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NIT FORUM: Black lands should be in black hands
ISSUE 169 - 21 Jan 2009
ISSUE 169, January 22, 2009: The future of vast tracks of Australian land looks brightest when management is left in the hands of the people who know the country best, writes Dr SEAN KERINS*.
Recently the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) announced a major new initiative in the development of its chain of wildlife sanctuaries across Australia. This was the proposed sub-lease of more than 190,000 ha of Aboriginal-held pastoral lease (Seven Emu and Pungalina) in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria.
AWC stated that it was "the first environmental rental arrangement of its kind [and] has the potential to open up economic opportunities for Indigenous pastoral lease-holders across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia" (The Australian, 11 October 2008).
Combine this with the protection of Australia's declining biodiversity and it sounds like a great objective.
Sadly, the announcement is not something to celebrate as this new environmental agreement undermines the already established Indigenous biodiversity conservation initiatives in the Gulf of Carpentaria and has implications for Indigenous Australians across Australia.
For close to a decade in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Yanyuwa, Garawa and Waanyi have been developing what they call Caring for Country programs.
These are Indigenous initiatives, underpinned by two-way knowledge systems (Indigenous ecological knowledge and bio-physical science) that aim to protect declining biodiversity, manage threatening ecological processes (wildfires, weeds, feral animals), develop community capacity in cultural and natural resource management.
Most importantly these initiatives assist people to remain on their lands and manage them for the benefit of all Australians through the provision of critically important ecological services.
This is the significant and still largely unrecognised benefit that all Australians are able to enjoy from the efforts of Indigenous people living on country.
There have been many successes in Indigenous Caring for Country programs right across northern Australia.
Indigenous land and sea managers have made significant contributions towards the reduction in the spread of ecologically altering weeds an in the occurrence of wildfires and related greenhouse gas emissions through the re-establishment of Indigenous fire regimes.
Indigenous enterprises have been developed based on sustainable wildlife utilisation and many fee-for-service contracts have grown out of recognition of the value and untapped potential of Indigenous ecological knowledge by government and the private sector.
Engagement in these programs has contributed directly to improved socio-economic outcomes through such things as new skill development by young Indigenous people across remote Australia.
Indigenous efforts have been recognised by the Australian Government through its Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA) program and its fledgling Working on Country (WOC) program.
However, Indigenous Caring for Country programs, of which there are over 60 across northern Australia, continue to struggle for resources to keep their programs going.
The majority of these programs are strung together with dozens of grants and fee-for-service contracts to help pay for vehicles, wages, helicopter time for burning, boats, fuel, spray, safety equipment, and training needs.
One of the most important aspects of the Caring for Country program has been the building of on-going partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations such as Land Councils, Bushfires NT, Tropical Savannas CRC, Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
The AWC through their charge into the Northern Territory threaten all this because they have not come with any idea of how to engage in partnership with traditional owners of country involved in land and sea management.
The AWC have come to northern Australia in much the same way the missionaries did a century earlier with little respect for, or understanding of, Indigenous initiatives.
The chain of wildlife sanctuaries that AWC are establishing across northern Australia compete with Indigenous people for scarce resources and duplicate what Indigenous people are already doing. There is no sense of partnership.
On its website, the AWC informs its potential donors that to achieve its conservation goals for Seven Emu and Pungalina it "must establish a field operations base and employ experienced land management staff. Assets such as vehicles, tractors and the equipment required for fire management, weed control and biological surveys must be deployed and maintained."
AWC also tells potential donors that AWC land management actions will be "informed by the best available science" so that AWC can "unlock the secrets to survival for northern Australia's threatened wildlife".
There is no secret to survival of northern Australia's threatened wildlife. The threatening processes that will potentially wipe out much of northern Australia's biodiversity have been clearly identified by Indigenous landowners and the research of the Tropical Savannas CRC and the Northern Territory Biodiversity Unit.
The major threatening process is the altered fire regimes. One of the major causes of this has been the removal of Indigenous people from their lands and the suppression of the their land management practices over many decades.
The great biodiversity benefits of Indigenous people returning to their land has been demonstrated with the return of Bininj people to the Arnhem Land Plateau and the re-implementation of their burning practices and the establishment of the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement project. This Indigenous and non-Indigenous partnership won a Eureka Science Prize.
As well as competing with Indigenous Caring for Country programs the AWC wildlife sanctuary also threatens the native title rights of the Garawa.
The traditional owners of Seven Emu and Pungalina, the Garawa assert native title rights across the country and have registered a Native Title claim (NTD6058/2001). A wildlife sanctuary does not sit well with these rights.
The Garawa assert native title rights to hunt and fish on the country, to gather and use natural resources, to take and use natural water, to live and camp on country and to light fires for domestic purposes.
AWC is silent on how their new wildlife sanctuary will impact on these rights and this is of great concern to the traditional owners of country. Assurances of opening up economic opportunities for Indigenous pastoral lease-holders across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia become rhetoric when such important rights are threatened.
There are other conservation organisations chasing the same donors with the same conservation objectives as AWC, but with very different ways of going about it.
Bush Heritage Australia (BHA), for example, operates in northern Australia. BHA, unlike AWC has developed Indigenous engagement policies and has an Indigenous engagement officer based in the North Australia Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA).
BHA is an emerging conservation organisation which understands the issues relating to partnerships and Indigenous socio-economic disadvantage and is currently leading the Australian conservation sector in incorporating community development initiatives into their conservation programs.
This is something that has been occurring for many years internationally yet has not been adopted widely as an approach from conservation organisations in Australia.
BHA work with Indigenous land owners by providing funding for planning and on-ground work through the provision of scientific expertise to assist Indigenous people to manage their country and meet the challenges that threatening processes pose.
Like AWC, they too acquire properties, but unlike AWC, they do not seek to build a vast conservation empire over Indigenous lands. Rather they work with traditional owners to develop management regimes for their lands that involve and include economic opportunities for local Indigenous people.
Prospective donors have a choice where they can invest their money. There are two options.
One mirrors the 1950s discredited conservation philosophy of past national park management where traditional landowners were excluded from the land, their rights suppressed and its management undertaken by imported park rangers.
The other, more reflective of the 21st century, is one where people, especially those with very long continuous connections to country and strong rights, are seen as integral to future management of the land and its biodiversity.
nitforums@nit.com.au
* Dr Seán Kerins is a Research Fellow with the respected Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR), based at the Australian National University in Canberra.
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