We need to change our approaches to land and seascape stewardship to protect and restore them. We need this so we can recover from past degradation and prosper in the future.
We want to be practical. There are too many ideas with little practical follow up. Indeed, greater attention to Aboriginal knowledge and practices is one of them. A policy hub bringing diverse knowledges and expertise together to point the way forward is more important now than ever before.
It is clear that we need to base our relationship with nature on an ethic of custodianship of country drawn from Aboriginal experience. We can do this while recognising and building on our history – the Aboriginal foundation, our modern production systems and our laws and institutions.
Background
This initiative stemmed from a webinar series, Stewardship of Country, presented by the Royal Societies of Australia and Inspiring Victoria, with support from the CSIRO, in February and March 2021. The series involved an historic collaboration between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts, land and sea managers, carers and policy makers, industry practitioners and thinkers.
This collaboration ensured a broad range of perspectives on landscape and environmental management bridging Indigenous, agricultural, scientific, economic and social perspectives. The linking proposition was support for practical action and public good.
The question
We have degraded our unique land and seascapes over the last 220-odd years. We are all in this together and we all depend on nature. We are well past the point where we can go on casually taking nature’s resources as if they were indestructible gifts. Brian Walker, prominent thinker about resilience problems, poses the right question:
How can we transition to a different way of thinking that matches the reality of the biophysical world, and the reality that individual wellbeing is largely determined by the wellbeing of society?
Our proposed land and seascape policy hub will help us find answers to this basic question.