Queensland Water and Land Carers are supporting the National Landcare Network (NLN) and Landcare Australia’s policy statement, Landcare Communities – Australia’s Future.
The policy statement seeks an ongoing commitment to our community Landcare movement. This commitement is about providing ongoing funding that supports a foundation of local action undertaken with regional, state and national support.
Extract from The Landcare Organisations, Policy Statement 2019 Executive Summary:
Collectively, the Landcare Organisations together represent community Landcare nationally. Community Landcare is a foundation of strong communities, with tens of thousands of Landcarers acting together to restore land, water and coastal landscapes across all boundaries. This approach builds resilience in communities, towns, on farms and in the outback, improving human and environmental health and wellbeing. Investment will empower the movement.
Landcare Communities – Australia’s Future is a statement from Landcarers from across the country. The document’s focus is on giving the community the capacity to ensure a stable Landcare system in the long term.
The key principles to underpin a renewed strategic investment in community Landcare in Australia are:
- A clear philosophical approach to support a grass-roots movement and volunteerism
- Funding delivered at the most local level possible – to support action on ground with paid local coordinators/facilitators
- Landcare Network Hubs leverage state and territory funding, staffed by federally funded but locally directed community Landcare networkers
- Modest core funding to support Landcare Organisations provide impact at scale, government relations, a unified voice and wider connections
- Measure and amplify local successes at regional, state and national scales.
These identified outcomes will meet local, regional and national commitments with a more than six-fold return on investment to:
- Empower local communities to act
- Address downward trends in land, water and coastal degradation, species loss and climate change
- Build overall resilience in communities and nature
- Increase carbon capture in soil and vegetation
- Deliver on local, regional, national and international commitments efficiently and effectively, maximizing co-benefits
- Empower Traditional Owners land management and decision making, recognising them as leaders in Landcare
- Provide children and youth a lifelong connection to place, community and food systems, bridge the city-country divide, and nurture a new generation of Landcarers
- Increase our knowledge base and capacity to learn, linking local knowledge and observations to national research, monitoring and evaluation systems.
To support Landcare you can:
Find out who is standing in your electorate: Find Your Candidate;
Write, email or phone candidates in your local electorate to ask for their support for Landcare policies before they go to the polls on 18 May;
Follow QWaLC on Facebook and Twitter and share key messages with your networks;
Talk to people in your community about how candidates in the Federal election can support Landcare.
Supporting Documents:
NLN and Landcare Australia Landcare Policy Statement 2019Policy
