The federal and Victorian governments have developed drought resilience plans for regions including Goulburn.
It and two other regions are the first of nine regional communities across Victoria to develop a community-led Regional Drought Resilience Plan through the Future Drought Fund’s Regional Drought Resilience Planning Program, jointly funded by the Albanese and Allan governments.
A further six plans will be developed and finalised in 2024 for the Barwon, Great South Coast, Central Highlands, Mallee, Loddon Campaspe and Ovens Murray regions.
The plans will be co-ordinated by councils and cover a range of areas, including community wellbeing, resilient local businesses and economies, building skills and leadership, landscapes and collaboration.
The Goulburn Drought Resilience Plan builds on recent experience of both dry seasonal conditions and major flooding to identify actions that support communities and natural and built environments, such as education programs to improve water use efficiency in irrigated agriculture, as well as programs to attract and retain young people in agriculture in the region.
The Victorian Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub is based at the Dookie Campus of the University of Melbourne.
Director Michael Tausz said: “The Decide and Thrive project, which is being delivered by the University of New England, CQUniversity and CSIRO through funding from the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund, is working to assist graziers ... by developing innovative and regionally relevant livestock ranking strategies.
“It’s great to see the first Regional Drought Resilience Plans launched, with Goulburn, Gippsland and Mallee-Wimmera the three preliminary regions.
“These plans are a Future Drought Fund program, begun around the same time as the eight Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hubs were established nationwide, which are also an FDF program.
“The hub’s farming-system partners were involved in consultations, supporting and helping direct the consultation processes to gain the best result.
“Agriculture Victoria, which is also a Vic Hub partner, led the plans and kept us up to date as the hub developed; they were also in communication with Vic Hub farming-system partners to avoid overlap in consultations.
“These three early plans were quite a while in development, with consultations key to their creation. They’ve just been through a review by CSIRO to gain official approval, and we welcome their release.”