Neil Morris, a Yorta Yorta man, gives a welcome to country and expresses support for a plan which continues the respect for land and water established by First Nations people.
A new land and water plan for the Shepparton Irrigation Region has been built on a decades-long history of strategic resourced management.
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The Land and Water Management plan is Australia’s longest running resource management plan, the launch was told on Thursday, August 29.
The launch was held at the Gargarro Gardens, Girgarre, a botanic garden featuring native species on a former farm paddock.
The first land and water plan emerged when the region suspected it was facing a crisis, with climbing water and soil salinity in the 1980s
Implementation Committee chair Kelvin Bruce told the gathering of farmers, natural resource managers and community leaders, like a business, or any worthwhile enterprise desiring to attract investment, a plan was needed.
“I see this as a vehicle to influence change,” Mr Bruce said.
Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority board member Adrian Weston said community involvement was essential to the development of the plan and to “keep it real”.
Guest speaker, former G-MW chief executive officer Denis Flett, said one reason for a plan was, “so that things are not all mucked up when you get to the destination”.
“Even if things are mucked up a bit at the destination, it is in my experience that the degree of muck-up is less so with a plan than without one. So planning is important,” he said.
Mr Flett said the CMA deserved plaudits for shifting the planning focus from salinity control, to integrated catchment management and to adopting a resilience approach.
“The resilience approach gives the region the best chance of being prepared for the threats, shocks, opportunities and strife which loom ahead,” he said.
“The holy grail is to build regional capacity so the region can respond to change with either persistence, adaptation, while preparing for transformation, or with transformation, to suit the circumstances which emerge.”
Mr Flett said each stakeholder related to the Shepparton Irrigation Region in their own unique way.
“The plan is a great connector and coordinator of people from a diverse range of different enterprise and interest,” he said.
“It enables alignment between diverse action at the individual level and shared aspiration at the regional and global levels.”
Goulburn Broken CMA chair Sarah Parker
Implementation Committee chair Kelvin Bruce with deputy chair Heather Du Vallon cutting the celebratory cake at the launch.
The birthday cake helped mark 30 years of land and water management in the Shepparton Irrigation Region.
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