Around 70 Traditional Owners, cattle producers, and other supporters gathered in Chillagoe recently for the launch of Living Landscapes – Local Livelihoods, a blueprint for Queensland’s future agricultural productivity and environmental health.

Achieving better natural resource management outcomes.

Living Landscapes - Local Livelihoods

According to NRM Regions Queensland Chair, Stephen Robertson, Living Landscapes – Local Livelihoods is our road map to a future where healthy ecosystems and water resources are harnessed by engaged communities for sustainable production.

“We have this vision of a Queensland where the priorities of people, planet, and profit are balanced to protect our living landscapes and local livelihoods for the benefit of all,” he said.

“And not only do we want these often competing priorities balanced, we believe that unless we get the management of our planet’s natural resources on a truly sustainable footing, people and profit will suffer.”

Experience across Australia over more than three decades shows that established, community-based regional arrangements achieve better natural resource management outcomes than fragmented and short-lived alternative service delivery approaches.

Mr Robertson said that Living Landscapes – Local Livelihoods doesn’t advocate replacing any existing NRM delivery systems; instead, it urges greater integration, streamlining, and collaboration between all levels of government and delivery vehicles.

“Currently we have an approach where everyone is doing their own thing… sometimes there is alignment and collaboration, sometimes cross-over, sometimes duplication,” he said.

“What we’re proposing is that National and State priorities across governments and departments mesh with delivery arrangements at the regional, local government, and local community scale.

“We see a seamless integration of national, state, and local strategic directions with community-based knowledge and capability forming a safety net for Queensland’s natural resources.

“Our model recognises that the individual contributions of all partners are multiplied and strengthened when deliberately woven together in a collaborative way.”

Living Landscapes – Local Livelihoods is the culmination of several years of work by Queensland Water and Land Carers, and NRM Regions Queensland, formerly the Regional Groups Collective; it builds on the 2011 Queensland Regional Natural Resource Management Framework.