... because we humans can only work for a future we can imagine.

TURNING THE BIG SHIP AROUND

Roger Holloway
Williamstown resident
and then-Chief Executive Officer
Greening Australia Victoria


As told to Merrill Findlay, 15 July 1996, for Painting the future real

Key issues: land degradation, sustainable agriculture, Papua New Guinea, Northern Australia, Western Suburbs Action Program, West Port Phillip Vegetation Management Project, Greening Australia, 'waste' recycling, water conservation, risk analysis, community attitudes, empowerment, urban consolidation, diversity, agroforestry, Landcare movement, economic rationalism, values, endangered species, governance, education.

I was educated in the Sixties, went to a private school in Melbourne, and my first degree was in Agricultural Science. I did that degree because, as a young person, I didn't want to be stuck in an office all day, and so I learned the conventional wisdoms of agriculture that were very production orientated, very technologically driven, and very 'scientific method'.

My first job was in the Gulf of Carpentaria where I worked on soil and land capability studies. At the time, the Ord River Scheme, a huge irrigation project in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, was being developed with Commonwealth Government funding, and the Queensland State Government decided it wanted an irrigation project in its north too! After all Queensland had a large amount of water flowing to 'waste', there were dying mining settlements at George Town and other small towns like Chilligo just west of Cairns, and there was growing unemployment because of diminishing mining opportunities at the time. So I went up there to do soil surveys, photo interpretation and land mapping to establish whether there were irrigable soils or potential dam sites available. We found that there were no opportunities for an irrigation system because there were very limited areas of good irrigable soil, and no decent dam sites.

Right:Digital composite based on the Painting the future real interviews and created by Csaba Szamosy from images contributed by project partners, Imagine The Future Inc, 1996. One of the skins in ITF's re-interpreted possum skin cloak.

But I also observed the impact of mismanagement -- or non-management -- of cattle that had decimated the countryside. Everywhere I went around the Gulf of Carpentaria, apart from the black soil plains, I noticed degraded landscapes, diminishing vegetation, silted rivers and soil erosion. It was a devastating sight. I'd been out to the agricultural research stations on the eastern seaboard and watched scientists there at work on their agronomic trials for pasture grasses and legumes which were highly technology and nutrient dependent -- and yet I knew that the main game over thousands and thousands of hectares of northern Australia, was the failure to manage cattle and the devastating impact these animals were having on our landscape.

After three or four years of working in northern Queensland, I went to Papua New Guinea to work with so-called 'primitive' people who lived in much steeper terrain with a much higher rainfall. And here I witnessed an absolutely amazing thing! People living in balance with their landscape!!! I noticed vegetable gardens, tree crops, pastures, with minimal soil erosion, and multiple and diverse production systems based on what's called moving-agriculture or slash-and-burn technique which can be sustainable provided rotations are long enough.

What I found in PNG in the Sixties, was a society living as an integrated part of their landscape, where-as people on Australian farms seemed to be isolated and removed from their landscape. To most Australian farmers and pastoralists, land was there to be conquered and produced from, rather than something that was embraced into the social and cultural life of the community. Understanding that difference was a very important part of my radicalisation experience. I had also been doing a bit of reading in Marxian literature and alternative economic systems and so began to realise that I'd been sold a very powerful myth in my western education! I started to fundamentally question that myth and where it was taking us.

In many ways, I've always felt uncomfortable about serving the interest of an economic activity if I've felt it was threatening our society's long term survival. So my experience in Papua New Guinea led to a gradual desire to work with community groups and government agencies on sustainability issues. For six years I worked with the Western Port Regional Planning Authority developing a conservation plan for the southern Mornington Peninsula for example. I then moved to the Department of Planning and Environment in the early 1980s and developed a program in the western suburbs of Melbourne called the Western Suburbs Action Program .

At the time, there was a perception that the West had been forgotten by previous Liberal governments because there were no votes to lose in the region and no votes to win. The Western Suburbs Action Program was developed not just to appease local people but to genuinely try to put together a new model of community empowerment which enabled communities to take responsibility for identifying local problems, working out the solutions then actively participate in the implementation of those solutions. My role was to facilitate that process. I did not see myself as an expert planner coming in and saying 'this is what I think you ought to have in your region' which is the usual expert-on top approach, but more as an expert-on-tap to the community. So we held community meetings, we grappled with issues, we argued, we prioritised -- and eventually a firm proposal would emerge that the Department of Planning and Environment could support. That was a very refreshing and enlightening process for me. Dealing with different community attitudes and aspirations taught me a great deal.

The Action Program continued throughout the 1980s under both the Cain and Kirner Labor governments and covered social, economic and environmental projects. There was a collaboration between the Commonwealth Department of Territories and Local Government which generally provided funding support for economic development initiatives and social and community projects, and the State Department of Planning and Environment which generally covered the projects dealing with the physical environment. Funding was also provided through labour market and anniverary programs which existed at the time. My primary responsibility was for the environmental side of the program and within that, we had a range of open space development projects covering parklands, urban forests and major government land holdings in which the amenities had been let run down, plus projects dealing with natural and cultural heritage, industrial amenity, community education and awareness, landscape design, local government services, urban improvements and civic design.

One of the most notable initiatives was the 150th anniversary Westgate Lower Yarra Project to develop Westgate Park near the base of Westgate bridge. Landscaping included the Stony Creek backwash and the river bank right down to Newport power station, and regeneration of mangrove habitats. We has a serious setback in about year three of the regeneration however when about 11,000 young mangroves were killed by a pollution spill from an industry upstream but they have since been replanted or have regenerated themselves.

As part of the Action Program we also funded an internationally renowned firm of consultants to undertake risk analysis around the major petrochemical industries within the region to establish appropriate buffer zones around the plants. As a result of this work, the probability that people will suffer serious consequences in the event of a major plant explosion, as has happened in Mexico and Italy for example, has been significantly reduced.

I have to admit that when I started to work in the western region of Melbourne, I was living in deep eastern suburbia in the Glen Waverley area. I have since moved to the West and have lived there for the last three years. To me, the region's diversity is its most exhilarating feature . It is diverse by way of the cultural background and ethnicity of the people who live here, the range of local industries, housing and commerce, and by way of its natural features including the rivers and creeks, the bay, and the wetlands and grasslands. There is a richness in many aspects of the landscape here that is quite different from anything you'll find in the eastern suburbs where you get kilometer after kilometer of conventional housing. Nicely landscaped of course, but ultimately pretty boring housing plus serious traffic congestion

I worked under the Kennett government in the Department of Planning and Environment became the Department of Planning and Development to review industrial and commercial planning, and commenced a review of rural zones in Victoria. I left the Department this year (1996) to join Greening Australia Victoria , a non-government community based organisation which is very close to my heart because it is ultimately about sustainable natural resources management.

Natural vegetation and its management contributes to things like the sequestering of carbon dioxide which is so important if we are to meet our Greenhouse targets, water quality, land productivity, flora and fauna protection and biodiversity maintenance . So natural vegetation supports a broad range of sustainability objectives.

Greening Australia's primary agenda is to work with community groups and government agencies on both sides of politics, to achieve practical outcomes for the environment. We don't stand in front of bulldozers, we don't get out there and physically plant trees ourselves, but we do work on capacity-building. We run seminars and training programs, we facilitate projects, we form consortia of landcare groups to put our programs in place, and we employ regional facilitators around rural Victoria to work with local communities and agencies to achieve practical outcomes.

At the moment we're putting together an initiative called the West Port Phillip Native Vegetation Management Project to draw together six or seven municipalities and a range of agencies to form a Centre of Excellence that covers research and the application of research and biophysical information on all aspects of vegetation management. There are still a number of species that have not yet been collected or for which seed is not available, so one of the things we'll being about to do is facilitate an indigenous seed bank to make sure those species are protected. We're not necessarily wanting to collect that seed ourselves, but we certainly want to know which indigenous plant nurseries have the seed available and grows those specific species.

Most of the Victorian Flora Database is now available on CD ROM but the information is not provided at a level of detail that actually assists vegetation management in any way, so we will seek to develop a regional CD ROM which will have a lot of vegetation management information on it, including when you collect the seed for specific plants, how you need to treat that seed to make it germinate, whether the plant is rare or endangered in the area, and what you might do to help retain or ensure its survival. We'll also be looking at the revegetation of native grasslands , how we can ameliorate the impacts of urban development and major infrastructure items like the Western Ring Road, and what we can do if the proposed East Coast Armaments Complex goes onto coastal land down at Point Wilson, or the new chemical storage facilities go ahead at Point Lillias. We'll also be looking at native vegetation management issues related to the proposed new coastal park between Point Gellibrand and Point Cook.

ISSUES I'M MOST CONCERNED ABOUT

For me, sustainability is the big issue because it requires quite a fundamental change in thinking . In simple terms, sustainability means not externalising onto future generations the costs of our living in this generation -- and that means, individually and collectively, we need to be fully self-responsible and live off our income and not off our capital . The income I'm talking about here ultimately comes back to the energy we receive from the sun that keeps our system alive. My concern is that if we live off our capital, we're actually passing on to future generations a diminished ability to enjoy the quality of life we're enjoying, or seek to enjoy.

Sustainability requires a fundamental change in attitude leading to small incremental behavioural changes that add up over time. An example might be our consumption of energy , or the extent to which we recycle what our society classes as 'wastes ' but should more correctly be considered an alternative resources. As soon as we start seeing 'waste' as resources, our attitude changes completely!

Take the case of the Werribee sewage farm, for example, where we have a large amount of water, phenomenal amounts of nutrients and potential energy in the form of methane that can be harnessed and put back into Melbourne's energy system. In terms of water , Melbourne has been living off borrowed resources by building water supply catchment dams increasingly further from the consumption points. Right now we're piping water from the Thompson catchment and beyond for use by Melburnians. The extent to which we can recycle the 'waste' water we discharge into sewage ponds such as Werribee may reduce the need to bring water in from those catchments and could even reduce the need to build more dams in the future. If we used Werribee water for irrigation purposes instead of discharging it into the Bay, the top catchment dam which supplies irrigation water, might be released to supply drinking water. So it's a matter of how we use the total resources of our system.

So that brings me to my next major concern which is attitudes . At present, our very human approach to living is to externalise our costs, and profit from the things we can benefit from, regardless of what it might mean to other people, including future generations, or to other species. Living in a way that doesn't externalise the costs of our lifestyles onto others, requires a very fundamental rethinking of what it means to live responsibly and to be self-responsible. I can illustrate what I mean by this by focussing on agriculture again for a moment. The farming community claims that farmers are the original conservationists, and it's true that no farmers wish to willfully damage or destroy the soil on which they depend for their income. But then there's another claim that says 'gee, it's hard to be green when you're in the red', which is a recognition that when you mortgage your property to the bank and owe money on a month by month basis, and then face a bad season or even a run of seasons -- say there's been a drought, or the bottom has fallen out of the market, or there's a price shock or some other problem -- then you simply can't generate a continuing cash flow that will both repay the bank and produce sufficient surplus to enable your family to continue to survive.

Over the longer term, this all-too-familiar scenario forces farming families into a no-win situation of having to struggle to generate an annual income to meet the bank's requirements plus their own living standard expectations by living off their capital -- which is the land itself. And eventually that capital will be reduced or even lost completely. The loss doesn't necessarily happen in one year, but when farmers are faced with a rigid structure of property boundaries and financial expectations, and the downward trend of commodity prices on the one hand, and seasonal conditions plus increasing costs of farm inputs (many of which are petroleum based) on the other hand, there is an increasing probability that future generations will be at risk.

Of course agricultural science, to a large extent, has been wedded to the view of the landscape that we've inherited from Europe, and faith in the technological fix, a belief that you can make the system work harder and faster by adding the appropriate technology. But Australia is an ancient landscape that doesn't take well to cloven hoofed animals, doesn't take cultivation very well, is subject to blowing, tends to be saline, is not highly fertile, and has already suffered very severely because of our mismanagement. If you want to get performance out of a geriatric, you have to massage it and treat it gently. You can't go in and treat it aggressively and expect to be able to do that year after year. That might be an over-simplistic model, but at least it graphically illustrates where I think we stand in relation to the Australian landscape. But there's some excellent work being done by the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and many other organisations in coming to grips with what it means to live in this landscape.

One of the fundamental ecological lessons is that stability and robustness are dependent on diversity. Monoculture is the antithesis of that, but we're still stuck on monoculture regimes, even though there are other ways of producing food and fibre. And this is where we can run slap bang into the conventional wisdom which says 'get big or get out' because you won't survive unless you can make your tractor cover more hectares, or your unit of labour produce more tonnes of wheat. We'll have to re-think those values. We'll have to re-evaluate what it is that we produce and how we produce it. And it may well be that wheat production for example, will be integrated into a closer landscape, a more intimate landscape, with other forms of production -- and an obvious example is agroforestry.

To some extent you can have your cake and eat it too if you follow a more diverse production regime. Some of the figures that are being published now show that by growing agroforestry plantations as windbreaks on your property, you can increase wheat yields by up to 40% without extra fertiliser. I was reading an article the other day by the the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation's program coordinator, and she claimed that around 40% of the projected potential increase in farm income from farm forestry would come from timber production, while 60% would come from increases in yield because of shelter and improved land management. She went on to say that the challenge for Australia was to find ways of translating this potential into reality.

Now even if those figures are only half right, what a brilliant outcome! There'd be wins on both sides of the equation because we'd be moving towards increased diversification in the way in which we use our land, and increasing our yields at the same time ! Another example of a more benign way of producing food might be no-till sowing. Two recent Western Australian research trials have shown that no-till sowing minimises water erosion on crop lands and promotes earth worm activities. They prepared a range of different tillage types and found that after 5 years, the number of earth worms in the no-tillage treatment was ten times the number that occurred in the multiple tillage plots.

When we look at the extent of devastation that has occurred on our agricultural lands over the last 150 years with soil erosion, salinity, weed invasion, pest problems and reduced productivity, we have to accept that the capital we've based our livelihood on as a nation has been severely diminished. Rural communities are themselves realising that their own future is in jeopardy unless they reclaim it , and they are now able to do this through the Landcare movement.

Landcare is a wonderful example of how local communities have recognised that they can't solve their problems within their own property boundaries, but have to cooperate with their neighbours. They have to think about the natural vegetation on the top of the hill where the intake of water occurs. They have to think about what happens down the slope if they graze it too heavily and the soil washes away and causes gullies or tunnels. They have to think about what happens when water becomes saline. And they therefore have to think in terms of the whole catchment, rather than simply the whole farm. The next step is to develop what we could call catchment integrated whole farm plans, where the whole farm plan deals with social, economic and environmental issues within the context of this whole-of-catchment thinking. And thanks to a very innovative approach by the Victorian Government, we now have a way of attempting to strategically do this through the Catchment and Land Protection Council and its regional boards.

Another issue that concerns me is the current conventional wisdom of economic rationalism which tends, to my mind, reduce everything to monetary values. I think there is a much broader agenda that needs to be addressed and that is that we share the planet with a whole range of other organisms which have no explicit or known monetary value. And yet we have an ethical, moral and indeed spiritual responsibility to recognise the needs of these other beings . Nurturing and protecting their right to survive is fundamentally worth doing even though it will never come out in a financial equation. It's a values thing, but a different perception of values than is expressed through a monetary figure, or indeed, through a voting system. A voting system that is built upon a three year cycle or a dollar cost, will never express that kind of intrinsic value, so we have to find other ways of ascertaining and apprehending what it is that the community values -- beyond the vote and beyond the dollar. And I think we have not got there yet. Our society is grappling messily, very messily, towards appreciating these things but economics doesn't deal with it, and politics doesn't deal with it.

I think to come to grips with sustainability in its fundamental sense ultimately goes to questions of quality . Quality is not addressed adequately through either our voting or dollar systems which have the dominant influence on the way our society currently makes its day-to-day, year-to-year decisions. Yet these decisions determine whether or not a species like the Small Golden Moths Orchid will survive in its native grassland habitat for example.

In the western region of Melbourne we are down to less than half a percent of the original natural grassland habitat , and those areas that do remain are increasingly threatened by either urbanisation or further agricultural and pastoral use, or are being invaded by pastoral weeds that compete against the native grasses. Some of the grassland species are now very, very rare. I think it behoves a civilised society to be thinking about how to adequately protect these things .

There are also many other species that are endangered within the bioregion. Whoever thinks about invertebrates like ants and worms, for example? If you go into the Long Forest Mallee near Bacchus Marsh for example, the most southerly extension of mallee, you'll find many more species of ants in a hectare of bushland than there are in the whole of the United Kingdom! Around Werribee there are some very small areas of remnant bull-oak or casuarina habitats which are the most easterly extension of that particular species, Allocasuarina cunninghamii. These habitats were very severely decimated during the early stages of our pioneering settlement for fire wood and fence posts and buildings and need to be identified and protected.

I'm just using the mallee and casuarina habitats here to illustrate the fact that where-ever you look, you will find special plants and special animals. And even though we can't put a present-day monetary or vote value on them, they are valuable never-the-less and we should find ways of co-existing with them and nurturing them. And this has nothing to do with economic rationalism.

To me, economic rationalism is a way of thinking that was born from a perceived necessity to achieve employment and economic growth at a time when the economic growth model of our economic system is the dominant model. As we move gradually from a historic or pioneering perspective to what we can call the sustainable or stewardship era of our development, the economic growth model will fade because it will be not be appropriate. The stewardship model will require different ways of operating and the nurturing of different attitudes through the generations. We're talking here about generational changes as distinct from something that will happen in the short term and it may well be that we'll have another wave of economic rationalism in the next generation before we move to a stronger view of sustainability. Who knows? It could take 10 or 15 or even 50 years. I'm sure, however, that the big ship is turning around. You just can't turn it around on a sixpence, to use that analogy!

So those of us who are working in the interests of sustainability have to recognise that we're making small contributions that are pulling down on the wheel of the big ship to make it shift in the right direction, as distinct from allowing the wheel to spin around in the opposite direction . The sustainability agenda is therefore about the slow pull and the small wins, not about anything that really shouts at you! It's about a commitment to tread more softly, and an acceptance that humans, and all other species, are actually in relationship. And relationships of all kinds need careful nurturing!

But I have a problem and that comes back to values again. Because I don't think anything that is simply imposed by way of government edict can work unless it is part of a shared value that actually comes up from the community , however imperfectly it arises. Currently we're still stuck on the old agenda of 'well, I elected the government to do that' and that's an excuse to abandon self-responsible involvement. But I think once we move from that view of the world, to self-responsible active participation, then we'll have a society that is moving towards sustainability. So to me, it ultimately comes back to the individual. Sustainability is about people making decisions to be self-responsible citizens, taking a stand on something we believe in, and structuring our lifestyles and institutions and ways of operating accordingly .

I saw a quote the other day along the lines that when a winner makes a decision, the so called 'facts' don't count. So if you want to create a new future for yourself, first of all you have to be able to envisage it, and then you have to make a decision to do something about it. And if you make that decision and you feel passionately enough about it, then the constraints like 'oh, you can't do that' or 'that's not been done before', or 'it doesn't work that way', or 'the economic system doesn't reward you for doing that' (in fact the economic system might penalise you) are irrelevant. So you have to create the world you want around the vision you have for yourself in that world. Either you're in there as an active participant making a contribution to what the outcome's going to be, or you're accepting the systems around you as constraints on the way you envision the world. And I think that's where we make the big mistakes. We tend to collapse our dreaming or envisioning of our future into a box that is defined by our political/economic systems. We limit our dreaming.

A Canadian educator, and I've forgotten his name, visited Australia 20-25 years ago and was reported in the Age as claiming there are four great stages in human education . The first stage, he said, is magical when you learn that the world is inhabited by fairies and goblins and Father Christmases and Easter Bunnies and things, and operates by magic. As you grow a little older and go to school, you start to learn the 'myths' of our society , and yes they start off with the fairy tales and the Hansel and Gretels and the Big Bad Wolf and Red Riding Hood, but they soon become much more sophisticated myths. By the time you're in secondary school and even in university, you are learning the well-worn myths of Newtonian and Einstinian physics, and ways in which men should relate to women and behave in relation to families, and how society's laws work -- which are all convenient mythical structures for socialising our behaviour and creating stable societies. So that is the mythic stage of human education.

The third stage of human education, he said, is 'analytical ' and it is at this stage that you, as a free citizen, critically question the myths and assess for yourself whether it is appropriate to behave according to those myths, or to behave differently because you see the world afresh. And this is when you become an active self-responsible participant in your society.

The fourth stage of human education is what he called 'irony ' when you recognise that there are different paradigms or different ways of viewing the world , and that each has its own legitimacy. But if you put one interpretation up against the other, you'll find that they're incommensurable and this incommensurability is actually a dilemma or ironical outcome. Someone once called these dilemmas 'wicked problems' because there is no 'right' answer or resolution . There is only an answer which, if you solve it one way at any particular point in time, you'll probably find that you'll have to solve it in another way later on, to overcome the problems you created by solving it the first way! So that is the notion of irony!

I'd like to raise the possibility that there is a fifth stage of human education and that is where we break through the notion of irony into a recognition that there is nothing certain in this world, and that ultimately, everything is magical! And in this recognition is the full flowering of creativity and the possibility of a new future that is unencumbered by the myths of the past.

MY VISION OF A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY

I start with the schools. I see children being taught techniques of discovering their world and pursuing their own truth in relation to the world. Creativity and questioning are nurtured, encouraged and rewarded rather than the emphasis being on the socialising process which our schools have historically delivered.

Over time I see a gradual change in the relationship between governments and citizens so that government are representing the citizenry in a different way. Governments won't be elected to perform in a way that absolves citizens' personal responsibility, but will be there to serve community forums which will have much more hands-on responsibility and involvement in creating their own futures -- but of course, with the benefit of shared wisdoms from other parts of the globe and a commitment to adopt best practice, and pursue excellence. But with a local commitment and a local flavour. I think that is the connection we need to make between 'acting globally and thinking locally', or 'thinking globally and acting locally', to put it in its conventional way around, and it will actually start to manifest itself in practice where citizens forums can perform more of the functions that are now given over to centralised governments. In my sustainable future, government is there to perform a service and respond to what is mobilised through citizens' forums. The emphasis is on self-responsible citizens who share a long term connection to themselves and to future generations, and see both future generations and other extant beings -- plants and animals -- as being worthwhile in their own right, and deserving of being nurtured and considered in a way that is different from the way we considered them in the pioneering stage of our time on earth.

I also see great changes in our landscape. I see a more diverse range of land uses, a richer tapestry if you like. I see permaculture gardens in urban settings. I see more multiple smaller scale cropping activities. I see many, much more native vegetation in the landscape than we've had. In the western volcanic plains area, of course, I see the retention of the grasslands and an increasing recognition that native vegetation has a very positive function in the landscape from a productivity point of view, and from a biodiversity perspective.

I also see a restructuring and consolidation of our urban communities . I see an emphasis on higher density housing in urban villages that are clustered around public transport nodes and multiple-choice transport options -- because of all the urban infrastructure services, transport is the single biggest financial constraint -- so that most people live within 5 minutes walking distances from public transport . Further out, I do see a continuation of the conventional suburban home on its fifth of an acre block, with dual occupancies and other opportunities, but I also see a willingness to address urban sprawl by containing its spread within certain limits. There will also be an interest to retain green corridors or green wedges that give people ready access to open space, usually connected with river or creek systems. Our urban settings will be much more diverse and multidimensional rather than being monocultures in clearly designated residential or commercial or industrial zones. All these functions will be interwoven into the fabric of urban life.

I don't see major dramatic changes because I don't think sustainability is about dramatic changes. I think it's about values and the sum total of many incremental and different ways of behaving that add up over the long term, into something that will be sustainable. That will enable the current generation to live a high quality of life, but not take away from future generations. And I look forward very positively to a very creative and very exciting future.

Protected by copyright 1996

[Page history: created and first published on www.ecoversity.org.au as part of Painting the future real (1995-97), the prototype for Redreaming the plain (1998-2002); taken off-line in 1998 and re-posted in a slightly modified form in July 2004 as a web archive. For more information contact redreaming@rmit.edu.au.]