Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
employment during the past five years. Tourism has replaced extractive industries but
is largely seasonal in temperate Australia. Absentee owners cannot contribute as much
to community service as permanent residents, and community organizations may
struggle to maintain membership.
A Culture of Volunteering
Victoria is fortunate to have a strong volunteering ethic. Ubiquitous community insti-
tutions, including the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and the Country Women's Asso-
ciation, have traditionally provided important social frameworks and services to rural
communities. The CFA is a volunteer-based, rural firefighting service responsible for
the suppression of wildfire on private lands. With a statewide membership of about
sixty thousand, the organization may be one of the largest volunteer organizations in
the world. With most country towns facing the threat of wildfire at some time or an-
other, the importance of the CFA's work is well understood and widely appreciated.
Victorians understand the enormous contributions that volunteers can make, and this
may provide conditions favorable to newer initiatives, such as volunteer-based conser-
vation and restoration of coastal ecosystems.
About twenty thousand people engage at least annually in some form of coastal
volunteering in one or more of about 120 groups. Groups include friends groups,
Coast Action, and Coastcare groups, and various other local and regional networks,
advocacy groups, and specialist naturalist groups (e.g., ornithologists or botanists). Re-
search undertaken in 2007 (VCC 2007) revealed that three in ten Victorians were in-
terested in volunteering in a coastal group, while half indicated that they would par-
ticipate in a “one-off” event, such as an annual Clean-up Day. Females and younger
Victorians (aged thirteen to thirty) showed the highest levels of interest in these
events.
The economic contribution of volunteer efforts in Victoria is significant. A 2005
study prepared by the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) found
the net worth of environmental volunteering in Victoria was $180 million, while the
value of volunteering across all sectors in 2002 was estimated at $10 billion, nearly 8
percent of gross state product (Department of Sustainability and Environment 2005).
The economic contribution of coastal conservation volunteers alone is on the order of
$20 million per year. As well as the social, environmental, and economic benefits, the
government benefits through working in direct partnership with communities and by
gaining direct feedback and guidance from the community about matters that con-
cern them. Furthermore, as long as there are volunteers invested in improving coastal
ecosystems, there will always be a conservation constituency to safeguard against the
political process.
Organizing Action
Organized community-led conservation initiatives in Victoria have their roots in the
twenty-year-old Landcare movement. In that effort, farmers and state land managers
