Our Priority Pillars

Purpose of Pillars

The Northern Hub has five pillars, or themes to guide our activities. Each pillar is guided by a Steering Committee that includes volunteer representatives from industry and government, in WA and NT. Committee members provide their expertise to ensure projects are relevant, valuable, and deliver value for money.

  • The Northern Hub prioritises the inclusion and empowerment of First Nations communities, ensuring their knowledge systems and contributions are central to resilience strategies:

    Knowledge Sharing: Collaborating with First Nations land managers and Traditional Owners to communicate insights about resilience threats to wild harvests, while safeguarding Indigenous intellectual property.

    Capacity Building: Providing routine training to enhance participation in pastoral and forestry industries.

  • Building knowledge, skills and confidence of land managers is integral to driving transformational change in northern agricultural systems and to build resilient industries:

    Skill Development: Strengthening networks and providing training opportunities to enhance practical competencies for long-term career pathways in agriculture and supply chains.

    Barrier Identification: Addressing challenges in workforce attraction, retention, and capability development across industries and services.

  • Promoting sustainable production practices is critical to maintaining landscape profitability and biodiversity:

    Pasture Management: Encouraging the use of improved pasture species to enhance feed quality and quantity.

    Paddock Challenge: Challenging producers to ‘beat the researchers’ in choosing the best stocking rates for profitability.

  • Improving access to nature-based markets in Northern Australia by providing clearer information on possibilities and pitfalls, and case studies of early adopters

    Clearer Information: Providing plain-language information to navigate local and federal laws, and current market opportunities

    Case Studies: Discussing the successes and failures of landholders who have tried entering natural capital markets before, and identifying regional solutions.

  • Supporting land managers to proactively manage risk, focussing on risk that comes from seasonal climate variation and longer-term trends

    Risk Management: Improving financial literacy and risk mitigation skills to enhance resilience in health, profitability, and supply chains.

    Understanding weather: Training pastoralists in using climate and weather forecasts to make better management decisions and better understand climate-related risk.