Land and Water Link

Issue No. 11, December 2001

Repairing Australia

Dr Graham Harris, Chairman, CSIRO Flagship Programs, spoke at the National Press Club on September 25 in Canberra on sustainability. An extract of his speech appears below.

Long-term sustainability for Australia is no longer just about conservation, or farming, or natural resource management - it is about the long-term competitive future of this nation. To remain competitive as a nation we need to improve Australia's economic performance and reduce our environmental impacts.

Business as usual is no longer an option. If we wish to fully address the sustainability of Australia we will need new science, new ways of operating, new incentive schemes and new economics. Above all we will need better integration of our effort.

Sustainability is about developing new tools to inform choices for landscape management, empowering communities to take decisions and then developing new competitive enterprises - environmental management is a global industry sector which is growing as fast as the Information Technology sector, and it is already much bigger.

This is an area where Australia is well placed. Our environmental science and ecology are world class. In a recent US analysis, CSIRO's work in environment and ecology was placed third and agricultural science fourth in the world in terms of scientific impact.

We are already far ahead of many countries in our ability to achieve positive outcomes. Thanks to progressive government policies and strong community involvement we are world leaders in our abilities to achieve sensible land and water management outcomes. Perfect we are not - we still have much to do - but because we are way out in front we face some new and unusual problems. Many have to do with our climate and unique animals and plants.

All the natural biodiversity of this planet is an important provider of many functions and services; like clean air and water, waste treatment, pollination, flood control and soil fertility. In many important and subtle ways biology rules the planet. Destruction of bio-

diversity and hence the destruction of global function is a major issue. Estimates of the value of what we call ecosystem services indicate that these services are worth far more than the global GDP.

In Australia alone, environmental problems caused by landscape destruction have been valued at about $65 billion by one recent study - and about $3 billion per annum by another. The world is run by natural laws - ignore those laws and we get problems. Just look at the landscape. We must develop a deeper understanding of the complexity and value of the natural world and we must continue to strive for better management outcomes.

Systems thinking

We now know that we require systems solutions to landscape problems at regional and catchment scales. We have to consider and balance many factors - land use, water quality and quantity, ecology and bio-diversity, human communities, economics at regional scales - if we are to build sustainable regional landscapes and communities. A single factor focus hasn't worked in the past - the evidence is written in the landscape.

The challenge to science is to integrate much of what we already know as well as do science at unprecedented scales. We need to understand how landscapes function and processes interact - and link catchments to waterways and to estuaries so that when we alter land use we can predict what will happen all the way downstream to the coast.

The really complex problems lie at regional scales, in that ghastly zone between global scales and paddocks - right where we need answers, but at inconveniently large scales for normal science. If we can get this right we can generate opportunities, jobs and wealth in rural Australia.

When we work at these scales we need to include the complexities of regional economics and the needs of the community as well as the ecology. Catchments have a nasty habit of not observing legal, institutional and governmental boundaries - thus institutional and governmental failures are a common cause of lack of progress.

The National Land and Water Resources Audit has given us numerous insights, including that much of our broad acre agriculture is only marginally profitable - the vast majority of the profit comes from only a small fraction of the land area, and most of this is irrigated land.

This intensification of agriculture is a rapidly developing international trend. There are enormous opportunities in this to design new kinds of profitable and sustainable landscapes, and new industries based around sustainability.

All of this isn't rocket science - it is much harder. If restoring the landscape were easy we would have done it already. This is a challenge more difficult than putting a man on the moon in a decade. This is ecosystem engineering - restoring centuries of damage in a few short decades.

We now realise that the solutions we seek actually lie between the present disciplines and institutional structures, for example to restore our rivers we need aquatic ecologists and hydrologists to work with economists and social scientists. We need a new science of integration and synthesis, new policy and new institutions. This is what is now termed 'Sustainability Science'.

New challenges

So what are some of the major challenges to repair the country?

We need rural and urban systems that deliver quality as well as quantity. We need landscape and land use patterns that sustain. We need integrated solutions that are practical and profitable. We need to leverage new forms of incentives. This means new land uses and industries that are profitable and which do not harm the environment. We should be 'farming without harming' and 'managing without damaging'.

Above all we need to fully empower regional communities to be able to deliver regionally sustainable solutions. With a judicious mix of social concern and financial incentives we can repair the damage and rebuild rural communities. There is a global niche in goods and services ready and waiting for a country able to deliver on this agenda.

We must educate and empower regional communities to use the knowledge at hand in creative ways. We must provide the resources and the financial incentives for those communities to take control of their futures and to lead us forward.

This approach will require innovation and learning in government/science and university institutions and societies. It will require the fusion of many different forms of knowledge coupled with tolerance and a willingness to listen. We need to invent new mechanisms to rapidly transfer knowledge and information needs across the science/policy/ community spectrum. We need much better integration.

There is an urgent need for leadership, for new partnerships and new alliances; and this will involve all jurisdictions - the entire community. We need to focus on the solutions to problems and the need for systems for integration and rapid learning. What we all need is a willingness to become more open, to become learning societies and individuals.

Repairing Australia will indeed require new science, new sociology and new economics - but perhaps more than anything else the biggest and most important challenge is to address the urgency of the problems Australia faces and to integrate science, society and the economy. With the necessary will, we can make Australia the envy of the world.

For copies of the full speech and further information:

Dr Graham Harris
Chairman, CSIRO Flagship Programs
Ph: (02) 6246 5621
graham.harris@csiro.au