National objectives
This page outlines a list of national objectives and outcomes for regional natural resource management (NRM) plan development. The information included here acts as a guide to the kinds of investments or activities the Australian Government supports through regional NRM strategies.
The examples given are not exhaustive or prescriptive. They are identified against Australian Government and national outcomes, including those identified through the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (NAP), the Natural Heritage Trust (the Trust) and the National Landcare Program.
National policies are given effect through a range of national strategies, guidelines and plans. Links to information relevant to the NRM objectives below follows information on the scope and suggested actions for each objective and outcome.
Topics on this page include:
- Promote sustainable resource use, particularly sustainable agriculture
- Protect and improve the condition of land, water (including groundwater) and vegetation resources that provide the ecosystem services that support sustainable resource use industries
- Improve water quality and environmental condition in surface and ground water systems including wetlands and estuaries while maintaining the economic and social values derived from water use
- Protect our coastal catchments, ecosystems and the marine environment
- Reverse the decline in the extent and quality of native vegetation and maintain and restore habitat for flora and fauna
- Protect and manage places and values of national environmental significance, including threatened species and communities, listed migratory species, Ramsar wetlands of international importance, world heritage areas and national heritage places
- Promote Indigenous community participation in planning and delivery of regional NRM outcomes
1. Promote sustainable resource use, particularly sustainable agriculture
The scope of regional plans:
- identify the contribution made by resource-based industries to regional economic viability
- identify opportunities to involve key regional industries in regional plans and actions to address key regional NRM problems
Actions that promote the sustainable use of resources include:
- building the capacity of rural communities and rural industries to understand, identify and apply improved NRM practices
- supporting community movements and volunteer efforts to transfer information, raise awareness and increase commitment about sustainable resource use
- the development and implementation of industry guidelines and application strategies to adopt best management practices, including thorough Environmental Management Systems
- applying the results of relevant research to improve industry sustainable resource management
- supporting innovative on-farm and catchment approaches to improve sustainable resource use, such as the testing of alternative production systems (e.g. in plantation forestry, agroforestry and high water use cropping systems)
- encouraging activities that coordinate the management of activities on public and private land
- improving industry capacity to report on resource use performance, linking regional reporting to national level reporting
The scope of regional plans also includes identifying economic and social returns obtained from water use, through actions that use industries to maintain profitable and sustainable water resources. For example, enacting measures that support sustainable water-using industries and measures to support developing, implementing, reporting or benchmarking best practice water resource usage.
2. Protect and improve the condition of land, water (including groundwater) and vegetation resources that underpin our natural ecosystems and productive agricultural industries
The scope of regional plans:
- identify key land resource assets
- identify key processes threatening land, water and vegetation resources or impacting on the provision of ecosystem services
- protect and improve the condition of land, water
and vegetation resources, for example:
- improve awareness and understanding of land and water degradation
- encourage the adoption of measures to address resource degradation and improve management, distinguishing between measures that provide primarily public benefit and those that provide private benefit
- improve mechanisms for communicating information on best practice management of soils and vegetation, including improved technical advice and agricultural extension services
- apply best practice guidelines in resource development, having regard to local and state regulations
- develop and implement best practice land, water and vegetation management guidelines at a property level
- implement actions at catchment level that enhance integration of surface and ground water management
National policies, strategies, guidelines and plans
- National Weeds Strategy (nat_weeds_strategy.pdf - 1200 KB)
- Weeds of National Significance
- National Water Quality Management Strategy
- Regional Forest Agreements
- Greenhouse gas abatement strategies and response measures
3. Improve water quality and environmental condition in surface and groundwater systems, wetlands and estuaries while maintaining the economic and social values derived from water use
The scope of regional plans:
- identify targets for surface and ground water quality, biological diversity and environmental condition of rivers and wetlands
- recognise targets and allocations of water between consumptive and environmental uses that may be being developed through other processes
- improve surface and ground water quality, biodiversity and environmental condition.
Example actions include:
- restoring water quality, removing redundant weirs and structures(including fish ladders in remaining structures), stabilising river banks and riparian zone, planting local native riparian and wetland plant species
- supporting measures such as those identified through the National Water Initiative or the Living Murray to implement environmental flows
- encouraging the integrated whole-water cycle management of surface and groundwater resources
- providing flow linkages between the river and floodplain
The scope of regional plans also:
- identify important wetlands, their values and the threats to such areas.
- manage threats and prevent degradation to important wetlands and improve wetland condition (e.g. ensure environmental water requirements, in order to maintain wetlands of national importance)
- identify rivers and river reaches of high conservation value.
- Maintain the high conservation value of rivers and river reaches (e.g. enact management regimes to protect riparian vegetation, managing storm water run-off)
National policies, strategies, guidelines and plans
- Council of Australian Governments Water Reform Framework
- A National Framework for Improved Groundwater Management in Australia.
- Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia
- Principles 3 and 9 in ANZECC and ARMCANZ; 1996; National Principles for the Provision of Water for Ecosystems; Sustainable Land and Water Resources Management Committee, Subcommittee on Water Resources; Occasional Paper SWR No. 3; Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra
4. Protect our coastal catchments, ecosystems and the marine environment and maintain profitable and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
The scope of regional plans:
- identify coastal habitats that are either at risk or of high conservation value
- protect, restore or manage coastal habitats of high conservation value, coastal processes and geomorphology (e.g. prevent salinity, erosion or exposure of acid sulfate soils by managing clearing and drainage)
- identify current and potential marine pests , including those on the Coordinating Committee for Introduced Marine Pests Emergencies Alert List
- eradicate, prevent or contain introduced marine pests (e.g. deploy actions consistent with the National System for the Prevention and Management of Introduced Marine Pests, including surveying and monitoring biodiversity, including exotic marine species)
- reduce marine pollution such as that from vessel sources, including sewage, oil garbage and debris, by removing marine debris from the shoreline and waterways, providing appropriate marine waste reception facilities at ports, harbours and marinas, and promoting best practice in slipway and other vessel cleaning and maintenance facilities.
- identify objectives and targets for coastal and estuarine water quality. In particular:
- identify the environmental values for estuarine and marine waters and coastal wetlands
- set water quality targets to address the environmental values specified (or indicate a process for their identification)
- identify sources of marine pollution, including land-based sources and human-generated marine debris
- describe monitoring programs to assess the effectiveness of management actions in meeting proposed target
- identify economic and social returns derived from fisheries and aquaculture, through actions that maintain profitable and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture industrie (e.g. implement fisheries with ecologically sustainable development frameworks)
This may be achieved through actions that maintain and improve coastal and estuarine water quality, such as actions consistent with the Framework for Marine and Estuarine Water Quality Protection. These include:
- ensuring that discharges of substances to coastal waters are within ecologically sustainable limits
- improving environmental flows to estuarine waters, where this is beneficial to improving water quality
- maintaining and protecting identified environmental values of those waters
- promoting adoption of best management practices to minimise agricultural sources of pollution, including both point and diffuse sources
- minimising the contribution of nutrients from atmospheric sources of pollution in highly urbanised coastal catchments
National policies, strategies, guidelines and plans
5. Reverse the decline in the extent and quality of native vegetation and maintain and restore habitat for flora and fauna
The scope of regional plans:
- identify the extent and quality of native vegetation through actions that reverse the decline in the extent and quality of native vegetation
- ensure there is no clearing of threatened vegetation communities (current extent below 30 percent of pre-clearing extent) and critical habitat for threatened species
- retain and manage native vegetation on land susceptible to land degradation
- increase the extent of native vegetation through revegetation in order to achieve multiple objectives, including:
- biodiversity conservation
- salinity mitigation
- greenhouse gas abatement
- improved land stability and production outcomes
- enhanced water quality
- identify national biodiversity hotspots by managing biodiversity hotspot areas and reducing threats to those areas.
The scope also includes identifing pressures on native vegetation, such as:
- land susceptible to degradation from dryland salinity, erosion and potential acid sulphate soils
- Weeds of National Significance and weeds on the national environmental alert list
- unsustainable firewood collection
- unsustainable grazing
- changed fire management regimes
- diseases and pathogens such as Phytophthora cinnamomi
These objectives may be addressed through actions that improve the quality of native vegetation, such as:
- restoring areas of high quality, endangered or vulnerable native vegetation communities
- managing the spread and reducing the impact of weeds of national significance
- identifying and reducing potential threats from sleeper weeds
- maintaining and restoring native bird habitat on farms, particularly in the woodland regions of Australia
- encouraging appropriate fire management practices within Indigenous communities
- encouraging ecologically sustainable collection of firewood by promoting the use of plantation timber for firewood
- encouraging the adoption of sustainable grazing practices and reducing unsustainable grazing in critical areas, such as the rangelands
National policies, strategies, guidelines and plans
- National Objectives and Targets for the Conservation of Australia's Biodiversity 2001 to 2005
- National Framework for the Management and Monitoring of Australia's Native Vegetation
- A National Approach to Firewood Collection and Use in Australia
- Weeds of National Significance
- Monitoring and Reporting on NRM Users' Guide
- National Framework for NRM Standards and Targets
- Biodiversity Hotspots
- National Principles and Guidelines for Rangeland Management (armcanz-may28.pdf 48 KB)
6. Protect and manage places and values of national environmental significance listed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
The scope of regional plans:
- identify Ramsar wetlands of international importance by managing threats and preventing degradation to Ramsar wetlands (e.g. establish practices that are consistent with those outlined in the wetland's Plan of Management or those which contribute to the development of a Plan of Management)
- identify nationally listed threatened species and ecological communities and the key threats to their recovery by managing threats and preventing the decline in nationally-listed threatened species and ecological communities (E.g.conduct actions to maintain and rehabilitate threatened species habitats, restore critically endangered ecological communities, inform land managers of the threatened nature of the species and its location, and monitor and record population and habitat
- identify and evaluate the impacts of nationally listed key threatening processes by reducing key threatening processes. (E.g. deploy actions listed in Threat Abatement Plans or develop actions that reduce:
- harm to marine species from marine debris
- competition or predation from feral animals
- land clearance
- spread of listed pests and diseases
- identify world heritage areas and national heritage places by supporting management of the values of world heritage areas and national heritage places
- identify listed migratory species and their habitat by managing the habitat of listed migratory species, including sea turtles and migratory water birds (E.g. protect the nesting habitat of sea turtles by closing the area to vehicles, or manage roosting or feeding habitats for migratory birds)
National policies, strategies, guidelines and plans
- Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
- Wetlands of national and international importance
- Threatened species recovery plans
- Key Threatening Processes
- Threat abatement plans
7. Promote Indigenous community participation in planning and delivery of Regional NRM outcomes
The scope of regional plans:
- identify and document current community engagement arrangements
- articulate specific actions and plans supporting improved Indigenous participation
- adopt participatory strategies and membership rules (at the board or advisory group level) that appropriately address Indigenous community issues, taking into account community size, ownership, and development or support potential
- put in place processes relevant to continuing or improving cross-cultural understanding, cooperation and relationship development
- identify economic and social returns relevant to Indigenous engagement in NRM processes
- ensure consistency with obligations in Australian Government and state and territory bilateral agreements, and national, state or territory Indigenous community policies
This can be achieved through actions that engage Indigenous Communities, such as
- supporting activities that improve indigenous NRM activities and planning
- increasing the capacity of Indigenous communities to understand, identify and apply improved NRM practices, or to articulate and communicate their knowledge of NRM issues
- assisting Indigenous community development of discussion, decision and participation options
- encouraging and contribute direct or cooperative support of the development of Indigenous participatory structures, organisations and governance arrangements
- promoting cross-cultural awareness at all levels
- incorporating Indigenous NRM aspirational and resource condition targets and actions into the regional plan
- building partnerships with Indigenous communities supporting complementary NRM outcome
Key
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