You, Me, Them and the Landscape: Collaborating for the Wellbeing for All

14th Murrumbidgee Landcare Annual Forum

Dinner 26th October 2011

Guest speaker

Stuart B. Hill
Adjunct Professor of Social Ecology
University of Western Sydney

I am well in every sense, leading a meaningful life, with caring family and community relationships, within a society that understands, values and fairly rewards and supports my work, and within a landscape that is ecologically ‘healthy’ and sustainable.

I suspect that all of us would love this to be completely true; and that we, in a variety of ways, are having to deal with many of the aspects of this ‘vision’ that are sadly not true.

The commonest ways in which we do this is through denial, postponement, blame, complaining, emergency measures, distractive and compensatory activities, problem-solving interventions, and involvement with projects that, however helpful, only address limited aspects of the underlying problem – together with engagement with some helpful networks, such as Landcare and Riverina Bluebell.

Deep down, however, we all know (or at least suspect) that what is needed is fundamental change that is both broader (local to global) and deeper (personal to political) – change that involves our species, nation, communities of practice, and our personal beliefs, priorities, competencies and ways of relating and acting.

In this presentation I am daring to present some frameworks for thinking about this more clearly and responsibly; and for collaborating together in mapping out the most effective and hopeful ways forwards.

Professor Stuart Hill

Professor Hill will be introduced by Chris Wilson from Riverina Bluebell.