The Cotton Communities CRC, working in collaboration with the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation, has agreed to fund $517,427 to conduct a study which is concerned with the socio-economic sustainability of rural communities. The team, lead by Dr Anthony Hogan, School of Sociology, ANU, is made up of community stakeholders, including John Clements (Senior Policy Advisor to Tony Windsor, MP and Councillor, Narrabri Shire Council), policy makers and social researchers. The researchers include Dr Kim Houghton (economist from Economic Solutions), Mr Rob Tanton and Dr Itismita Mohany (economists from NATSEM/UC), Prof Dean Carsons (demographer from Flinders University), Dr Doris Schmallegger and Ms Jen Cleary (Uni SA community development researchers), business analysts David Donnelley and Rob Mercer from Instinct & Reason, Mr Mark Hickman, policy maker with the Queensland Government and Dr Paula Jones, Chief Operating Officer with the Cotton CRC.

The research team met recently at the Australian National University in Canberra, concerned with the critical question as to how rural and regional communities can sustain themselves in the face of significant change. The meeting was hosted by the National Institute for Rural and Regional Australia (NIRRA), at the Australian National University.

‘Across Australia communities in rural and regional Australia face critical challenges to their socioeconomic viability. Global economics, factory closures, water policy, population drift and a booming mining industry are just a few of the pressures changing the economic fundamentals which underpin our communities’ said Dr Anthony Hogan, Director of the National Institute for Rural and Regional Australia.

‘The socioeconomic viability of communities pivots on their capacity to continue to adapt in the face of considerable change. Critical to adaptation is the capacity to rapidly assess the impacts of economic and environmental change of the socioeconomic viability of specific areas’. said Dr Hogan

‘To equally participate in the decision-making process, communities need access to decision making tools (the kinds which policy makers already have) which enable them to easily identify the probable impacts of change. Armed with such information, communities are then in a position to identify pathways for change which optimally benefit their communities.’

To make this project a reality, Dr Hogan leads a high skilled project transdisciplinary team consisting of community stakeholders, economists, business analysts, demographers, community development workers sociologists and environmental scientists. The project is funded through the support of the Cotton CRC and the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation.