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Forum identifies regional resource planning priorities

December 09, 2004

Prior.Norma[1].JPGA forum at the University of New England has identified the engagement of Aboriginal communities as one of the priorities for regional resource planning in NSW.

Representatives of Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) in northern NSW, and of equivalent authorities in Queensland and Victoria, attended the two-day forum. The forum also identified consensus-building within rural communities as a whole, and defining relationships with existing Landcare structures, as priority issues for regional resource planning.

The Regional Resource Planning Forum, titled “Lessons Learnt, Future Challenges, and the Way Forward” and held at the end of November, was the first meeting of its kind. It enabled the representatives of CMAs in northern NSW, established within the past year as part of a State-wide initiative, to learn from the experiences of their longer-established counterparts in Queensland and Victoria. “The inter-State perspective was particularly helpful,” said UNE’s Julian Prior, one of the organisers. “There are important lessons that one State can learn from another.”

Mr Prior, the Director of UNE’s Centre for Environmental Dispute Resolution, said the forum’s recommendations to the CMAs on Aboriginal engagement would recognise the need to protect Aboriginal intellectual property rights, to promote Aboriginal commercial development opportunities, and to support employment and training opportunities in natural resource management for Aboriginal people.

The four northern NSW CMAs represented at the forum were Northern Rivers, Gwydir Border Rivers, Namoi, and Central Western. Delegates to the forum also included managers and representatives of Federal and State Departments involved in supporting regional bodies. “This provided a unique opportunity for Federal managers to talk to the grass-roots people,” Mr Prior said. One of the presenters was Mr Les Russell, Acting Manager of the Natural Resource Management Team for NSW within the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forests. Others included Dr Paul Lawrence and Dr Michelle Walker from the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines. Altogether, about 40 people attended the forum.

Mr Prior said the policy recommendations that emerged from the forum at UNE would go to the next meeting of the Chairs of the 13 CMAs in NSW. These recommendations also included processes for the monitoring and evaluation of plans and projects, he said.

The co-organisers of the forum with Mr Prior (at left in the photograph presented here) were Mr Phillip Norman (at right in the photograph) from the NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources (who is based at UNE as the Department’s Manager of Ecosystem Process and Biodiversity), and Dr Paul Lawrence (Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines). Funding for the event was provided by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research and UNE. The forum “highlighted the increasingly important role of regional universities as independent providers of scientific expertise for CMAs and other regional bodies”, Mr Prior said.

Media contact: Julian Prior, School of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resources Management, UNE (02) 6773 3610 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.
For a photograph, please contact Jim Scanlan on (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at December 9, 2004 05:14 PM