Sustainability: A study of Birdsville and its environs

Abstract

This paper provides a general profile of Birdsville and its environs. It also discusses some of the features that contribute to sustainability, with a particular emphasis on local capacity and determination to translate locally existing stocks into flows that sustain human life and make the settlements viable. The paper draws on a range of secondary sources, particularly data available from Australian Bureau of Statistics, and it supplements this with learnings from several trips to Birdsville over the period July 2007 – June 2009. The paper concludes that an active community and effective governance have established the economic and social conditions that make sustainability possible. This achievement is the more meaningful for the recognition that vulnerability remains and in such a remote and arid region sustainability can never be taken for granted.