Day One Agenda
Tuesday 29th November, 2011

8:30
Registration, coffee & networking
9:00
Welcome to Country
Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council
9:10
Welcome remarks from the Chair
Strategy & Planning
9:20
Introductory outline of strategy & planning objectives & outcomes
9:30
Exploring the roadmap & priorities for the National Plan Environmental Information (NPEI)

  • Exploring the whole-of-Australian Government environmental information reform program
  • How the initiative will assist with environmental decisionmaking and requires shared vision and collective action to deliver greatly improved access to high quality information
  • Developing environmental accounts to help us account for changes in the environment and understand the impacts of decisions on the environment, economy and society
Warwick McDonald
Branch Head, Environmental Information Services
Bureau of Meteorology
10:05
Progression towards the next phase of Caring for our Country

  • What have stakeholders told the Caring for our Country Review?
  • The importance of M&E to support effective decisionmaking
  • Communication as a critical component to the process
  • Where to next?
Paul Salmond
Assistant Secretary, Policy and People
Australian Government Land and Coasts
10:40
Framing M&E in a policy context for NSW

  • Stressing the importance of M&E to support effective decision-making
  • Ensuring that communication is critical to the process
  • Influencing the decision makers to better inform policy
Tom Grosskopf
Director, Landscapes & Ecosystems Conservation
Office of Environment and Heritage
Department of Premier and Cabinet, NSW
11:15
Morning tea & networking
11:45
Coordinating standards for M&E across Victoria

  • Working towards a common language for planning and monitoring
  • Developing a 'program logic' as the essential basis for understanding why and what we monitor
  • Establishing clear roles, responsibilities, standards and good planning for meaningful evaluation
Dr Dale Watson
Acting Manager, Monitoring & Reporting Unit
Department of Sustainability and Environment, VIC
12:20
How regional NRM plans can guide terrestrial carbon investment

  • Using regional plans to deliver landscape co-benefits and avoid perverse outcomes
  • Re-designing regional plans for their new role of guiding carbon investment to build landscape health
Mike Berwick, Chair
Terrain NRM, QLD
12:55
Networking lunch
1:55
Collecting resource condition information related to the environmental accounting pilot

  • Long term monitoring and modelling of water quality condition
  • Monitoring whole-scale changes in land-use and linking this to management action
  • Using an open platform of information to analyse remote sensing data
Geoff Penton, CEO
Queensland Murray Darling Committee
2:30
Using a resilience framework for assessing & managing socio-ecological systems

  • Outline of a resilience based approach to catchment planning
  • Profiling the new Namoi Catchment Action Plan (CAP)
  • Implications for monitoring and managing social-ecological systems going forward
Dr Francesca Andreoni
Program Manager – Strategic Planning
Namoi CMA, NSW
3:05
Round table discussions
Delegates will break out into groups to discuss the key themes of the conference
3:40
Afternoon tea & networking
Implementation & Monitoring
4:15
Introductory outline of implementation & monitoring objectives & outcomes
Land Cover
4:25
Using the Dynamic Land Cover Dataset to characterise landscape changes

  • Examining the nationally consistent land cover information based on innovative analysis of time-series satellite data
  • The starting point for national-scale monitoring of changes and trends in Australia's landscapes
  • Using cases demonstrating how integration with other economic and environmental data could enable the design and assessment of national NRM programs
  • Exploring the aim of future works using specific tools to assess sustainable farming practices, management of water resources and soil erosion
Dr Medhavy Thankappan, Director, Science and Strategy
National Earth Observation Group
Geoscience Australia
5:00
Closing remarks from the Chair & end of Day One

View agenda day two