Table of Contents
From the Board…
I think it is safe to say that Global Landcare is poised to move strongly forward in line with our strategy and has successfully raised our profile over the past few months.
In partnership with Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) the publication of the book Building Global Sustainability Through Local Self-Reliance: Lessons From Landcare has provided the perfect platform to increase our profile.
It is so significant we launched it twice! On Monday August 22, 2022 we held our first face to face Global Landcare event and then on Tuesday 23 we were part of the Welcome event to the Australian National Landcare Conference in Sydney. I can happily report that the concept of ‘subsidiarity’ that Prof Michael Siegel was so passionate about has been introduced into the story of the Landcare approach.
We were also invited to take part in the Global Landcare Panel at the conference where we spoke of the significance and potential for Global Landcare and then heard of the successful LIFE project in the Philippines and the research project in Fiji in which we are partners.
Again, with thanks to funding from ACIAR, we were able to bring 3 delegates to Sydney: Leo Soares from Timor Leste, Solo Nagaunavou and Aloesi Dakuidrekekti-Hickes from Fiji.
I’d like also to thank our generous donors to the Global Landcare Program raising over $26,000 in the past year – in particular a private donation of $10,000 and a donation from the MCU Charitable Trust of $15,000. With these and other contributions we are now in a great position to plan new projects to support Landcare action across the globe.
Thank you to the Board for all your hard work over the past 2 months to support all our recent successes.
I hope you enjoy the stories below of our progress.
Andrea Mason, Chair
Building Global Sustainability Through Local Self-Reliance: Lessons From Landcare
The new Monograph showcases practical capacity building in action globally – building livelihoods, restoring landscapes, taking practical action on climate change. It contains the papers from the 2017 Nagoya Landcare Conference at Nanzan University in partnership with Australian Landcare International and potently demonstrates community partnership in action. An important element is the tribute to Professor Michael Seigel originally from regional Victoria (a great friend of Global Landcare and instigator of the Nagoya Conference) who believed passionately in subsidiarity and the power of partnerships to build momentum for and achieve change.
You can get a copy of the book from https://www.aciar.gov.au/publication/MN219-lessons-landcare
Pictured Left: Andrew Campbell CEO ACIAR, Andrea Mason Chair Global Landcare and Prof Allan Dale, JCU
You can watch all the launch speeches on our Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/_SxL2xZlbv0
International Delegates to Sydney
We were very excited to have been able to facilitate 3 international delegates to the National Landcare Conference in Sydney next week, thanks to the generosity of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
Global Landcare Board member SOLOMONI Q. NAGAUNAVOU joined us for our first face to face event since forming (and COVID!). A Senior Technical Assistant at Ministry of Agriculture, Fiji. He is the National Reporting Officer for United Nations Convention to Combat Dessertification since 2012 and part of the intergovernmental Working Group – Future Strategic framewok of UNCCD. He has worked on many important Ministry of Agriculture initiatives for climate change adaptation and mitigation and better utilization of land. Solo is a member of Fiji’s National Landcare Steering Committee.
Fellow Fijian, ALOESI DAKUIDREKEKTI-HICKES is the Landcare Project Manager at the College of Agriculture Fisheries & Forestry, Fiji National University. Aloesi Dakuidreketi
Global Landcare will play a role in training in Fiji as part of an ACIAR and RMIT research project Landcare – an agricultural extension and community development model at district and national scale in Fiji. GL Board member Clinton Muller is a leader in this project.
Lastly LEO SOARES is from Ermera in Timor-Leste. He is the Agroforestry Technical Adviser & Project Designer for the Institutu Matadalan Integradu-IMI. Leo has been working with IMI for 12 years teaching at some schools and doing research on social and environmental issues. Institutu Matadalan Integradu (IMI)
Global Landcare has supported IMI through its Global Landcare Small Grants Program for projects addressing agroforestry, food security and chickens, and soil conservation.
GL Board members Dr Nick Edgar from New Zealand NZ Landcare Trust and Dr Kazuki Kagohashi from Nanzan University Japan also attended the conference.
It was unfortunate that GL Board members Awadh and Mabarek were unable to get their visas through in time.
Pictured L to R: Darryl Ebenezer GL, Leo Soares Timor-Leste, Solo Nagaunavou GL, Lucy ACIAR, Andrea Mason GL, Aloesi Dakuidreketi-Hickes Fiji, Cherie Clare ACIAR and Anne Shangrila Y. Fuentes Philippines
Global Landcare Board members enjoy meeting for the first time at the book launch: Darryl Ebenezer, Rob Youl, Clinton Muller, Nick Edgar, Pamela Greet, Andrea Mason, Solo Nagaunavou and Kazuki Kagohashi.
Thank you to our launch sponsors:
National Landcare Conference Sydney
The National Landcare Conference took place from Tuesday 23 to Thursday 25 August, at the International Convention Centre, Darling Harbour, Sydney. Learn more here: https://nationallandcareconference.org.au/
Presentations can be seen on Landcarer.com in the library section
In particular contributors from across the globe included a cameo appearance of Dr Kazuki Kagohashi in the Landcare Back to the Future Panel plus:
Landcare Impact Stream:
Global Landcare Panel
Prof. Andrew Campbell, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) was joined by Dr Mary Johnson, RMIT University; Anne “Shang” Fuentes, University of the Philippines Mindanao; Clinton Muller, RMIT University; Andrea Mason, Global Landcare; and Rob Youl, Global Landcare.
Based on this publication on Wednesday August 24 the GLOBAL LANDCARE PANEL: Building Global Sustainability Through Local Self-Reliance – Lessons From Landcare
Landcare Impact Stream:
Landscape, biodiversity, community resilience, mental and physical health of individuals, economy
Global Landcare Board member Dr Pamela Greet
Big Bang, Small Bucks – Tackling Climate Change Globally On a Tiny Budget
In Australia we have become accustomed to thinking that tackling climate change is an enormously costly exercise, with ever more alarming headlines featuring lots of zeros about what net zero will cost. Through the Australian Landcare International Fund, Global Landcare with its annual program of micro grants up to $A 500, has been able to deliver big dividends with small monetary investment. The leverage is the connection, the collaboration and the community. 
This presentation reviews the genesis of this initiative. We’ll look at some of the practical lessons learned along the way about responding to community driven solutions. We will provide examples to showcase the variety of different solutions that local communities in settings as diverse as the suburban slums of Nairobi, to water conservation in Timor Leste have devised for our support.
Our objective is to show how small amounts of seed funding can germinate and plant ideas allowing little seeds of community action to grow into concrete contributions that are part of a global solution to tackle the challenge of climate change.
Francis Steyn, Global Landcare member from Western Cape South Africa
LandCare Changing the Future of Farming in the Western Cape, South Africa
LandCare is both community based and community led, which is the real secret behind the massive success of this methodology, which has been implemented in the Western Cape over the past 20 years.
Considering climate change and cycles of drought and more intense rainfall, never before has it been more important to prepare better and protect the country’s natural capital.
This presentation will explore the Western Cape’s many success stories, including examples of farmers protecting their water, their soil and their biodiversity while becoming more productive – the cornerstone of LandCare.
It will outline how farming challenges can be transformed into solutions and opportunities and will highlight how, by working together and with partners in government, farmers can find and take the lead in implementing innovative approaches to addressing questions around natural resource and farm management.
We encourage you to access the recorded live streams and speaker presentations that will be published on the Landcarer website here: landcarer.com
RMIT ACIAR Project in Fiji
RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, has a new project: “Landcare –an agricultural extension and community development model at district and national scale in Fiji”. It is funded by Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). This project will …the landscape degradation in Fiji and prepare for future challenges such as rising sea levels. To ensure sustainability involves many factors inclusing the evolution of new farming practices but also consideration of such as gender norms that might suggest men should be doing the farming work. In the future, all hands will be needed and those who help will need due compensation for the part they play.
“Previous research in Mindanao, Philippines highlighted how certain types of community-based extension principles can rapidly enhance agricultural livelihoods by improving both farmer-based learning networks and community social capital. From this research an extension model known as Livelihood Improvement through Facilitator Extension (LIFE) was specifically developed. With its genesis in Philippines Landcare, LIFE has been evaluated by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD)and is providing evidence of extension scalability at local, regional and national level within the Philippines”.
In collaboration with the RMIT project team, Project Leader Mary Johnson, RMIT and Researcher/adviser Clinton Muller, RMCG consultant and Global Landcare (GL) will co-design and deliver Landcare training and mentoring in Fiji, network with Fiji Landcare stakeholders, link Fiji with the Global Landcare network, attend and present at Fiji regional and national forums and promote the project and project learning through various forms such as working papers and conference presentations.
Now, the research question is whether a Landcare approach, using the LIFE model, can work equally well in other countries. This project is trialling a new partnership that will “strengthen cooperation (including across the Pacific region) and contribute to the international discourse on research for development and extension”. see more at https://www.aciar.gov.au/project/sss-2019-140
Global Landcare Program
In our last call out for donations we received over AUD $26,000 – a tremendous response and we thank all our donors. We will now work through our priorities to see where best to use these funds – stay tuned!
All donations to the Global Landcare Program are tax deductible and all the fund Board members are volunteers, 100% of your donations goes to fund projects and to support training. – and we know where our funds are going.
Global Landcare only gives funds to groups visited by its volunteer members and assessed personally, so you can be sure your donation will be spent where it is needed.
You can read about some of the projects funded at https://globallandcare.org/donate/glf-funds-and-projects/
To donate, just go to our website – https://globallandcare.org/donate/
In the field and at the desk
Making sure that Global Landcare members around the world get access to news and opportunities is a desk job! It goes alongside doing the work but it requires a special set of communication skills – these include being good at finding and telling the stories, and at working with all the new technologies. GL would love to hear from electronic communicators who would like to help with this work. Email us at secretary@globallandcare.org
Membership
In 2022 we are critically aware of our interconnection. It is not just what we do in our backyard that determines what our future looks like. We therefore encourage Landcare groups here to think about how they might share their knowledge and experience with others: membership of Global Landcare does not cost anything. Go to https://globallandcare.org/membership-form/
