soil-conservation-people-religion-and-land.pdf - South West NRM

use advisors in agriculture, pastoralism, forestry, wildlife
management and mine site rehabilitation.
The recent developments, singly and in combination,
create a new and different frame of reference for both rural
leaders and advisory personnel. The thrust has been for
landholders to be more pro-active, more innovative and more
responsible for giving direction in land management. This
reflects a major change in the attitudes and actions in the
rural areas of all states, and constitutes a "new deal1@ in
environmental awareness in ~ustralia. ~dvisors, researchers
and administrators now find themselves responding to calls for
support from a burgeoning corps of allies on the land, in
their attempt to improve land management, productivity and
stability of the ecosystems on which the community depends.
Rather than acting as the expert, giving advice on a oneto-one
basis, the specialists are now invited to offer
resources and support to groups acting in concert. Under the
emerging circumstances, an understanding of effective group
extension methods, which have been neglected since their
development by the Americans and the Dutch in the 1950s, needs
special attention at an early date. Advisors will have their
greatest effect on land management if they encourage the selfhelp
groups to identify their own problems and to "own the
solution^^^. This can be best achieved by evaluating causes
and alternative solutions through vigorous and open group
dynamics in which a majority of landholders are involved. In
this way, land care, soil erosion and loss of fauna and flora
will hopefully no longer be regarded as the government's
problems waiting for the government's action.
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE?
Predictably the rapidly emerging new approaches have led
to uncertainty and insecurity on the part of those in
leadership roles in producer groups, extension services,
research organizations and educational institutions. The way
to overcome the present tentative stance is to begin by
discussing goals and objectives, in an effort to reach
agreement on the targets of land care as a. nation-wide
rn~vemehk~ of potentially immense significance. What are we
trying--- do? Who are the players? What are their roles?
These- are the questions that need to be seriously addressed
within the concept of lgsustainabilitytl as the guiding
principle.
Many researchers and advisors have tried to simplify the
bewildering complexities of the large number of inter-related
factors which contribute to sustainable rural production and
l@ecological healthM of Australia's country districts. The
result of what Odum has termed "the struggle for perspective1',
can be stated in simple tabular form as shown in Table 1, The
Elements of Sustainable Agriculture (Roberts 1989). In
essence the four factors in the right hand column are the
targets which managers should aim at, whatever their
production system. These can be achieved by a variety of
practical methods on the property. It is suggested that if