The Wet Tropics Plan for People and Country is a community-based plan which prioritises natural resource management activities in the Wet Tropics, addressing social, economic and cultural issues, as well as environmental management.
Extensive consultation during the Plan’s development ensures it is a reflection of community priorities and values.
The Plan was launched in November 2015 and Terrain is now responsible for supporting the community with the plan’s development, implementation and ongoing review across the region.
Summary of Priorities
While the full plan is accessed online, a summary document has been prepared to provide an overview of the key components of plan development and the regional and community priorities identified through the planning process.
Click on the link to download a printable version of the Wet Tropics Plan for People and Country Summary of Priorities.
Who Owns the Plan?
We all do! While Terrain is the custodian of the plan, it belongs to the entire Wet Tropics community, including community groups, local government, Traditional Owners and industry groups.
To be successful, the NRM Plan must be relevant to all key NRM partners in the region and influence their decisions.
The Purpose of the Plan
The role of the Wet Tropics NRM Plan (the Wet Tropics Plan for People and Country) is to influence all levels of decision making, including policy makers, investors, community groups, local government and land managers.
It does this through:
- Prioritisation: Identifying regional goals, outcomes and priority actions – at both the regional and local scales. These actions are based on community values and the best available knowledge, to address our region’s challenges – current and emerging. Importantly, the implications of climate change projections have been a key informer of these actions. These priorities aim to influence and attract investment into the region for these priorities.
- Connections: Facilitating partnerships, helping people make connections, learn from one another and stimulating collaborative action.
- Knowledge: Providing community members, land managers and strategic partners with information to help them make decisions about how to manage what is valued in the region. A key feature of the knowledge component of the plan is an interactive mapping portal.
- Monitoring: Providing the basis for tracking progress towards the goals and outcomes, and keeping tabs on how we are progressing with our priority actions.
Responses to commonly asked questions about the Plan and its purpose have been compiled into a Frequently Asked Questions document. Please click on the link to view the document.
How the Plan Works
Unlike a traditional ‘plan’ that is usually a big document that gets dusty on the shelf, this plan is different. It is an interactive web-based plan, enabling anyone to have access, as well as allowing ongoing updates. A key feature is the ability to view the plan through a range of lenses, allowing searches for either a particular topic (eg. biodiversity or climate futures) or by location.
The interactive mapping tools enable people to view a wide range of mapping layers, as well as create their own maps and capture their project information. The mapping tool is a key to monitoring progress.
Underpinning the plan prioritisation is a Plan Logic, which provides the justification for the priority actions, an explanation on the way these actions will be delivered to meet the goals and how progress will be monitored.
What is a Natural Resource Management Plan?
One of the biggest challenges for Natural Resource Management is reconciling and harmonising the objectives of community wellbeing, economic development, environmental protection and sustainable resource use. Equally challenging is finding a connection between local, regional, state and national priorities, but it is an important role that the regional plan must provide.
A regional NRM Plan is the formal documentation of this process, bringing together people from different sectors, tenures and backgrounds, with the aim of getting all parties to agree on where to focus effort. It articulates the actions, mechanisms and partnerships to ensure these priority NRM actions are undertaken in the Wet Tropics.
What isn’t a Natural Resource Management Plan?
A NRM Plan is not a planning scheme, a set of rules or regulations or even an agenda set by government. It is a non-statutory document and nothing in the plan is binding to any party.