Improving Sustainability in the Arid Rangelands of Australia

A ground-breaking initiativefor planning and action across borders of provincial legislature is operating in the arid Lake Eyre Basin of central Australia. The basin, which covers 16% of Australia’s land area, was considered for World Heritage listing by the A ustralian government in the early nineties because of its unique inland river systems and wetlands. Strong opposition to World Heritage listing from pastoralists and other stakeholders catalysed an alternate voluntary and community based initiative aimed at changing to more sustainable use of natural resources, a catchment management framework. Natural resource management and planning based on river catchments takes into consideration all environmental and production values. Activities of the groupfeature training of group members, initiation of on-ground projects through partnerships, coordination of research and the preparation of common maps and data sets. Sustainability will be achieved by building knowledge, better decision-making, changed management practices and building a sense of community across borders. Key success characteristics include the involvement of all interest groups (stakeholders) from the beginning of the process and initiation of the process by the community as opposed to the government. Other factors were the employment of an effective coordinator, a skills-based coordinating group drawn from all stakeholders, delegation offunding and power to catchment committees, strong support from the private sector, and significant funding from the Australian government.