In Natural Resource Management there is a lot of talk about developing income independent of government funding, a worthy goal. Not always easy to achieve though. Some groups, for example Noosa Landcare, have developed quite a successful service provider model which allows them to buffer the elastic nature of government funding.

While others like Tiaro Landcare have become quite clever at raising funds by selling chocolate turtles and running fishing competitions. The Tiaro group use their hard earned funds to protect the endangered Mary River Turtle. However there appear to be very few groups like Tiaro and Noosa can continue in the medium to long term without government funding.

Earlier this year a study by the ANU found “it’s the environment stupid” i.e the environment was the Australian public’s number 1 concern. With this setting, it seems to me the broader public are genuinely concerned about sustainable agriculture and the environment. However how much is there that the average urban resident is prepared to do to assist either of these causes. Perhaps there is room for innovative business models that can raise funds and or other forms of support for Natural Resource Management and Sustainable Agriculture.

Today I was notified of a new person (chiefwala) was following me on Twitter (a neat micro-blogging tool with many uses for NRM). Nice to meet you Rajeev.

So I checked out his site Treewala :: Play. Learn. Save the Planet at www.greenwala.com/treewala/index.php.

The concept is simple play Treewala’s trivia game, get 20 correct answers and the company buys a tree to be planted by the Marion Institute to plant trees as part of the Las Gaviotas project. (links not working at time of posting). Presumably all funding comes from the advertising on the competition page. Rajeev and the team must have done their job well because a) 20 correct answers gets enough traffic to pay for a tree and b) they have Dell sponsored reGeneration onboard as an advertiser, that’s pretty good for starters.

Anyway there is plenty of food for thought for Natural Resource Managers. Is the reforestation appropriate and conducted in a way that creates a nett positive for the environment? We all have assets that we are working with. Which of these assets could capture the public’s attention and potentially wallets? Are there ethical advertisers who you would enter into partnership with in a similar venture in your organisation.

As always I’d love to hear you comments.

If you are not involved in Landcare, Natural Resource Management, or Sustainable Agriculture, would you like your entertainment to provide advertising revenue to green causes such as reforestation? Or would you prefer a direct donation model?

If you are working in Landcare, Natural Resource Management, or Sustainable Agriculture, what are your thoughts can you see yourself working with advertisers to generate income for your onground activites? If so which advertisers would you like to work with?

Tags: Landcare, Treewala, Twitter, NRM, NaturalResourceManagement, SustainableAgriculture

Dr Paul Humphries of Charles Sturt University’s Institute for Land, Water and Society has written an interesting article called “The drought we had to have?” which has been published by Science Alert. Dr Humphries’s comments are particularly tagretted towards Austrlia’s Murray River Basin, however the principles apply the world over.

Image courtesy of yewenyi @ flickr

Modification of river systems for irrigation and urban and industrial use are detrimental to river health we all know that. However this article proposes that climate change, drought and the difficulties the Murray is now facing might be impetus to re-evaluate catchment management.

Read the full article.

The drought we had to have? (ScienceAlert)

Tags: MurrayRiver, ecology, CatchmentCare, WatershedManagement, ClimateChange

Early bird registrations for Australia’s national vegetation conference Veg Futures 08, have been extended until 31 August.  Veg Futures will be held in Toowoomba, Queensland from 20 – 23 October.

Register Now to join researchers, policy makers, scientists, practitioners and landholders to discuss and challenge a range of vegetation management issues.

The conference program includes keynote presentations covering issues such as global, national and local pressures and drivers on vegetation; water’s interface with vegetation; carbon markets; and climate change and adaptation, as well as a broad range of technical and practical speakers.   Hands on Paddock Sessions will offer field-based learning opportunities with local and national vegetation experts; and a series of workshops and forums will provide a snapshot of what is happening in vegetation management across the country.

Trade and sponsorship opportunities are still available but close soon.  For more information visit the conference website or, contact Samantha Morris at Wombat Creative:  sam [at] wombatcreative.com.au or 0421 709 519.

Veg Futures is an initiative of Greening Australia in partnership with Land and Water Australia.

Tags: biodiversity, Greening Australia

Seven leading lights in the battle against global warming who are also catalysing the transition to a greener and leaner global economy were recently acknowledged as the 2008 Champions of the Earth. Including Helen Clark Prime Minister of New Zealand

Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browser
http://flock.com


read more | digg story

Sustainable Agriculture is a carbon sink not a carbon source. A healthy prosperous future requires both a healthy environment and a vital food and fibre production. The challenge for designers is to create ecological systems which have a nett positive effect on soil, biodiversity, air and water as well as producing healthy food and fibre. The future farmer will be as revered for farming carbon as for farming delicious healthy food.

read more | digg story

Embedded Video

Animoto is a very cool presentation app, see my review here.

For more about BCCA and Better Burnett go here.

Tags: Animoto, BCCA, BetterBurnett, presentation

I had a call the other day from an old friend who has decided to make the move and leave a long time position with a State department for a new freelancing role. Basically he will contract the majority of his time to one organisation and pick up smaller contracts opportunistically, good move.

Anyway he rang for some advice on resources to help set up his business. After sending the email I decided I should share these resources here on the eco2oh blog for any extension people who might consider starting thier own consultancy or start doing some NRM freelancing. Good luck if you have decided to make the move.

Some Resources

Freelance Switch
A great source of strategy and tactic on becoming a freelancer often quite tech based but you can ignore those parts. Definitely on the coal face regarding new tools and applications
http://freelanceswitch.com/

Billing Manager

From the folks who make Quickbooks a free online invoicing system you can have the system email invoice or print them and post them yourself. They even have a fee for service option to allow you to accept credit card payments

http://billingmanager.intuit.com/billing/welcome.url

Skype

This will save you a bucket load on your most common phone calls especially when you get your colleagues on Skype too (that makes your calls free), you can purchase Skype credit to call landlines or mobiles (for STD telstra or a mobile cap can be competitive). You can get a Skype in number (a capital city number) for about $40 / year that allows people to call a brisbane number and you can take it on your laptop or computer wherever you are, you can also get an extension like hot recorder to record calls (it’s easier then taking notes). Skype is great for doing conference calls to a combo of skype users and landlines. Best of all Skype is free to downoad and free to call any other skype user.
www.skype.com

iGoogle

Google has a swag of free tools so get a gMail account (almost unlimited storage space) use your iGoogle page or google reader to subscribe to blog feeds like freelanceswitch.com and betterburnett.com, use google docs to share collaborative documents online, get a google calendar and keep it on your iGoogle page

Some Advice

• Do invoicing on time! So important putting this off for a couple of days can cost you big bucks
• BP Mastercard saves 10% on fuel get one before you resign
• Don’t print anything you can avoid printing it’s bloody expensive
• Do lot’s of research before buying a printer there are 3 variable (cost of the printer, cost of the cartridges, cost per copy) cost per copy is the one to focus on it is very easy to get lured into buying a cheap printer with very expensive cartridges or cartridges that only do a small number of copies
• Check out http://www.gettingthingsdone.com/ for incredibly simple but effective strategies for managing your time and info. Wish I knew about this 2,3,4,5 years ago I just got the book and audio book
• Think about an Apple computer if you don’t have a computer already they are designed with freelancers in mind
• Get yourself out there get a website (preferably a wordpress blog), a twitter account, a flickr account, a facebook profile, etc interlink them all and use them as your online portfolio
• Think like the boss and not the employee (I still find this tricky)

Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browser
http://flock.com


read more | digg story

As the sun begins to set on current Natural Heritage Trust NHT arrangements, people employed by Regional Bodies, Catchment Care and Landcare Groups, Research and Extension projects and all manner of NHT funded roles wonder about their future. A cloud of uncertainty mars the competition of successful Natural Resource Management projects. At a time when successes should be celebrated, and processes reflected upon in the spirit of continuous improvement, many of the front-line of sustainable agriculture and natural resource management are scanning the employment columns and surfing seek.com.au. This is not an uncommon event but none the less it causes pain.

In 2006 while working for the Burnett Mary Regional Group BMRG I had the good fortune to attend a forum “Young People In Extension” organized by Australasia Pacific Extension Network APEN. Two things happened at that event that influence my outlook on the push and pull that sporadic funding puts on Natural Resource Management careers.

The Future Of Employment

During the first evening of the event after a round of ice breaking by a group of people whose profession is facilitating where subject to an ice breaker session. Is that life imitating extension? Anyway with that uncomfortable session out of the road we where shown a video of an English futurist who specialised in workforce trends.

His advice was that in the future employment would become more entrepreneurial. Workers would have many employers in a lifetime, work would be more likely to occur on a contract/freelance basis, people would collect a portfolio of successful projects and a roster of clients.

In his 2002 book
;Free Agent Nation”, Daniel Pink wrote a manifesto for people finding themselves on the eve of such an age.

Secondly our Queensland APEN forum found that the biggest issue facing Young People in Extension was a lack of security in employment due to the cyclic nature of funding. Luckily I was chosen along with Peter Hocking to travel to Melbourne to present a paper at the APEN National Forum.
Peter and I were most certain our fantastic paper would floor everyone and our group’s finding that a lack of employment security was the number issue facing young people in queensland extension would be a revelation. It will probably come as no surprise that every other state presented the cyclic nature of employment as the biggest issue in their states as well.
There was a convergence of messages.
On one hand the futurist telling us that we should become more entrepreneurial on the other a national forum telling us overwhelmingly that as young people in extension our careers were likely to be characterised by cyclic employment. There and then I decided to look for ways to get on the front foot.

The Number One Issue

At around the time I was completing my employment with BMRG I noticed another trend. All around me NRM professionals seemed to be saying “… until the broader population see Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management as an real issue we are going to struggle to have a real impact on sustainability…” or some variation of that. It seems to me that the message of just was not getting out, not reaching the people who needed to hear it. Preaching to the converted, always the usual suspects, and similar statements were common amongst colleagues. It seem that the number one issue was Who Cares??

The Future Of Natural Resource Management

What does your NHT future hold? In 2013 when “Caring For Our Country” potentially expires will you be taking a short holiday and hoping for swift funding negotiation and a plethora of job offers when you return. If the future of employment is more contractually based, more freelance, more entrepreneurial, why not start now? One small step might be to consider starting a blog or some eExtension activity.

Working in Natural Resource Management, Sustainable Agriculture, or Environment is a rewarding career path if not turbulent at times. So my question to you is What colour is Your NHT Parachute?

Fresh And Salty: Increasing Salinity Awareness Using New Media

Kate Rhook, Wimmera Catchment Management Authority

http://www.nrmknowledgeconference2008.com/presentations

http://www.nrmknowledgeconference2008.com/presentations/files/katerhoook.pdf