Peering into the future to plan for today

Delegates at the recent VegFutures 2006 conference in Albury were treated to a journey into the realms of the future for natural resource management in Australia courtesy of the wool industry’s Land, Water & Wool Future Woolscapes initiative.

The future scoping session explored what on-farm natural resource management in the year 2030 may look like. The entertaining session revolved around a mock radio interview with a woolgrower set in the future, followed by a facilitated and interactive ‘hypothetical’ panel session to discuss and debate the interview, the ‘Future Woolscapes’ scenarios and how they relate to today’s operating environment for woolgrowers and broadacre grazing more generally.

Workshop participants heard about a number of key issues that are likely to be relevant to the future of vegetation in grazing landscapes.

Panel participants debating the scenarios were Tasmanian woolgrower and 2004 McKell Medalist, Tom Dunbabin; one of Australia’s leading futurists and author of numerous papers on long-term resource issues, Barney Foran; former head of the Grains Research and Development Corporation, John Lovett; Australian Conservation Foundation’s Corey Watts; Mary Goodacre, a member of the wool industry’s Sustainable Wool Advisory Group; and Jann Williams, a well-known ecologist and Land, Water & Wool Native Vegetation and Biodiversity Coordinator.

The Future Woolscapes initiative originally had its genesis in 2004, when 20 representatives from the wool and other industries came together to examine a range of key issues that may impact on the world and wool industry over a 25-year timeframe.

While recognising that the future cannot be predicted, the group used a scenario planning approach to analyse trends and patterns evident today and look at how they may impact on the wool industry of the future.

Key outcomes from this process were discussed at VegFutures 2006 to help inform the core objectives of the conference.

“Throughout the original scenario planning process, the group was constantly challenged to think differently about the future as a way of dealing with the uncertainty of the world we live in,” said Russell Pattinson, Future Woolscapes coordinator.

“This experience was, in part, replicated during VegFutures 2006.

“Future Woolscapes is not about predicting the wool industry’s future per se , but rather about stimulating debate in order to provide insight into the challenges, threats and opportunities that lie ahead in the next 25 years.”

The knowledge and information gained as a result of Future Woolscapes will ultimately assist in the direction of strategic planning for overall wool industry research and development while for woolgrowers it means access to authoritative information detailing some of the challenges and opportunities that may lie ahead.

Land, Water & Wool is a $40-million collaboration between Australian Wool Innovation Limited, Land & Water Australia and other research investors. Researchers are working directly with nearly 1300 woolgrowers on 230 commercial farms and influencing more than 7000 farm businesses nation-wide across seven important natural resource management themes.

Citation

Land & Water Australia. 2006. Peering into the future to plan for today. [Online] (Updated October 12th, 2009)
Available at: http://lwa.gov.au/node/44 [Accessed Wednesday 29th of February 2012 08:12:14 PM ].