We would like to alert members, subscribers and all LLEN stakeholders to three outstanding upcoming forums that focus on much of what is at the heart to the work of the Central Range LLEN. Three world-class opportunities exist to engage with key policy makers, community leaders and researchers who are all focused on strengthening communities by finding ways to better synchronise local planning, improve skill, competitiveness and economic and social outcomes.

• Governments and Communities in Partnership - Sept 25-27th Melbourne

• Strategy and Global Competitiveness - Nov 30th - Sydney

• Asset Based Community Development - 6th -7th Dec -Melbourne

Governments and Communities in Partnership

The two most important developments in policy making in recent years concern efforts to 'join-up' different public services and related initiatives to strengthen communities to help them become more economically and socially resilient.

The Centre for Public Policy Governments and Communities in Partnership conference will bring together key policy makers, community leaders and researchers from around Australia , together with leading experts from the UK, Ireland, Austria, Canada, the United States and New Zealand . The aim of the program will be to deepen the academic and policy debate about the impact and value of these transformations, and also to support the needs of practitioners to discuss cutting-edge cases and issues with colleagues from around the world.

It is organised by the OECD LEED Programme in collaboration with the Centre for Public Policy.

Event details here

Strategy and Global Competitiveness

Michael Porter, acknowledged as the most influential living management thinker, and respected Harvard Business School professor, will share his latest unpublished material on strategy and global competitiveness, with an in-depth focus on Australia. Professor Porter is a leading authority on competitive strategy and the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions. He leads The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.

Professor Porter's work on Institutional structures for rural economic development and his work on regional clusters is of particular [and critical] interest to many stakeholders within the LLEN and broader region. I highly encourage representatives from peak industry bodies and local government planners to consider attending this event.

Event Details here

Asset Based Community Development - National Facilitator Training Workshops

An exciting opportunity exists for people Australia – wide who have an interest and commitment to Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) philosophies and methodologies, and want to further their facilitator / trainer skills, and become part of the creation of an Australian National Network.

The Asset-Based Community Development Institute (ABCD), established in 1995 by the Community Development Program at Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research, is built upon three decades of community development research by John Kretzmann and John L. McKnight. The ABCD Institute spreads its findings on capacity-building community development in two ways:

(1) through extensive and substantial interactions with community builders, and

(2) by producing practical resources and tools for community builders to identify, nurture, and mobilize neighborhood assets.

Three facilitator training workshops are being held, each with a maximum of 30 participants. Training will be provided and certified by the ABCD Institute at Northwestern University in Chicago, USA.

Contributors include The Municipal Association of Victoria, Centre for Community Child Health - The Royal Children's Hospital and Peter Kenyon's "Bank of Ideas" group.

Event details here 

Related Links

OECD - LEED - Local Economic and Employment Development

Centre for Public Policy - Univeristy of Melbourne

Michael Porter - The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness -Harvard University

Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research - ABCD

CRLLEN's Discussion Forum on Asset Based Community Development

8:50:17 AM    

Melillo[base ']s research in Massachusetts forests has highlighted a little known piece of the carbon cycle: If more nitrogen becomes available to plants, they grow better, and tend to accumulate more carbon-- reducing the amount released to the atmosphere. So one way of helping reduce atmospheric CO2 is feeding trees with nitrogen. But this works only to a point, since too much nitrogen, from such sources as fertilizers, washes out of the soil and into water supplies.

The bigger picture Melillo presents is grim: human land use -- specifically the conversion of forests into agricultural land -- represents an irreversible loss of the capacity of the planet to store carbon. He points to an astonishingly destructive project: China[base ']s $7 billion dollar investment in Borneo in 2005 to clear tropical forests in order to create palm tree plantations to produce biofuel. Half of Borneo[base ']s forests are already gone. Comparable enterprises are underway in Brazil, clearing forest and savannah to make way for massive soy bean plantations -- for biodiesel fuel. Melillo points to the paradox of destroying carbon dioxide storing capacity, to feed economies that will produce more carbon dioxide. [base "]The prospects for carbon storage on land, if this activity continues -- it's not a pretty picture," he says. He also points out that as the world warms up, we must contend with more frequent forest fires, as well as the vast pool of carbon lying in cold regions, which will be released into the atmosphere as frozen soil thaws and decomposes.

[base "]I look into a very clouded crystal ball,[per thou] concludes Melillo. [base "]Our knowledge of the global carbon cycle is incomplete and our current approach of managing it is not in the interests of humankind.[per thou] -- [May 18, 2006 4:00 PM] [MIT World » Recent Updates]
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