Living River on a Beautiful Day

The Brahminy Kite flies in slowly and settles on a branch overlooking the river. Tiny birds such as Wrens and Flycatchers hop chirpily through the undergrowth. Ravens caw overhead. It's just another beautiful day on the river. As Bono sings in the evocative U2 song Beautiful Day.

It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out

Here, in Bono's song, incidentally performed at the Live 8 megaconcert, beauty meets concern and care for global devastation. And, in a plea for action, it calls for peace and social and environmental justice.

U2 use their music to raise political issues. They use their celebrity status and moving lyrics to call for an end to poverty, to stop overfishing, to halt rapid overdevelopment and to bring peace to the world in the song's image of the peace dove. Hope springs eternal - after the biblical flood, the world was born new again, colours burst forth and it was, and is, beautiful.

Beauty, poetry and any mention of the spiritual seem to be anathema to river management and are are largely missing from the more clinical discussions on natural resource approaches. Passion for place is absent. Feelings of love or attachment are buried as if projects to protect, save or restore a beautiful place like the river domain have little to do with these emotions. Individuals and groups involved in NRM community consultations are referred to as 'stakeholders' who are encouraged to bring arguments about the merits or otherwise of the stakes they hold. Emotions may flare but feelings of love, joy and passion rarely hold sway with decision makers.

Places may get protected not because people love them and express their feelings of love openly but perhaps because we/they realise that to be heard and taken seriously, we/they need to voice our concerns in NRM speak - resources, impacts, allocations, assessments, scientific research findings and management measures. But what needs to be managed - is it human or nature?

But some of these narrowly framed NRM practices are being countered in an unsual way - using art and music to raise community awareness about environmental and social concerns in more creative and innovative ways. In many places across the globe, creativity has become a cornerstone for community action and involvement.

One powerful example of creative ecology is what's known as River Dialogues. In different localities around the US, communities are taking part in discussions about their river systems. The aim is to find a balance between the needs of residents and the needs of the river. For example, in Spokane, the River Dialogues project sourced and involved local residents 'passionate' about the river. They told stories about their relationship with the river and along the way created relationship and community capital.

One of the local residents, Mary Kunkel, started a small activist group called River Sisters, made of up of women who cared passionately about their region and were worried about the river. The river area was destined to become a 'condo' development but their concerted effort and committed action led to the creation of an open access river park instead.

This now very well-used and loved park began with passion and sharing stories about what the river meant to them.

Another Spokane group Friends of the Falls also encouraged locals to think about, and connect with the river. Says Steve Faust, the group's Executive Director:

'My relationship with the river was like a lot of people in this town. They sort of know it's there, but they don't really pay much attention to it. One of things we try to do as an organization is to change the way that people relate to this river. To really get them to engage with it in a positive way, with the expectation that if they engage with it, we will, as a city, have a higher degree of concern about what we do with the river.' (Spokesman Review, 2006).

Telling and re-telling stories of place is one way to keep the history and presence of a place alive and in people's hearts. It can also help raise awareness about how to improve and/or restore water quality and riverbank eco-aesthetics by sharing experiences of involvement in rivercare and recreation as well as knowledge of the river's ecology. Emerging out of this process of sharing stories, suggests Linda Burnham (2001), founder and director of the Community Arts Network, come innovative ways of managing and improving the water environment.

Another River Dialogues project, this time in Pennsylvania, set out to engage local residents in 'issues of water quality, riverbank diversity, stream restoration, and river advocacy'. Using a multi-disciplinary team of artists and scientists known as 3 Rivers, 2nd Nature, the project assessed water quality and the state of urban riverbanks and questioned the 'blue and green infrastructure of a recovering landscape' by asking the following questions:

'1. Can artists working as cultural agents affect the public policies and private economic programs, which mark and define urban places and ecosystems?
2. Given the issues of scale, the power of private interests and the state both invested in the development/growth model, can the artist develop a public realm advocacy that expands the creative act beyond the authorship of the artist?
3. Finally, can (and should) artists create verifiable social change?'

Blending ecology with art, the research team arranged river tours and gathered residents, artists and ecologists together to tell stories and brainstorm ideas in groups referred to as charrettes. Through these active and engaged focus groups the research team devised a set of Living River Principles.

Living River Principles is a set of guidelines for caring for local waterways and also designed as a 'challenge' to communities, governments and residents about the urgent need to ensure healthy water quality for rivers and streams, and to do something about it, especially at the local level.

The Living River principles state:
'1. Each community should monitor and care for water quality in rivers and streams
2. Upstream community water problems should not impact downstream communities
3. Water problems should be solved at the source, addressing cause, not effect
4. Public rights to waterways and wetlands should not be compromised by private interests
5. Wetlands and streams should be treated as economic and ecological assets
6. Wetlands and streams should not be lost, and should be restored where possible
7. Public access to and from the water, and along the water's edge, should be restored
8. Riverbanks should be preserved or restored to their natural form wherever possible
9. Pre-industrial connections between water and communities should be restored
10. Redevelopment should accommodate public access to water and riverbanks
11. Redevelopment should restore community, culture, ecology and economy.'

These principles are part of a wider program to encourage action towards protecting riverine ecosystems at all levels. They are based on the presumption that water needs to be a common access resource. But in many regions, water is also a privatized resource, and thus the cost of what is a basic right can become, and has become, way too expensive for individuals who simply can't afford it.

The rationale of the Living Principles states that:'All citizens should be able to have a direct relationship to water; All rivers and streams should meet the water quality standard for swimming; and Rivers and streams should support an increasing diversity of plant and wildlife.' These recommendations are not dissimilar to the water quality reports from SE Queensland, and more widely, rivers throughout Australia.

But in a field of rapid development and lack of action on Living River Principles, coupled with the severe drought, creating healthy river systems and restoring environmental damage seems a long way off...but still possible. It requires passion, certainly, and commitment, and perhaps a shift in resource management practices to hold consultations as conversations where stories can be shared and in the process, both the environment and the local community can be regenerated.

Reference
Burnham LF, 2001, Telling and Listening in Public: Factors for Success, Reading Room, Community Arts Network, http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2001/02/telling_and_lis_2.php
Spokeman Review, 2006, Spokane River Dialogues, http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=129449

Ecologies of Care

Caring for the place where you live/love - how does that happen? Is the quality of caring something we only hold in the mind? Or does caring for place entail a practical engagement with that place? And does it involve a sense of responsibility and/or some kind of action to look after that place?

When I started this blog I knew little about this place, the original custodians of the land, the life of the colonists, and the changes that white settlement brought (and wrought). Learning about the historicity of this place has come about through meeting a local historian and other long-time residents along the trail, reading local histories, and peering through the undergrowth for signs of former riverbank uses - sugar cane farm, cattle raising, bird sanctuary, golf course, recreation - when there were swimming baths and sandy beaches along the river, when people used to live in boats moored to jetties, and when the river was clear and fishing abundant.

Caring for the river has encouraged this research and engagement. And I have learnt much from the river itself and the creatures who dwell here. The highlight was the flurry of Brahaminy Kites as they came, built their nest, laid eggs, hunted and watched over the river but the sadness as they were eventally chased away by a barrage of maurauding birds.

Each day there is something new to see and experience. Willie Wagtails shift location and their dancing flows with the river's tides. Red Wrens make way for their Blue cousins. Pardalotes dig their small tunnels into the muddy embankment and find home. Dozens of Cockatoos forage in the treetops. Black Ducks bark from their vantage point above in the Eucalypts. Sacred Kingfishers come and go. Each day another layer is peeled away; each day something more is revealed; this place is a veritable jewell of the Brisbane River.

And yet this vital natural corridor is under increasing pressure to change. The surrounding natural habitat, so essential for protecting water quality, is threatened especially by rapid development and the desire for water views. As a consequence, natural capital is displaced by other forms of capital.

When development is mooted local residents need to be consulted about how they perceive changes to the river valley and their views need to be taken into account. Caring needs to go both ways - so sustainable residential developments are created, ones which blend trees and natural amenity with eco-friendly construction.

Studies on how people perceive rivers and their preferences for particular riverscapes has shown they prefer rivers which curve and wind offering a sense of mystery and views through open trees (Levin, 1977 in Ryan, 1998). Another study found that the knowledge that 'nature' was present near to one's home was a strong indicator of residents' satisfaction (Talbot et al, 1987), while other research suggested people living near an 'unkempt creek' felt more affinity for a creek further away which was kempt and 'park-like' (Ryan, 1998: 226-227).

Robert Ryan (1998) surveyed residents in a rural region of the American midwest. And perhaps like here, they commented on the river's quality, pollution and the damage of agricultural runoff. One resident said: 'The river has been turned into a giant sewer, the farm pesticide and herbicide has killed most of the fish species, muskrats are non-existent. The amount of birdlife and habitat is way down.' (234).

Farmers and residents, long term and recent arrivals had differing perceptions about riverscapes and natural amenity with newly arrived folks being more attracted to local natural settings (the river and woods) than longer term residents who had more affinity with domesticated farmscapes (235).

When development threatens the river valley planners could take residents' values and perceptions into account. Robert Ryan says: 'Understanding how rural residents perceive river corridors ... is only half the battle. The more difficult task is for planners and local communities to develop plans which are senstitive to both human and environmental concerns (236).

Which brings me back to caring for place. If the Brisbane River valley is threatened by more and more development, to what extent are local people's perceptions canvassed? And if they care, and want to oppose habitat and river bank damage, will their caring voice be heard?

In contrast, where the public has been involved in consultation on river restoration, a UK study showed that local residents valued the river highly, used it increasingly, and attached great importance to the consultation and feedback process (Tunstall et al, 2000).

References:
Levin JE, 1977, Riverside Preference: On-site and Photographic Reactions, Unpublished Masters thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Ryan RL, 1998, Local Perceptioins and Values for a Midwestern River Corridor, Landscape and Urban Planning, 42, 225-237.
Talbot JF, Bardwell LV, Kaplan R, 1987, The Function of Urban Nature: Uses and Values of Different Types of Urnam Nature Settings, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 4, 47-63.
Tunstall SM, Penning-Roswell EC, Tapsell SM and Eden SE, 2000, River Restoration: Public Attitudes and Expectations, JCIWEM, 14, 363-370.