Desert Knowl­edge Aus­tralia (DKA) is pleased to announce the release of its Strate­gic Plan 2023 – 2025, which delin­eates a roadmap of pri­or­i­ties and key ini­tia­tives devel­oped in con­sul­ta­tion with part­ners, stake­hold­ers, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and the local busi­ness community. 

In Decem­ber 2022, an ener­gised Board renewed DKA’s pur­pose to ​‘share our place on coun­try to inno­vate, progress social well­be­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty for desert and arid com­mu­ni­ties.’

While DKA’s objec­tives broad­ly focus on socioe­co­nom­ic devel­op­ment and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the new Strate­gic Plan high­lights a return to DKA’s found­ing pur­pose – as advo­cate and facil­i­ta­tor for the progress and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the desert region and its peo­ple – but with ini­tial actions strate­gi­cal­ly focused on two pri­or­i­ty time­lines: short term, and long term. 

The short term pillar aims to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment of DKA’s ecosys­tem through acti­va­tion of the Desert Knowl­edge Precinct (DKP), strength­en­ing exist­ing part­ner­ships and net­works, and expand­ing rev­enue streams via prospec­tive partners. 

Imme­di­ate projects include devel­op­ing onsite accom­mo­da­tion, to be made avail­able to DKP stu­dents and research alum­ni, nur­tur­ing syn­er­gies between part­ners, ten­ants and vis­i­tors, and effec­tive­ly increas­ing util­i­sa­tion of the space. 

The long term pillar will see DKA’s key part­ner­ships progress the Desert Resilience Initiative via the estab­lish­ment of a ​‘Liv­ing Lab’ to col­lab­o­rate on deep dive research into the most urgent needs of our remote com­mu­ni­ties, such as: 

• Cli­mate resilience 

• Water scarci­ty

• Renew­able energy 

• Extreme heat mitigation 

• Cli­mate adap­tive housing 

This will allow DKA to bet­ter explore and coor­di­nate imple­men­ta­tion of sus­tain­able ser­vice sys­tems, there­by accel­er­at­ing the roll-out of solu­tions to address the most preva­lent prob­lems being faced by desert communities. 

‘The DKA Board is proud of our strate­gic plan and thanks all the peo­ple across gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty sec­tors who will­ing­ly gave their time and offered valu­able insights into it. The hard work is ahead of us now to deliv­er on this ambi­tious but time­ly plan that will see ben­e­fits and pos­i­tive impacts across the region’, said DKA Chair, Sera Bray. 

“With Precinct Part­ners, Batch­e­lor Insti­tute & Cen­tre for Appro­pri­ate Tech­nol­o­gy, we’re work­ing to ensure the poten­tial of the Precinct is realised, and its val­ue to the wider com­mu­ni­ty clear­ly demon­strat­ed. Ulti­mate­ly, our col­lec­tive goal is to be estab­lished as a nation­al and inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for research and edu­ca­tion on sus­tain­able desert liv­ing – and, we want our cen­tral Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty to be a part of the jour­ney, because we tru­ly are all in this togeth­er,” said CEO Jim­my Cocking.