The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (usually known as the Wentworth Group) is an independent group comprising Australian scientists, economists, and business people with conservation interests.
History
The name of the group comes from the venue of their principal meetings prior to release of their first blueprint, Blueprint for a Living Continent, in November 2002.[1]
Program
The Wentworth Group has three core objectives:
Driving innovation in the management of Australia's biodiversity, land, and water resources;
Engage business, community and political leaders in a dialogue to find and implement solutions to the challenge of environmental stewardship facing the future of Australian society;
Building capacity by mentoring and supporting young scientists, lawyers and economists to develop their skills and understanding of public policy.
Their first statement, Blueprint for a Living Continent, set out what it believed were the key changes that needed to be made to deliver a sustainable future for our continent and its people. The Group emphasised the need to:[1]
Clarify water property rights and the obligations associated with those rights to give farmers some certainty and to enable water to be recovered for the environment.
Restore environmental flows to stressed rivers, such as the River Murray and its tributaries.
Immediately end broad scale land clearing of remnant native vegetation and assist rural communities with adjustment. This provides fundamental benefits to water quality, prevention of salinity, prevention of soil loss and conservation of biodiversity.
Pay farmers for environmental services (clean water, fresh air, healthy soils). Where we expect farmers to maintain land in a certain way that is above their duty of care, we should pay them to provide those services on behalf of the rest of Australia.
Incorporate into the cost of food, fibre and water the hidden subsidies currently borne by the environment, to assist farmers to farm sustainably and profitably in this country.
Terry Hillman, AM, an ecologist who is an adjunct professor at La Trobe University; a former Member of the Murray-Darling Basin Sustainable Rivers Audit
Emeritus ProfessorBruce Thom, AM, FTSE, a geographer who is the Chair of the 2001 Australian State of the Environment; and a former Chair, Australian Coast and Climate Change Council
Teagan Shields, a proud Arabunna descendant from Lake Eyre country and a PhD candidate in empowering indigenous biodiversity conservation at the University of Melbourne.
Peter Cullen, AO, FTSE (1943–2008), an ecologist, who served as a member of the Group until his death
Richard Davis, a hydrologist who was a Chief Science Advisor to the Australian National Water Commission; and research scientist at CSIRO Australia
Quentin Grafton, FASSA, Professor of Economics, ANU Public Policy Fellow, Fellow of the Asia and the Pacific Policy Society and director of the Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy (CWEEP) at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.
Mike Young, FASSA, an Australian economist and water policy expert, holds a Research Chair in Environmental and Water Policy at the University of Adelaide and is a Fellow of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.
