Interview for Radio Marinara
It was a pleasure and delight to join Anthony Boxhall and Kade Mills on RRR’s Radio Marinara this Sunday to talk about Restore the Bay.
We spoke about the upcoming workshops, why and how, collecting information from you about your connection to the ecosystem, is important.
Join a workshop!
With your input, we will create a community-owned tool to help us make better decisions for our bay, now and into the future. Moreover, the process itself allows us to ask questions of each other, which will reveal surprising ways we can work together to design actions to … restore the bay.
Please sign up for a 1-hour online workshop in mid-May (Zoom)
Tue 6 May, 6:30-7:30PM | Wed 7 May, 6:30-7:30PM | Sun 11 May, 6:30-7:30PM
Or, join our in-person workshop at the Ecocentre, St Kilda
What does Restore the Bay mean?
A common question I get asked is … that title sounds quite a lofty title … where does it come from?
Well, the full scientific title of the project is too verbose to use publicly. That is: “Building community capacity for understanding, preserving and restoring Port Phillip Bay” … it’s much easier to point people to a website using the abbreviated title.
But it’s also quite accurate. We’re challenging the assumption that the bay can be restored to some preconceived ideal. This isn’t about restoring the bay to look a certain way, it’s about Restoring the Bay’s natural processes that look after us.
We know the bay won’t look the same in years to come so instead, we have to breathe life back into the ecosystem so it can reform its purpose and settle back into patterns of sustainability that support and nurture our livelihoods and lifestyles (our economy).
That path to restoring natural processes beings by understanding we are part of that system. Because we are the biggest animals in the ecosystem. We are drivers of change – both positive and negative – and we are the recipients of success and failure. It’s only right that we should have a say in this.
Restore the Bay will have a few important outcomes:
A tool that will enable us to see our personal and shared values represented in a picture, so we can work out where and how to take actions for the best overall benefit to our community;
A way to give communities a voice in their own environment, that’s connected to real economic and social outcomes and values, and to do-design improvements – a community stewardship plan; and
A way to transform our thinking, where we see our future and that of our community and economy, as connected to nature restoration values, so we become better custodians for ourselves.
