg talked about the economics of having tree cover as well as the environmental importance of maintaining trees for their aesthetic, for biodiversity, for better stream flow, rubbish entrapment and other things.
He was followed by Professor Snow Barlow, also from the University of Melbourne. Snow, with his history of coming from the land, took us through the climate change issues and spoke with authority of the problems we would be confronting in the next generations. His presentation was clear and compelling.
Academics of great authority such as Snow and Greg (and also Doug and the others who joined in the day’s work) are making themselves available to talk to the public about climate change and biodiversity because of their commitment to the environment, enthusiasm for their disciplines and effective science communication and, more broadly, because they know the value of public participation to the environment.
Not yet finished, we then heard from a number of people about sustainable water use – Geoff Earl from the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority, John Dainton the former chair of Goulburn Murray Water and Matt Hudson from Goulburn Murray Water.
Once they presented this group was joined by Snow and Greg and also by John Pettigrew, Climate Ambassador and member of the Goulburn Valley Environment Group for a public question and answer forum which could have gone all day.
At the end of the public forum, which covered issues from biodiversity to skills training, people from the floor of the meeting threw up a number of ideas for consideration by the Shire’s Environmental Committee. These ideas covered roadside vegetation, climate change and water sustainability. Interestingly, very many of the ideas proffered focused on climate change.
The day finished at the oval at the Honeysuckle Creek where the Violet Town Market has been held for more than 30 years. Pizzas cooked in the community pizza oven were churned out for the dozens of people who still sat and talked exploring ideas and the potential for inventiveness and change around climate change and sustainability.
So, in the space of a week the great and the good came together internationally and locally to talk about the same issues, to seek better communication and encourage public participation, and in the quest for leadership on the issues which confront us about the sort of world are we making.
