Soil Conservation in Australia

For about 70 years now, Australia has used a variety of technical, institutional, legislative, and strategic tools for soil conservation. During the first 50 of those years, the soil conservation effort remained relatively unchanged. In the past 20 years, the discipline has changed substantially.Soil conservation is a state responsibility in Australia, and by the mid-1900s, most states had introduced soil conservation laws and established soil conservation institutions. Some became world-renowned, the Soil Conservation Service of New South Wales, for example. Legislative responsibilities focused on the control and mitigation of water and wind erosion in agricultural and pastoral areas, sometimes from a catchment perspective. Close cooperation with farmers and pastoralists was a hallmark of those institutions.The federal government maintained a coordinating role with the states and the Australian Standing Committee on Soil Conservation, which was formed in the 1950s with representation from state and federal governments. Implementation remained a state responsibility.A turning point came in the late 1970s when the federal government coordinated a national evaluation of land degradation and soil conservation strategies and policies. The National Soil Conservation Program was established in 1983 to confront the country's serious land degradation problem. States were allocated