National Forum

The challenge we face in developing sustainable landscapes - how do we make production and biodiversity compatible?
Abstract for Jann Williams
Native Vegetation R&D Program, Land & Water Australia
Protecting the Bush
2:15-2:30pm, Wednesday, 21 March 2001

Native vegetation provides many benefits and services from both a production and conservation perspective - helping to maintain the health of land and water and providing a home for Australia's unique biodiversity. Recognising this, there is an increasing trend to try and incorporate the management of native vegetation and its associated biodiversity into agricultural production systems. This goal is reflected in policies and programs across a range of jurisdictions, but putting it into practice has many challenges. Of particular relevance is trying to manage the landscape in a way that ensures satisfactory performance for all management objectives, and still make a good living.

Research undertaken in Phase 1 of the Native Vegetation R&D Program identified a number of reasons why relatively few landholders had incorporated management of native vegetation, fauna and natural systems into their property plan, cropping or grazing strategies or management activities - particularly in an integrated manner. These include:

There is little obvious financial or other reward for doing so, nor are there significant disincentives for poor management of native vegetation.
Society's economic and financial systems primarily value physical outputs. Services such as clean air and water, control of groundwater, pleasing aesthetics or existence values are not quantified and incorporated in economic decision-making or national accounts.
Even where native vegetation can be shown to have a significant market value, this is often much lower than the value of adjacent or alternative land uses and/or is not recognised by landholders.
There is a large gap between the attitudes and understanding of many rural landholders and those of urban populations and scientists - most technical knowledge is not available in the form that landholders can use readily.
Even where technical knowledge is available, many landholders lack the confidence to apply it and are uncertain whether resources applied to managing native vegetation will result in any worthwhile outcome.
Appropriate group mechanisms to address scale issues are not well defined.
The scale may not be appropriate. For example, some actions are better done at a higher scale or will be potentially rendered useless by the action or lack of action of others.
Finally, even if there is a will and knowledge to act, many landholders do not have the resources required for effective management. These barriers to better management have been clear for some time, and in each jurisdiction there are policies and projects underway to trial and/or promote various approaches to overcoming them. These were mirrored by a number of innovative projects in Phase 1 of the Program, for example to extend the range of incentive structures available and to integrate ecological and economic aspects of native vegetation management into farm planning and operations.

The second phase of the Native Vegetation R&D Program is building on this work and is currently developing a research project on the integration of native vegetation management into agricultural production systems. While the project is in its early stages, it aims to further develop, test and promote options for the incorporation of vegetation, fauna and ecosystem management in farm, landscape and regional planning across Australia. Further information about this exciting new project and other relevant material will be provided at the Forum.