Abstracts of The Rangeland Journal

The full text of these papers is available to members of the Australian Rangeland Society at http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/trj

These abstracts are from the latest issue of The Rangeland Journal  Vol. 33 (4) 2011. This is a Special Issue sponsored by Ninti One Ltd. with Guest Editors Murray McGregor and Craig James.

Guest Editorial

Livelihoods in desert Australia

Murray McGregor ^{A C} and Craig James ^B

^A Ninti One Limited, PO Box 771, Northam, WA 6401, Australia.

^B CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship,GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.

^C Corresponding author. Email: M.Mcgregor@curtin.edu.au

pp. i–v

Co-benefits of large-scale renewables in remote Australia: energy futures and climate change

Barrie Pittock

PSM, Honorary Fellow, CSIRO

CMAR, Aspendale, Vic. 3195, Australia.

Email: bpittock@bigpond.com

Abstract

Desert/remote Australia is blessed with abundant natural energy resources from solar, geothermal and other renewable sources. If these were harnessed and connected appropriately desert/remote Australia could be not only energy self-sufficient but a net exporter. Generation of abundant, clean energy can also attract energy-intensive industries and provide local income and employment. Such co-benefits should be included in any cost-benefit analysis.

Regardless of renewable energy’s contribution to reducing climate change, the world is already committed to global warming and associated climate changes. Desert/remote Australia will thus inevitably get warmer, with implications for health, energy demand and other issues, and may be subject to increased extremes such as flooding, longer dry spells, more severe storms and coastal inundation.

In addition, the prospect of world demand for oil from conventional sources exceeding supply will likely lead to oil shortages, higher oil prices, and additional incentives to provide alternative energy supplies. The region is heavily reliant on diesel generators and fossil fuel-powered motor vehicles and airplanes for transport for within-region mobility, the importation of goods, the tourism industry and emergency medical services.

Without adaptation, climate change and peak oil will make living in desert/remote Australia less attractive, resulting in increased difficulty of attracting and retaining skilled workers, which would constrain development.

This paper focuses on the climate and energy-related impacts and potential responses. These are both a challenge and an opportunity. They could provide additional employment and income, thus helping remote communities to participate in the clean energy economy of the future and thus overcome some serious social problems. The paper attempts to review current knowledge and provoke debate on relevant investment strategies, and it teases out the questions in need of further research.

Additional keywords: electrical grid, employment, income, Indigenous communities, peak oil, remote communities.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 315–325 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11012

Submitted: 15 March 2011  Accepted: 8 September 2011   Published: 17 November 2011

Supporting cross-cultural brokers is essential for employment among Aboriginal people in remote Australia

Yiheyis T. Maru ^{A B} and Jocelyn Davies ^A

^A CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, PO Box 2111, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia.

^B Corresponding author. Email: Yiheyis.maru@csiro.au

Abstract

Employment is generally considered as essential for improving individual and social livelihoods and wellbeing in Australia. Typically, employment rates are low among Aboriginal people living in remote regions of Australia. Often this is attributed to a lack of mainstream labour markets. However, Aboriginal employment participation is low even in remote places where there are employment opportunities, creating a seemingly paradoxical situation of lots of job vacancies and lots of unemployed locals. Social networks are one of the factors that contribute to this phenomenon, and that can potentially help to address it. We applied social network and social capital theory in research in the Anmatjere region of central Australia. Our findings indicate that Aboriginal people have strong and dense bonding networks but sparse bridging and linking networks. While the existence of such ties is supported by research and observation elsewhere in remote Australia, the implications for employment have not been considered from the perspective of social network theory. Dense bonding networks reinforce, and are reinforced by, Aboriginal norms of sharing and reciprocity. These underpin the Aboriginal moral economy but can have negative influence on motivation to engage with mainstream employment opportunities that are driven by workplace and market norms. Brokers who can bridge and link Aboriginal individuals and their dense social networks to potential employers are essential for Aboriginal people to be able to obtain trusted information on jobs and have entrée to employment opportunities. Brokers also foster new norms that mediate the conflicting values and expectations held by potential Aboriginal employees and employers, who are generally not Aboriginal people. Social network theory suggests that bridging and linking provides advantage to the broker. However, stress and burnout are readily suffered by the people who broker networks with divergent values in cross-cultural settings. To improve employment outcomes and expand livelihood options for Aboriginal people in remote Australia, it is essential to recognise, support and recruit brokers.

Additional keywords: brokerage, closure, Indigenous livelihoods, social capital, social networks.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 327-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11022

Submitted: 2 May 2011  Accepted: 11 October 2011   Published: 29 November 2011

A framework for sustainable rangeland livelihoods

Michael LaFlamme

CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, PO Box 2111, Alice Springs, NT 0870, Australia.

Email: michael.laflamme@gmail.com

Abstract

Natural environments around the world shape their human residents, whose land management practices in turn shape their natural environments. The trial-and-error process of learning how to live within a human-environment system is costly for lands and for people. However, groups who have lived in the same type of place over long periods of time have often developed similar practices. For 20 years, sustainable livelihood frameworks have been used to identify those effective practices and to make them clear to others. I developed the Sustainable Rangeland Framework (SRF) by comparing scientific reports, pastoral management plans, Aboriginal experiences and government programs to identify how very different rangeland landholders could work together to benefit our human-environment system. The SRF focuses on ways to build valuable assets. I found that all groups described six similar categories of assets: landscape, biodiversity, flexibility, skill, information and networks. Land managers use their assets to develop strategies that increase sustainability and reduce vulnerability to risk. The SRF helps land managers visualise how each decision balances productivity and vulnerability in the context of ecological, economic and social variability. I provide a set of six measures for groups to evaluate the effectiveness of their strategies in building stronger assets. Because the SRF clarifies the learning process and highlights the benefits of collaboration, rangeland groups can use this model to work together to develop more secure lives in our increasingly unpredictable environment.

Additional keywords: Aboriginal land use, best practice, biodiversity, flexibility, landscape productivity, resilience.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 339-351 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11023

Submitted: 2 May 2011  Accepted: 19 October 2011   Published: 29 November 2011

Attracting and retaining skilled and professional staff in remote locations of Australia

Fiona Haslam McKenzie

Graduate School of Business, Curtin University, 78 Murray Street, Perth, WA 6000, Australia.

Email: f.mckenzie@curtin.edu.au

Abstract

Remote Australia constitutes ~75% of the continent and is a dry, often harsh environment in which to live; consequently less than 3% of Australia’s population reside there but it is also where a substantial proportion of Australia’s export wealth is derived. It is therefore important that attention is paid to ensuring that remote locations in Australia are liveable and that innovative strategies are pursued to attract and retain a productive workforce in these places. Attracting and retaining skilled and professional staff is a problem not limited to remote, or even rural and regional locations in Australia. There is strong evidence to suggest that it is increasingly a global problem and organisations throughout the world are seeking innovative strategies to attract and develop new talent and developing other strategies to retain that talent. This paper examines population and labour mobility trends in remote Australia and the issues that have been influential on rates of staff attraction and retention, most particularly adequate housing, services and infrastructure. The second half of the paper examines a variety of recommendations and strategies developed by the public and private sectors to more effectively attract and retain skilled and professional staff to remote locations. This paper does not claim to be a rigorous analysis of all remote areas of Australia nor a comprehensive study of attraction and retention strategies. Rather, it aims to highlight the complexity, depth and interconnectedness of the issues for communities, public and private sectors and how they apply in remote locations in Australia.

Additional keywords: attraction, labour force, retention sustainable communities.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 353-363 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11024

Submitted: 2 May 2011  Accepted: 19 October 2011   Published: 29 November 2011

Application of an integrated multidisciplinary economic welfare approach to improved wellbeing through Aboriginal caring for country

David Campbell

Ninti One Ltd, PO Box 3971, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia.

Centre for Remote Health, PO Box 4066, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia.

Email: d.campbell@flinders.edu.au

Abstract

The lands held by Aboriginal people are mostly located in the Australian desert, aside from pastoral country purchased under the Indigenous Land Corporation, they are among the least amenable to agricultural production. Social expectations regarding land use are undergoing a multifunctional transition with a move away from a focus on production, to increased amenity and conservation uses. This change means that Aboriginal people with cultural connections to country enjoy an absolute advantage in managing country through their application of land care involving Indigenous ecological knowledge.

An integrated multidisciplinary economic welfare approach, based on data from northern Australia and the central Australian desert, is used to demonstrate the role Aboriginal people can play in caring for country. Such engagement can be to the advantage of Aboriginal people through a multiplicity of private and public good benefits, such as improving Aboriginal health, maintaining biodiversity, and the mitigation of climate change impacts through possible greenhouse gas biosequestration and the reduction of dust storms – which are an important vector of disease.

Additional keywords: closing the gap, desert, natural resource management, social determinants.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 365-372 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11025

Submitted: 3 May 2011  Accepted: 15 September 2011   Published: 17 November 2011

Why tourism may not be everybody’s business: the challenge of tradition in resource peripheries

Doris A. Carson ^{A D} and Dean B. Carson ^{B C}

^A Centre for Regional Engagement, University of South Australia, 111 Nicolson Avenue, Whyalla Norrie, SA 5608, Australia.

^B Flinders University Rural Clinical School, PO Box 889, Nuriootpa, SA 5355, Australia.

^C The Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, NT-0909 Darwin, Australia.

^D Corresponding author. Emails: doris.schmallegger@unisa.edu.au; doris.carson@unisa.edu.au

Abstract

Tourism is commonly promoted as a tool for economic diversification in peripheral regions that have traditionally relied on exporting natural resources (the ‘staples’). However, developing tourism in these regions has often proven immensely difficult. Part of the reason for this is that tourism seems to require different institutional arrangements to those common in traditional staples economies. This paper analyses the case of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia to examine how the conflicting institutional requirements of tourism and staples industries impacted on the capacity of the regional economic system to innovate and diversify its staples-based economy to include tourism. The paper further documents how conflicts in the diversification process have been mitigated. The research concludes that harnessing tourism for successful economic diversification in peripheral regions requires fundamental changes to previous ways of operating, including new approaches to business creation, capacity building, education and knowledge exchange, networking and public–private interactions.

Additional keywords: economic diversification, Flinders Ranges, innovation capacity, institutional environment, resource peripheries, staples thesis.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 373-383 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11026

Submitted: 3 May 2011  Accepted: 10 October 2011   Published: 29 November 2011

Representatives in orbit: livelihood options for Aboriginal people in the administration of the Australian desert

Elizabeth Ganter

School of History, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia.

Email: Elizabeth.ganter@alumni.anu.edu.au

Abstract

Aboriginal people comprise ~30% of the Northern Territory population, but make up well under 10% of the government bureaucracy designed to serve that population. This paper is based on PhD research into Aboriginal experiences of participating in this bureaucracy. Interviews were conducted in 2007 with 76 people of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander background who had worked in the Northern Territory Government since self-government in 1978. The process of recruiting interviewees revealed a high degree of career mobility between government and the Indigenous sector of publicly funded organisations which operates at arm’s length from government. This finding was quite pronounced in the desert centre of Alice Springs, at the periphery of the Northern Territory administration, where those who were encouraged as a livelihood option to build Aborigines’ numeric representation in government were unable to represent their people in more substantive ways without coming into tension either with the terms of their employment or with their communities. The paper explores the ways in which Aboriginal public servants sought substantively to represent others and the phenomenon whereby many who sought representative roles in the government of the desert were in orbit and thus neither inside nor outside but somewhere at the edges of government. The paper concludes by observing that the knowledge and experience of Aboriginal people who orbit at the edges of government may be made more accessible through collaborations with the Indigenous sector than solely through government employment.

Additional keywords: Australian Indigenous history, Indigenous political studies, Northern Territory, political theory, public policy and administration.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 385-393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11027

Submitted: 4 May 2011  Accepted: 10 October 2011   Published: 29 November 2011

No bush foods without people: the essential human dimension to the sustainability of trade in native plant products from desert Australia

Fiona Walsh ^{A B} and Josie Douglas ^A

^A CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, PO Box 2111, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia.

^B Corresponding author. Email: fiona.walsh@csiro.au

Abstract

Improvement in Aboriginal people’s livelihoods and economic opportunities has been a major aim of increased research and development on bush foods over the past decade. But worldwide the development of trade in non-timber forest products from natural populations has raised questions about the ecological sustainability of harvest. Trade-offs and tensions between commercialisation and cultural values have also been found. We investigated the sustainability of the small-scale commercial harvest and trade in native plant products sourced from central Australian rangelands (including Solanum centrale J.M. Black, Acacia Mill. spp.). We used semi-structured interviews with traders and Aboriginal harvesters, participant observation of trading and harvesting trips, and analysis of species and trader records. An expert Aboriginal reference group guided the project.

We found no evidence of either taxa being vulnerable to over-harvest. S. centrale production is enhanced by harvesting when it co-occurs with patch-burning. Extreme fluctuations in productivity of both taxa, due to inter-annual rainfall variability, have a much greater impact on supply than harvest effects. Landscape-scale degradation (including cattle grazing and wildfire) affected ecological sustainability according to participants. By contrast, we found that sustainability of bush food trade is more strongly impacted by social and economic factors. The relationship-based links between harvesters and traders are critical to monetary trade. Harvesters and traders identified access to productive lands and narrow economic margins between costs and returns as issues for the future sustainability of harvest and trade. Harvesters and the reference group emphasised that sustaining bush harvest relies on future generations having necessary knowledge and skills; these are extremely vulnerable to loss.

Aboriginal people derive multiple livelihood benefits from harvest and trade. Aboriginal custodians and harvester groups involved in recent trade are more likely to benefit from research and development investment to inter-generational knowledge and skill transfer than from investments in plant breeding and commercial horticultural development. In an inductive comparison, our study found there to be strong alignment between key findings about the strategies used by harvesters and traders in bush produce and the ‘desert system’..

Additional keywords: Aboriginal livelihoods, arid Australia, commercialisation, desert system, indigenous enterprises, natural products, non-timber forest products, wild foods.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 395-416 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11028

Submitted: 9 May 2011  Accepted: 17 October 2011   Published: 29 November 2011

Attention to four key principles can promote health outcomes from desert Aboriginal land management

Jocelyn Davies ^{A H}, David Campbell ^B, Matthew Campbell ^C, Josie Douglas ^{A D}, Hannah Hueneke ^A, Michael LaFlamme ^A, Diane Pearson ^E, Karissa Preuss ^{F G}, Jane Walker ^{D G} and Fiona Walsh ^A

^A CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, PO Box 2111, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia.

^B Centre for Remote Health, PO Box 4066, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia.

^C Remotelink, Office of Remote Services, Alice Springs Campus, Charles Darwin University, Alice Springs, NT 0870, Australia.

^D The Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT 0909, Australia.

^E School of Environmental and Life Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Health, Science and Environment, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT 0909, Australia.

^F Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.

^G Central Land Council, North Stuart Highway, Alice Springs, NT 0870, Australia.

^H Corresponding author. Email: jocelyn.davies@csiro.au

Abstract

We identify four principles that can promote the prospects of health outcomes for desert Aboriginal people from livelihoods engaged with land management. The principles were derived inductively using a grounded theory approach, drawing on primary research that used qualitative and participatory methods, and from relevant literature and theoretical frameworks. International and Australian literature offers evidence that supports desert Aboriginal people’s view that their health depends on their relationship with their land. Engagement with land management can lead desert Aboriginal people to feel that their own actions are consistent with their own sense of the right and proper way for them to behave towards land, family and community. This increased ‘sense of control’ impacts positively on health by moderating the impact of sustained stress from health risk factors in the environment and lifestyle. The four principles focus on underlying characteristics of Aboriginal land management that are important to promoting this increased ‘sense of control’: (1) Aboriginal land management governance recognises and respects Aboriginal custom and tradition, and is adaptive; (2) learning is embraced as a life-long process; (3) relationships are recognised as very important; and (4) partnerships give priority to doing things that all parties agree are important. These principles are presented as hypotheses that warrant further development and testing. While they do not account specifically for the impact of lifestyle and environmental factors on health, we expect that the increased sense of control that desert Aboriginal people are likely to develop when involved in Aboriginal land management that applies these principles will moderate the impact of such factors on their health. The principles offer a starting point for further development of criteria and standards for good practice in Aboriginal land management, potentially including an environmental certification scheme that integrates social and environmental outcomes.

Additional keywords: community-based conservation, environmental certification, Indigenous development, natural resource management, scoping economies.

The Rangeland Journal 33(4) 417-431 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/RJ11031

Submitted: 13 May 2011  Accepted: 14 October 2011   Published: 29 November 2011