
Beyond The Bell
Program: Education
Building capacity for an ongoing complex systems change initative in South West Victoria
ProjectRiver Laws Program
Amount$90,000 over two years
Date2019
ProgramEnvironment
TRUST OBJECTIVES | PROJECT OBJECTIVES |
---|---|
Rural and regional Victoria | Peri-urban Melbourne, Geelong region, and east Gippsland |
Reducing inequality | Building community capacity to engage in waterway protection and championing |
Building organisational capacity | Providing specialist resources and expertise to community environmental organisations to extend and deepen urban and peri-urban environmental outcomes |
Collaboration and partnership | Yarra Riverkeeper Association, Friends of Steele Creek, Werribee River Association, Friends of the Barwon River, Gippsland Environment Group, Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation, RE Ross Trust |
Strengthening community voices in the governance of rivers and waterways
Water and waterways are key public assets for environmental, social and cultural reasons but they have been historically degraded and neglected. Environmental Justice Australia is working with community organisations to identify and implement legal and policy solutions that lift standards for waterway management, build capacity, and facilitate urban waterway community networks through practical support.
Image Kororoit Creek, restored by community groups over two decades. Credit: Colleen Miller
Actions and planning for Victoria’s waterways, including the outcome of the Yarra Strategic Plan, aim to be ambitious, robust and transformative. This project builds on several years’ work responding to the needs of communities for protection and restoration of waterways through improved governance and higher legislative standards (see Waterways of the West case study).
Snapshot:
"EJA is collaborating with community groups for a new generation of ‘river laws’. Our work in this area aims to use the law not only to change how we manage and govern rivers but change how we relate to rivers and shift the stories law has to tell about waterways. Indigenous communities have done this since time immemorial. Now the rest of us need ways of treating waterways as living entities. The law can be part of that process." Bruce Lindsay, lawyer, Environmental Justice Australia.
Program: Education
Building capacity for an ongoing complex systems change initative in South West Victoria
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Our grants matrix is a graphical representation of our matched objectives. Each column of circles represents one of the funding criteria, and the colour coded central row represents the program that funding was received in.
Use the interactive example below to see whether your project ticks at least 3 of the 5 objectives.