Country, Native Title and Ecology
Abstract
Country, native title and ecology all converge in this volume to describe the dynamic intercultural context of land and water management on Indigenous lands. Indigenous people’s relationships with country are discussed from various speaking positions, including identity and knowledge, the homelands debate, water planning, climate change and market environmentalism. The inter-disciplinary chapters range from an ethnographic description of living waters in the Great Sandy Desert, negotiating the eradication of yellow crazy ants in Arnhem Land, and legal analysis of native title rights in emerging carbon markets. A recurrent theme is the contentions over meaning, knowledge, and authority.
“Because this volume is scholarly, original and very timely it represents a key resource and reference work for land and sea managers; policy makers; scholars of the interface between post-native title responsibilities, NRM objectives and appropriate heritage protocols; and students based in the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities. It is rare for volumes to have this much cross-academy purchase and for this reason alone – it will have ongoing worth and value as a seminal collection.”
– Associate Professor Peter Veth, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University.
... This is evident in birthing practices linking Aboriginal women to their kinship and Country [14,26]. Weir [65] highlighted that " in country humans and nature, and nature and culture, are not regarded as separate, but are entangled together in all types of relationships " . Aboriginal people have little room to separate themselves from Country as they are embedded within it. ...
... Strang [72] noted that " nature is imagined as " the other " , there is a perceptual separation between social and environmental sustainability… this separation leads to a crucial distancing... of nature and—inevitably—to unsustainable environmental relationships. " Weir [65] reiterated that " the influence of separating humans from nature has also contributed to a rationalist and utilitarian approach to country " . However, researchers should not over romanticize Aboriginal peoples' connection to land, which has changed over time, is complex and not rooted in the past [27,72]. ...
Aboriginal people across Australia suffer significant health inequalities compared with the non-Indigenous population. Evidence indicates that inroads can be made to reduce these inequalities by better understanding social and cultural determinants of health, applying holistic notions of health and developing less rigid definitions of wellbeing. The following article draws on qualitative research on Victorian Aboriginal peoples' relationship to their traditional land (known as Country) and its link to wellbeing, in an attempt to tackle this. Concepts of wellbeing, Country and nature have also been reviewed to gain an understanding of this relationship. An exploratory framework has been developed to understand this phenomenon focusing on positive (e.g., ancestry and partnerships) and negative (e.g., destruction of Country and racism) factors contributing to Aboriginal peoples' health. The outcome is an explanation of how Country is a fundamental component of Aboriginal Victorian peoples' wellbeing and the framework articulates the forces that impact positively and negatively on this duality. This review is critical to improving not only Aboriginal peoples' health but also the capacity of all humanity to deal with environmental issues like disconnection from nature and urbanisation.
... Country might be similar to a drainage basin for a river, or be marked by a particular plant species, or not … it is multilayered and indeterminate with multiple forms and meanings. 11 On this account, country is not that familiar institution many of us learn from school, captured in the imperialistic 'spatial writing' of topographical maps. 12 Instead, country appears as the constitution of a place. ...
... This does not downgrade the protection of people and property but understands that they are not categorically separate and cannot be protected without looking after the environment first. This viewpoint understands that humans live within the environment, as distinct from viewpoints that understand the environment as biodiversity or a place to visit (Weir and Freeman 2019, p.25;Weir, 2016). ...
... For example , government agencies are not typically structured to accommodate Indigenous ontologies or epistemologies that emphasize spiritual relationships between people and the landscape . Translating Indigenous management concepts into narrow categories that fit within pre-defined agency structures often results in incomplete representations of complex Indigenous knowledge systems (Vaughan 2012; Weir 2012). Furthermore, when knowledge systems diverge, dominant institutions typically choose Western science as the final authority (Nadasdy 2003 ). ...
Co-management frameworks are intended to facilitate sustainable resource management and more equitable power sharing between state agencies and Indigenous communities. However, there is significant debate about who benefits from co-management in practice. This article addresses two competing perspectives in the literature, which alternately portrays co-management as an instrument for co-optation or for transformation. Through a case study of co-management negotiations involving the Karuk Tribe and the U.S. Forest Service in the Klamath Basin of Northern California, this study examines how Indigenous communities use co-management to build greater equity in environmental decision-making, despite its limitations. The concept of pivot points is developed to describe how Indigenous communities like the Karuk Tribe are simultaneously following existing state policies and subverting them to shift federal forest management. The pivot point analytic demonstrates one mechanism by which communities are addressing Indigenous self-determination goals and colonial legacies through environmental policy and management.
... Country might be similar to a drainage basin for a river, or be marked by a particular plant species, or not … it is multilayered and indeterminate with multiple forms and meanings. 11 On this account, country is not that familiar institution many of us learn from school, captured in the imperialistic 'spatial writing' of topographical maps. 12 Instead, country appears as the constitution of a place. ...
This issue of Settler Colonial Studies comes out of a long-term collaboration between the guest editors which began, in earnest, with a panel on the theme of ‘Other People’s Country: Law, Water, Entitlement’ at the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference held at the University of Sydney in December 2012. The panel’s topic was drawn from our own work on encounters between settler and indigenous ‘laws’ over specific waters, including Lake Omapere in the Hokianga district of Aotearoa/New Zealand, Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada, Lake Cayuga in upper New York State, and the Wenlock, Archer, Stewart and Lockhart rivers in far north Queensland, Australia.1 Further, the conference’s provocative title (Materialities: Economies, Empiricism, & Things) corresponded to our own interest in thinking through the entangled objects of law – legislation, policies, institutions, treaties and so on – that ‘govern’ waters and that make bodies of water ‘lawful’ within these settler colonial sites today. Informed by the theoretical interventions of cosmopolitics and political ecology, each opening up new approaches to questions of politics and ‘the political’, we were interested in attempting to locate these insights within material settler colonial ‘places’ rather than abstract structures of domination. A claim to water is not simply a claim to a resource. It is a claim to knowledge and to the constitution of place and therefore, in the terms of Isabelle Stengers, to the continued constitution of the past, present and future of a ‘real world’.
... Their concept of 'pristine nature', however, still reflected the legacy of terra nullius in that it failed to acknowledge the long-term engagement of the indigenous people with all of Australia's diverse landscapes. (Mulligan and Hill, 2001, 2003, 2008, 2012, 2014) offers a window on the utility of Country as a term in environmental management systems, while Rose (Rose, 1988Rose, , 1996Rose, , 1999Rose, , 2004Muir et al., 2010), Graham (Graham, 1999), Weir (Weir, 2009Weir, , 2012) and others offer insights into the mobilisation of Country as an important trope in Indigenous thinking in Australia. Drawing on this literature in the Australian context, it has been argued that 'the outcome of natural disasters is often mediated by the unnatural disaster of colonial and post-colonial state policies and practices' (Howitt et al., 2012: 48). ...
In Australian Aboriginal thinking, the idea of ‘Country’ comprises complex ideas about relationships and connection. It simultaneously encompasses territorial affiliation, a social identification and cosmological orientation. It draws attention to what might be glossed as people-to-environment, people-to-people and people-to-cosmos relations. These relations influence disaster responses, but are rarely mobilised explicitly in shaping formal recovery and reconstruction efforts. Colonial disruption of connections to Country imposed new practices and presences into contemporary Indigenous geographies and is often reinforced in disaster settings. This paper considers more recent disruptions arising from post-disaster recovery in Taiwan, arguing that the idea of Country offers a powerful way of framing cultural and social dimensions of post-disaster relief and recovery for government agencies, non-government organisations and research alike.
Ecosystem accounting is emerging as a promising tool for environmental management by offering consistent information about ecosystem change over time. Via a United Nations process, ecosystem accounting has been standardised in the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). However, there are currently no examples of ecosystem accounts developed specifically to support Indigenous people’s management of land or sea. More than 40% (3 million square kilometres) of Australia’s land and sea territory has Indigenous Title. If Indigenous managers are to use ecosystem accounting, then it is essential for them to be involved in its devel- opment. We assessed how ecosystem accounts can be developed and applied in a manner that supports the management objectives of Indigenous owners and managers. Working collaboratively with the Yawuru Tradi- tional Owners of the land and sea country around Broome, Western Australia, we constructed and assessed experimental ecosystem accounts for land cover and fire for the period 2000–2020. Three key benefits of ecosystem accounts for supporting the priorities of Yawuru managers were identified: (1) flexibility in the units used for the analysis; (2) the extended time scale of the accounts; and (3) the emphasis on consistent capturing and reporting of data. We also identified the need for further work to incorporate cultural knowledge and values within the broader SEEA, with implications for the recognition of Indigenous people, knowledge and values within accounting systems globally.
Issue addressed:
The Anthropocene is a new era in which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. The negative impact humans have on the earth’s systems pose significant threats to human health. Health promotion is a discipline well placed to respond to planetary health challenges of the Anthropocene. The overarching aim of this paper is to describe the elements of 21st century socio‐ecological health and apply them in a revised socio‐ecological framework for health promotion.
Methods:
A qualitative description study design was employed to explore the significance of ecological and cultural determinants of health and review models in contemporary health promotion to inform the development of a revised Mandala of Health. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit ten experts from across Australia including academics and practitioners working at the nexus of health promotion, environmental management and sustainability. Data was analysed thematically, using deductive and inductive methods.
Results:
A revised Mandala of Health could address existing gaps in health promotion theory and practice. Ecological and cultural determinants of health were considered essential components of health promotion that is often lacking in socio‐ecological frameworks. Indigenous Knowledge Systems were considered immensely important when addressing ecological and cultural determinants of health.
Conclusions:
A revised Mandala of Health could encourage development of contemporary health models, assisting health promotion to evolve with the health and environmental issues of the Anthropocene. This study highlights the need for more theoretical development and empirical research regarding ecological and cultural determinants of health in a health promotion context.
So what?
In the context of the Anthropocene, this study highlights the potential gaps in health promotion theory and practice in terms of the natural environment and health and emphasises the need of a paradigm shift to embed ecological and cultural determinants with other determinants of health.
In this essay, the authors respond to several of the papers included in this special issue. First reflecting on the relation between waters, ‘First law’,1 and settler law, the authors then draw connections between some of the contributions to the issue. Water, the authors contend, is a productive site for thinking through the organs and processes of settler law, though such attention, they argue, also reveals how the ‘constitutional’ question of waters is occluded by the presence and dominance of settler law. The final section turns to Aotearoa/New Zealand as a negative example of this situation, one in which the constituting force of waters is nullified by the incorporation of indigenous politics within the processes and institutions of the settler legal order.
Human geography has driven substantive improvements in methodologies and applications of Geographic Information Systems (GISs), yet Indigenous groups continue to experience erasure in geographic representations. GIS ontologies comprise categorised labels that represent lived contexts, and these ontologies are determined through the shared worldviews of those labelling spatial phenomena for entry into GIS databases. Although Western ontologies and spatial representations reflect Western understandings of human experience, they are often inappropriate in Indigenous contexts. In efforts to be represented in courts and land management, Indigenous groups nevertheless need to engage Western spatial representations to ‘claim space’. This paper examines what GISs are and do and shows that GIS technology comes with strings attached to the myriad social contexts that continue to shape the field of GIScience. We show that Intellectual Property Rights Agreements can sever and control these ‘strings’; the agreement between the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and university researchers reframes GIS from a technology of erasure to a technology of opportunity that enables Indigenous groups to define their own engagement. The visual and narrative outputs will contribute important understandings of the environmental crisis facing the Murray–Darling Basin and connect older and younger generations through knowledge sharing. We conclude the application of GIScience is never simply technological but always has potential to empower particular communities. Applying GIS technology to new circumstances is an engagement of new relationships in the social praxis of technology transfer, where worldviews meet and negotiations are made over what exists and how we know.
Across the globe, community-oriented protected areas are increasingly recognised as an effective way to support the preservation and maintenance of the traditional biodiversity related knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities. We argue that guaranteed land security and the ability of indigenous and local peoples to exercise their own governance structures is central to the success of community-oriented protected area programs. In particular, we examine the conservation and community development outcomes of the Indigenous Protected Area program in Australia, which is based on the premise that indigenous landowners exercise effective control over environmental governance, including management plans, within their jurisdiction (whether customary or state-based or a combination of elements of both), and have effective control of access to their lands, waters and resources.
Key Words: community-oriented protected areas, Indigenous rights, conservation, Australia
Before investigating specific issues associated with the case for Indigenous NRM, we consider a general question: Do we need government programs to facilitate Indigenous NRM? If one adopts an economics approach to considering this question, a role for government is predicated on the notion of market failures. Market failures occur when the actions of individuals, operating according to forces of supply and demand, do not further, and may conflict with, social objectives. The government's role then is to seek out market failures and correct them with policies designed to align private and social interests. In the discussion below, we review some of the current thinking in Australia about the role of governments in correcting market failures. We then proceed to criticize some aspects of this approach. Public good market failures 3.1 NRM often suffers from market failures due to the "public good" properties of services that we derive from natural resources. Public goods are characterized as being "non-exclusive" and "non-rival". Non-exclusive means that it is difficult (i.e. costly) to exclude people from enjoying a public good who make no contribution to its provision. Non-rival means that adding another user does not detract from the benefits enjoyed by existing users. An important example of such a public good is the maintenance of biodiversity resulting from high quality NRM, which may be valued by large numbers of Australians (in this case part of the value is existence value – knowing that biodiversity exists but not necessarily using it or seeing it). However, unlike goods and services traded in markets, it is difficult to know which Australians really value biodiversity, or to say how much they value it. Therefore, if we thought to establish a market in biodiversity, it would be difficult to exclude those who enjoyed benefits from improved biodiversity, but chose not to pay. Moreover, there is no extra cost imposed on those already enjoying the presence of biodiversity by allowing an additional user to also enjoy the benefits of biodiversity. If left to market forces, these characteristics would cause too little biodiversity to be conserved, as there are incentives for some members of society to free-ride on the good will of other members who are providing these services. Therefore, a market failure occurs, which can justify government programmes.
This study examines a particular form of cooperative wildlife management on Aboriginal land in the tropical savanna of the Northern Territory of Australia, in the context of broader questions about governance. It asks how governance at the local or community level can be designed to ensure sustainable development and real economic benefit for the region’s long-term indigenous residents. It is argued here that sustainable development will require hybrid institutions that accommodate and value the principles and practices of indigenous resource management, while also recognising the benefits of broader regional resource governance. Emerging best practice in wildlife harvesting that is founded on careful scientific assessments of sustainability is identified, and an approach to northern development based on sustainability and locally controlled commercialisation is canvassed. Future challenges to the proposed approach include convincing governments and state agencies of its national as well as regional benefits. Reform of governance to facilitate its rapid implementation is desirable, in the context of the relative poverty currently experienced by many indigenous people in tropical north Australia.
The potential for combining Aboriginal ecological knowledge and scientific knowledge to enhance understanding of the environment is explored. Results of a fauna survey jointly undertaken at Uluru National Park by Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, CSIRO and Aboriginal members of Mutitjulu Community provide the basis for discussion. Examination of comparative habitat classifications, recognition of faunal habitat preferences and knowledge of the effects of drought and fire suggest that information from Aboriginal people can enhance, and in some instances provide an alternative perspective to, the knowledge currently held by scientists. The scientific community will benefit by accepting Aboriginal ecological knowledge on an equal basis to scientific research. The importance of involving Aboriginal people through all aspects of the research and ensuring that they maintain control over the usage of their traditional knowledge is stressed.
In the Australian Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA), protected areas impact on the rights and obligations of Indigenous traditional owners. This research investigated the effectiveness of two new policy instruments, a negotiated agreement, and a protocol, as mechanisms to bridge between the differing protected area management approaches of Kuku-Yalanji Aboriginal people and the WTWHA managers. The policy innovation sought from these instruments reflects a paradigm shift in protected areas globally toward a more inclusive approach, and recognition of diversity in governance types. However, the instruments' effectiveness in achieving innovation was hampered by the lack of substantive legal mechanisms to overcome the colonial legacy within protected areas. Legislative reform to properly recognize diversity in protected area governance would assist effective bridging. Internationally, rigorous criteria to measure progress toward a more inclusive approach in national systems would enhance our capacity to ensure the current paradigm shift becomes more than convenient rhetoric.
We describe and analyze changes in ideas of land and marine tenure and resource rights in the Lihir group of islands in Papua New Guinea as they have developed over a ten-year period. The paper examines some issues that have become contentious since goldmining mine began in the 1980s, analyzing the underlying principles of tenure and changing ideas of entitlement that inform them. Beginning with a description of the basic representation of tenure given to the anthropologists who worked there before mining began, we shall then examine the ways that clan ownership and communal rights over sacred sites have been influenced by notions of land having monetary value. We also explain some ways that rights of transmission and inheritance, claims for compensation, benefits from leasing, and transactions and emergent ideas of individual ownership have developed in the context of the mining project. In particular we look at disputes and tensions that have arisen in the context of a dramatic increase in population, changes in housing, transport and land use, and the monetization of the economy.
Aboriginal economic relations have been misconstrued as a type of primitive exchange in at least one native title case discussed in this paper. The pursuit by Aboriginal native title claimants of recognition at law of customary economic rights as inherent in, or an adjunct of, native title rights failed in Yarmirr and Others v. Northern Territory of Australia and Others (1998) 156 ALR 370 (the ‘Croker Island case’) for several reasons. The applicant's native title was found to be non-exclusive of other interests, and a right to trade in resources of the sea was rejected. This case was argued in part by relying on historical material regarding Macassan trading arrangements. The profound alterity of Aboriginal relationships among persons and things, as the Croker Island evidence of property and trade relations demonstrates, have been re-constituted in legal discourse as an absence of economic relations. In this paper, we argue that there is no sound basis for the distinction made between commercial and non-commercial native title rights, whether in the Native Title Act 1993 (Commonwealth of Australia), or in recent judicial reasoning. We contend that native title rights and interests constitute a sui generis species of property relations that enable economic rights as conceived in Aboriginal tradition and custom to circulate in the modern market. Aboriginal customary economic relations of and between Aboriginal groupings are markedly distinct from, yet not incommensurable with, the normative conception of economic relations in the Australian market. We argue that a reformulation of the current Australian legal ideas about economic life is necessary for the recognition of Aboriginal economic institutions in native title claims and other economic arenas.
A series of recent cases, including the judgment of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court in Anvil Hill, signal the rise of climate change litigation in Australia. Climate change litigation involves legal action to seek redress for damage arising from activities said to be causing global climate change. The growth of climate change litigation has been particularly pronounced in the United States, due to perceived inaction by national political authorities to deal with issues of global warming. In Australia, frustration with the slow pace and fragmented nature of regulatory developments regarding climate change similarly appears to be encouraging environmental groups to turn to the courts as a possible saviour. This article argues that while there are positive indications in some climate change cases that the courts are prepared to embrace rigorous practices of EIA for assessing climate change impacts, climate change litigation is unlikely to be a panacea for delivering effective action on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, a strong national-level regulatory response is still required to generate the necessary behavioural change for deep cuts in emissions.
Professor Ross Garnaut was commissioned by all of the Governments of Australia’s Federation to examine the impacts of climate change on Australia and to recommend policy frameworks to improve the prospects of sustainable prosperity. The Garnaut Climate Change Review is one of the most important reports to be published in Australia for many years. It examines the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy, the costs of adaptation and mitigation, and the international context in which climate change is experienced and negotiated. It analyses the elements of an appropriate international policy response, and the challenges that face Australia in playing its proportionate part in that response. The Garnaut Climate Change Review is highly relevant to the global problem that is climate change. It considers what policies the international community should adopt in responding to climate change, and urges humanity to act now, and in concert, to develop the required policy response in time.
A large complement of Australia’s biotic web is dependent on a regular regime of burning, much of which is the result of firing by humans. Many researchers have suggested that moderate and repeated burning by Aborigines is a tool designed to enhance hunting efficiency. We present the first test of this with data on contemporary Martu Aboriginal burning and hunting strategies in the arid spinifex savanna of the Western Desert during the cool-dry season (May–August). Our results show a strong positive effect of mosaic burning on the efficiency of hunting burrowed prey (primarily conducted by women), but not larger mobile prey (primarily conducted by men). We suggest that regular anthropogenic disturbance through burning in Australia’s Western Desert may be important for sustaining biodiversity and habitat mosaics, but these effects may be maintained primarily by women’s hunting of burrowed game. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding variability in hunting strategies, issues of conservation, and land management policy for the region.
Pollution is an inevitable by-product of living. It is of concern where someone uses something and fails to take the costs resulting from that use into account. Normally this is due to the absence of a feedback mechanism to sheet home to producers and consumers the full costs of their decisions. Thus the operator of a steel mill emitting smoke may cause considerable harm in terms of respiratory aggravation, increased cleaning costs and so on. But in the absence of markets, the mill owner has no accurate information on the extent of that harm and certainly has no price incentive to do anything about it.
The past fifteen years have seen neoclassical economics and its various ‘free market’ offshoots replace Keynesian economics as the dominant economic philosophy around the world. Often referred to as ‘economic rationalism’ in Australia, this philosophy promotes the free play of markets, ‘unhindered’ by government intervention and control, as the best means of achieving an efficient allocation of resources and thereby maximising the welfare of society. Neoclassical economics has also entered the environmental debate, with many of its exponents arguing that the appropriate balance between environmental protection and economic development can best be achieved through market mechanisms, whether by means of market-based incentives and/or the privatisation of environmental ‘assets’.
Although the emergence of widespread popular concern over environmental problems is typically dated from the 1960s, the 1980s decade is more likely to be remembered as the period during which environmentalism rose to prominence in terms of the degree of media saturation, public concern and national and international political debate given over to environmental problems. This was also the decade that saw the emergence of Green parties as a new minority political force — a symptom of increasing frustration and disillusionment with the capacity of established political parties and the policy-making process to address ecological problems. The mounting popular concern and political agitation over the environment have exerted pressure on governments around the world to move from a piecemeal and largely reactive response towards a more integrated and anticipatory strategy.
Environmental law in Australia has been dramatically transformed during the last thirty years. International environmental law has undergone an equally dramatic transformation over the last fifteen years. Although developments in international law have always been important, it is only recently that developments of environmental law at the Commonwealth, State and local levels in Australia have been heavily influenced by what has been happening internationally. It is the purpose of this article to examine the relationship between international environmental law and environmental law in Australia and to predict how the law in Australia might respond over the next decade to these international developments.
Abonginal culture integrates land, spint and the sacredness of all living things. Western civilisation, by contrast, views the land and its inhabitants as resources to be exploited, protected or managed. The purpose of this article is to argue for the development of partnerships between indigenous and non-indigenous knowledge regarding land use and protection; and suggests that returning effective control of Abonginal land to Abonginal communities can only assist land management objectives, even where that land or its inhabitants are formally protected for nature conservation.
In this update to the 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review, Ross Garnaut re-examines the case for action in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and recent developments by major countries to reduce emissions and prepare for a low-carbon future. He guides the reader through the climate change debate, and explains why Australia's contribution is vital to the national interest and matters to the global effort. He outlines a set of policies through which Australia can contribute its fair share without damaging Australian prosperity. The Garnaut Review 2011: Australia in the Global Response to Climate Change extends the analysis to contemporary economic, political and environmental conditions in a way that is clear and easy to understand. It is an essential resource for all who care about the future of our economy and environment. © Commonwealth of Australia 2011 and Commonwealth of Australia 2011 and Commonwealth of Australia (Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) 2011.
With the current public attention being directed to climate change and water conservation, environmental issues are experiencing somewhat of a renaissance in legal institutions and processes. One of the most difficult issues thrown up by environmental regulation in any field is how this should or can be reconciled with. development and economic growth. At the heart of Australian environmental law is a commitment to 'ecologically sustainable development' ('ESD'), a policy which should dictate the meaningful integration of environmental and economic goals in public decision-making processes. Yet too often ESD has merely been paid lip-service in Australia, with minimal legal elaboration and little change to conventional practices of development approval. This article considers two recent court decisions-one in the Federal Court (Brown ν Forestry Tasmania (No. 4)), the other in the New South Wales Land and Environment Court (Anvil Hill)-indicate signs of change with respect to how seriously Australian environmental law, and particularly Australian courts, take the concept of ESD. Both decisions brought to the fore conflicts between environmental and economic goals: the Brown case looking at this in the context of logging of old growth forest in Tasmania; the Anvil Hill case evaluating the environmental assessment requirements applicable to a large coal mine development that could contribute substantially to greenhouse gas production through the burning of the coal harvested. Each case is noteworthy for the way in which the judges concerned attempt to reconcile environmental and economic prerogatives, in the process putting some flesh on the bones of the concept of what it might mean for development in Australia to be 'ecologically sustainable'. Both decisions have also generated substantial controversy, signalling the extent to which moves to pay more than 'mere lip service' to ESD still challenge entrenched modes and practices of development and economic decision-making in Australia.
This paper is an attempt to develop the notion of the 'intercultural' suggested in Caging the Rainbow (Merlan 1998), a book which dealt with the situation of Aboriginal people in a north Australian town. I explore possible implications for this notion of work done in the name of structural history; of some of the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu; and of V. N. Voloshinov (and/or M. M. Bakhtin). All these approaches were developed against the background of structuralism, and all struggle with problems of conceptualizing process and the dynamics of interaction. I suggest that especially Voloshinovian notions of the fundamentally dialogical aspects of interaction offer some interesting perspectives for our treatment of central issues of difference, boundedness and change.
This paper addresses the inter-cultural meanings and assumptions which have arisen in the interpretation of heritage and its conservation in central Australia. Conflicting views of heritage conservation are grounded in particular constructions of the past which are adapted and redefined in relation to the present. In central Australia, Indigenous notions of time and property have stressed the symbolic value of objects in terms of the Dreaming and their active role in exchange. The definition of objects as personal effects and their enhancement of social values through exchange have been at odds with archaeological understandings of the same objects as artefacts and attempts to conserve them as items of heritage significance. Specific examples discussed include the use of artefacts in economic exchanges, interpretation of archaeological sequences, and the application of concepts of significance through land rights and heritage legislation.
Recent movements within sustainability have sought to integrate Indigenous relationships to natural resources as part of the sustainability paradigm. Australian Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous movements internationally, have also utilized the language of sustainability when promoting inherent Indigenous rights to land, aspirations of self-determination and obligations to ‘country’. However, in utilising sustainability as a field of negotiation, Indigenous participants generally speak of another dimension within this debate, an Indigenous approach to ‘country’ that is bound within Indigenous relationships to natural-cultural resources that cannot be divorced from cultural-spiritual relationships with our natural world.
In 1971, Ezra Mishan brilliantly satirized the views of a Dr. Pangloss, who argued that a world of largely unregulated pollution was "optimal" because cleanup would involve enormous transaction costs.' Less than 15 years later, Professor Latin uses the same Panglossian argument to rationalize the current regulatory status quo.2 He not only accepts but endorses our extraordinarily crude, costly, litigious and counterproductive system of technology-based environmental controls. Like Mishan's Pangloss, he seems to believe that if it were possible to have a better world, it would exist. Since it does not, the transaction costs involved in regulatory improvement must exceed the benefits. Proposals for basic change accordingly are dismissed as naive utopianism.
Chapter 1 Faciliting Cross Disciplinary Understanding of the Commons Chapter 2 Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis Chapter 3 The Tragicomedy of the Commons Chapter 4 Contracting into the Commons Chapter 5 Capturing the Commons: Legal and Illegal Strategies Chapter 6 The Political Economy of Changing Property Rights: Dismantling a Kenyan Commons Chapter 7 Analyzing Institutional Successes and Failure: A Millennium of Common Mountain Pastures in Iceland Chapter 8 Covenants With and Without a Sword: Self-Enforcement is Possible Chapter 9 Economic Principle in the Emergence of Humankind
Since the subject of environmental economics first began to arouse public debate at the end of the 1980s, attention has focused on what are widely described as ‘market’ solutions to environmental problems. Predisposed as they are to market-based analysis, and to the abstract concept of ‘optimality’, the majority of environmental economists have been engaged either in studying ‘market-based mechanisms’ of environmental control, such as green taxes and tradable quotas, or in devising hypothetical markets by which to value environmental goods. Needing snappy headlines and uncomplicated arguments, media commentators have eagerly seized on the apparent Left-Right conflict in environmental policy, with the Left said to favour old-fashioned ‘regulation’, the Right the new solutions of the ‘free market’. Meanwhile real free market solutions, grounded in other policy areas, have been cheerfully applied to environmental issues by those with a genuinely ideological axe to grind.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
In this analysis of the genealogy of western capitalist 'development', The Political Economy of Desire departs from the common position that development and underdevelopment are conceptual outcomes of the Imperialist era. Instead, it positions the genealogy of development within early Christian writings in which the western theological concepts of sin, salvation, and redemption are expounded. Linking the writings of early theologians, such as Augustine and Anselm, to the processes of modern identity formation - of which phenomena such as the West, the First World, the Rule of Law and the individual subject and his or her freedoms are but a part - the concept of development is thus traced to a particularly Christian dynamic. As such, the promise of development is considered as analogous to the way in which the Word of God was used to call Christianity into being, with the promise of salvation.
'Honour Among Nations? Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People' emerges from the growing academic and public policy interest in the area of indigenous peoples, treaties and agreements, challenging readers to engage with the idea of treaty and agreement making in changing political and legal landscapes. 'Honour Among Nations?' contains contributions from both indigenous and non-indigenous authors from Australia, New Zealand, North America and Canada including Marcia Langton, Gillian Triggs, Brad Morse, Paul Chartrand, Joe Williams and Noel Pearson. This book covers topics as diverse as treaty making in New Zealand and British Columbia; land, the law, political rights and indigenous peoples; maritime agreements; Torres Strait Islander self-government; race discrimination in Australia; the Timor Sea Treaty; copyright and intellectual property issues for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors.
It is 10 years since the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) was passed in response to the High Court's Mabo decision. Those years have been marked by an interplay between the common law and statute. Following the High Court's decision in Ward and Yorta Yorta, this interplay has been starkly enunciated and redefined. The Act is dominant and the common law has been almost relegated, at least for the moment, to a historical artefact. Noel Pearson described the process most dramatically: "Ten years in the sunshine of the Rule of Law was all that black Australians were fated to enjoy". How is it that such a determinate view of the state of native title could be made a mere 10 years after the promise engendered by the Mabo decision? While there is little doubt that the nature of the rights emerging from both the common law and the Act have been significantly diminished by both the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (Cth) and the recent decisions in Ward, Yorta Yorta and Wilson v Anderson, it is indisputable that the recognition and protection of native title as a result of Mabo provided the underpinning for a realignment of relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Indigenous rights and interests in land can no longer be ignored or cast aside. This article argues that in spite of both legislation and the courts diminishing the concept of native title and the rights associated with it, the process of change unleashed by Mabo and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) cannot be reversed. The question now is where this process of change will lead.
This first chapter in the book 'Settling With Indigenous People' introduces a collection of interdisciplinary case studies examining the specific cultural context in which local agreement-making proceeds, as well as issues relating to economic development, the creation of economic structures, questions of governance and communication structures. As former British colonies, Canada, Australia and New Zealand share in the legacies of the English common law, yet its historic application in these different locations can be seen, with hindsight, as haphazard and random. Efforts to comply with legal or moral standards were more often detrimental than beneficial to the rights and interests of the local indigenous people. The collection of case studies shows that, despite the modern legacies of that history, indigenous people and those with whom they are engaged in sharing land and resources are capable of inventing new approaches to these postcolonial problems. Specifically, the case studies focus on how, in postcolonial states, modern agreements and treaties can provide avenues for indigenous and local people to resolve both outstanding historical disputes and those resulting from new developments.
The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio Conference) heralded a new era of environmental law, with its purpose to formulate strategies to achieve sustainable development worldwide, recognising the interconnectedness of all systems on earth, and the need to protect them. The conference instruments recognise that the sustainability of the earth depends on national responses that are crafted with the fullest possible extent of public participation. Recent Australian policy for managing natural resources has sought to reflect the goals of sustainable development as enunciated by the Rio Conference and this article looks at two key features of this policy: the establishment of government/community partnerships to achieve ecologically sustainable natural resource management; and the numerous proposals by the Commonwealth and New South Wales governments that market-based instruments be used to address natural resource degradation.
The article begins with a review of recent trends in the devolution of state functions to nongovernment institutions, and discusses how private interests may be enlisted in furtherance of public policy. It then outlines a variety of institutions and instruments which might comprise a system of regulation for environmental protection, and suggests some of the forms of interaction between them.
The focus then turns to commercial activity which can further the interests of environmental protection. It summarizes eight emerging trends in “green commerce” and concludes that in some settings, the constructive influence of commercial forces can exceed that wielded by government agencies.