Dear Friends of Greater Sydney Landcare,
This year has been one of growth and collaboration. From bush regeneration and habitat restoration to community education programs and youth engagement initiatives, the work we’ve accomplished together is laying the foundation for a greener, more resilient Greater Sydney. Each project, large or small, contributes to the long-term health of our unique ecosystems, and your support is vital in making this vision a reality.
As we look to the future, we are excited about the opportunities ahead—strengthening connections within our community, engaging new volunteers, and expanding our reach.
Greater Sydney Landcare AGM
Greater Sydney Landcare (GSL) invites all members to attend our AGM to be held online at 4pm on Tuesday 26th November. Please RSVP to chair@greatersydneylandcare.org and we will send you a link closer to the date.
Global Nature Positive Summit
As Chair of GSL I was invited to attend the first Global Nature Positive Summit held in Sydney on 8th and 9th October. It was an interesting mix of attendees from all sorts of backgrounds including First Nations people of Australia and various Pacific nations, Finance, Mining, Farming, Business and Environment. I was heartened to hear so many people from a wider audience talking about repairing and improving nature and stopping the loss of nature.
Some of the many messages I took away include:
- First Nations message is we all need to:
- reimagine conservation and heal the land
- develop a 100-year plan
- act now and develop the same values
- learn from nature and Aboriginal lore
- develop proper partnerships with First Nations people and invite them to the table before we start planning projects – and include young people and women (nurturers)
- move First Nations communities out of poverty in a meaningful way through Nature Positive project leadership and involvement
- Natural capital accounting is front and centre with good monitoring and baseline data
- Both Federal and State Governments are working towards a Nature Positive Economy
- To accelerate change we need to have Nature Positive Governance integrated into legislation
- Ocean conservation is like a bank for the future and needs to be measured and advanced
- Businesses need to measure their footprint on nature and need standardised frameworks and methodologies to accelerate change
- Commitment to positive change attracts bright young people and loyalty
- Everything comes back to repairing nature and in the long run costs tax payers much less
- Nature Positive should become the norm
- Government, business and philanthropists need to invest in nature – the return on investment is the savings of not further destroying nature and future costs
- Move away from project finance and move towards landscape restoration with scalable projects – build capacity and find large scale funds for bigger projects with measurable returns and outcomes – ask a banker to help find an investor
- Nature needs to be forefront of every government and business decision.
Lets hope most of this comes to fruition and we do become Nature Positive.
We wish all of you a happy and safe summer!
Kind regards,
Bev Debrincat
Chair of Greater Sydney Landcare
