Tender for the Programme - South West Catchments Council

DRAFT
South West Regional NRM Strategy – Ancillary Document
The objectification of the natural world began during the Age of Enlightenment about 300 years ago.
People saw the world and their place in it in very different ways before that, said Robinson.
Today, he said, sustainability will not be achieved without "engaging people in numbers and at levels that
have never been done before".
New social media tools like Facebook may help with such a monumental task, as "people certainly don't
like to come to public meetings".
Current approaches to help the public understand the implications of climate change, such as graphs or
iconic pictures of polar bears, have limitations and are ineffective, said Mike Hulme, a climate scientist at
the University of East Anglia in the UK.
"We need to find new ways to think about the future under climate change," said Hulme.
Art could be one such approach, suggested Dietz. It would serve not as propaganda but as a creative way
to engage our imaginations. "Art can provoke thinking and actually change people's perceptions of the
complex issues associated with sustainability science," he argued.
"When we're considering questions about preserving biodiversity versus creating jobs, art can help us
examine our values and have a discussion that's broader than just scientific facts."
It is tempting to believe the arts can help by softening and 'pretty-fying' the message and bringing it to a
wider audience, said award-winning photographer Joe Zammit-Lucia.
"We need to go much further to provide a different worldview that can help us re-frame the issues," said
Zammit-Lucia.
Society's choices are driven by people's cultural perceptions of reality, which in turn are based on their
values and their cultural context, he said. While helpful, scientific knowledge and experts are also part of
the problem: by dominating the sustainability discourse, they narrow people's visions of what's possible.
"I also don't buy in the idea we need to make the right decisions. What we need is the right process, ways
in which the public can fully participate," he concluded.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.aspidnews=106808 21-2-2012
7.7 Land use change and development
The speed of land use change and development in the South West NRM region has accelerated over the
last decade or so, partly due to the ever-increasing numbers of mining employees on FIFO (fly in-fly out)
contracts that now call the south west “home”. This naturally puts the environment under increasing
pressure and demands ever more rapid responses from the NRM community, just to maintain the status
quo for our most valued NRM assets.
Of particular importance is the fact that many of the community engagement strategies employed in the
past may not be as effective as before, as FIFO employees don’t have the same “connection with the
land” as do people who have lived for generations in the same area, or at least have moved to an area
with the aim of staying there in the long term. SWCC and its partners will have to deal with this issue, as
will all other sectors (ranging from health to policing and social welfare).
7.8 Decreasing resilience in the community
Resilience is generally said to mean the time it takes for an individual, community or organization to
recover/rebound from a crisis or disturbance, such as a drought or freak storm, and not effectively resolve
it but also learn from it, be strengthened and emerge transformed by the experience. That said, it is a
more “diffuse” issue that is a little difficult to “pin down”, also being closely related to some of the other
issues, such as globalisation and FIFO contracts, as well as with consumerism and the general decrease
in personal responsibility and empathy across communities.
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