sustainable use of biological diversity.pdf - India Environment Portal

Sustainable use of biological diversity in socio-ecological production landscapes
Nature-friendly agriculture in the state of Queensland, Australia
Masatoshi Sasaoka 1* and Ryutaro Ohtsuka 1
1
Japan Wildlife Research Center (JWRC)
*
Present position: Research Fellow, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute (FFPRI)
1. introduction
Australia has a highly advanced agricultural sector
and has largely depended economically on the export
of agricultural products, despite receiving small
amounts of rainfall over most of its territory. This
is mainly due to large-scale farm management and
mechanized farming practices. Since such agricultural
systems have gradually caused environmental
degradation through soil erosion, increases in salinity,
and water pollution from agricultural chemicals,
the central and state governments, non-governmental
organizations and farmers have begun cooperating
on the development of nature-friendly agricultural
systems.
Australia’s nature-friendly agriculture does not depend
largely on so-called traditional knowledge for
the management of land and wildlife but agrees with
the Satoyama Initiative (SI) with respect to the basic
idea of harmonization between development of human
activities, especially agriculture, and conservation
of biodiversity. It is of relevance to the SI that advanced
agricultural systems in developed countries,
including Australia, can be more nature-friendly,
decrease their environmental impact and conserve
biodiversity. Keeping these notions in mind, this
field survey aimed to investigate innovative farming
systems in the State of Queensland, where agriculture
has been a major industry and the natural environment
has been well conserved.
The State of Queensland, located in the northeastern
part of Australia, is one of most biologically
diverse regions of Australia and has a population
of approximately 4.4 million (Australian Bureau of
Statistics, 2009). In the Far North Queensland area,
approximately 900,000 hectares of the forest known
as the “world’s oldest rainforest in existence since the
age of the continent of Gondwanaland” was designated
a “Wet Tropics World Heritage Area” (WT-
WHA) in 1988.
However, the agriculture and forestry that began
there in the latter half of the nineteenth century have
fragmented the rainforest and hindered its biological
diversity. Moreover, chemical substances and soil
particles from agricultural run-off have caused (and
are causing) problems such as damage to the coral
reef in the coastal areas. In such an environment, the
Wet Tropics Management Authority (WTMA), Far
Source: 2010 Google - Map data. GBRMPA, MapData Sciences
Pty Ltd, PSMA
figure 1. Map of the Wet tropics World Heritage area
and the research sites. The upper and lower marker indicate,
respectively, the location of case study 1 and case study 2.
North Queensland Natural Resource Management
Limited (FNQ NRM Ltd) and Rainforest Cooperative
Research Center (Rainforest CRC) have taken
measures to coexist with the bountiful natural resources.
The main industries in Queensland are agriculture
(sugar cane, tropical fruits, and cotton), cattle
ranching, and tourism. This case study reviews how
agricultural measures adopted by the farmers in the
vicinity of the WTWHA are high in sustainability.
The study focused on the tropical fruit-producing
farmers of the Tully region and the sugar cane farmers
of the Ingham region and was conducted between
19 and 29 November 2009 by Ryutaro Ohtsuka
(Japan Wildlife Research Center) and Masatoshi
Sasaoka (Japan Wildlife Research Center), with the
assistance of Stefan Ottomanski (Nagao Natural Environment
Foundation).
2. case study 1: nature–friendly fruit farms
2.1 Overview of the fruit farm
This farm is located in a forest approximately 140
kilometres south of Cairns in the Mission Beach area
of the northern part of Queensland, an area where
the low lying tropical forest is still intact. The area
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