Cultural value of water and western water management: an Australian Indigenous perspective

Moggridge, Bradley; Thompson, Ross

doi:10.1080/13241583.2021.1897926

Cited by 41 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In some situations management is focussed on maintaining or restoring ecological functions (de Groot et al, 2002;Capon et al, 2013), such as the provision of habitat or food (Valinoti et al, 2011;Bice et al, 2014;McGinness et al, 2014). Increasingly management is focused on achieving multiple ecosystem services including: aesthetics (Cottet et al, 2013), cultural connection (Douglas et al, 2019;Moggridge and Thompson 2021), recreation (Gitau et al, 2019), education (Flitcroft et al, 2016), or tourism (Balmford et al, 2009;Harrison et al, 2010). There are also calls for environmental water management to increase the focus on managing for resilience to better link environmental water management to ecological sustainability and social well-being (Arthington et al, 2018;Poff 2018).…”

Section: What Do We Want To Achieve By Watering Non-woody Wetland-floodplain Vegetation and Why Do We Target These Outcomes?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Condition: Measuring and Evaluating Wetland Vegetation Responses to Water Management

Campbell

Capon

Dyer

2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Environmental water management is increasingly used to restore riverine, wetland and floodplain ecosystems and requires an understanding of what the flow regime or restoration objectives are, why these objectives are being targeted and how outcomes will be evaluated. This perspective paper focuses on non-woody vegetation, an important component of river-floodplain ecosystems and a targeted outcome for many environmental flow management programs, such as the Basin wide environmental watering strategy for the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia. Effective management of non-woody vegetation using environmental water requires identifying a suite of measurable condition outcomes (the “what”), understanding how these relate to broader functions and values (the “why”) and developing clear cause-and-effect relationships between management and outcomes (the “how”). A critical component of this process is to characterise what constitutes management success, which requires reimagining current definitions of condition to better incorporate dynamic functions and diverse values. We identify the need to characterise condition in a structured framework using both ecological data and societal values. This approach will not only help inform the development of benchmarks, watering objectives and monitoring metrics, but will also facilitate engagement by a broader spectrum of the community with the management and outcomes of environmental watering.

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Section: What Do We Want To Achieve By Watering Non-woody Wetland-floodplain Vegetation and Why Do We Target These Outcomes?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Condition: Measuring and Evaluating Wetland Vegetation Responses to Water Management

Campbell

Capon

Dyer

2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…The contemporary impacts of this domination of the rivers for irrigation supply are significant for the wetlands and riverine ecosystems [10,45]. For Indigenous Peoples, degradation of rivers is deeply disturbing [82,83]. Colonisation resulted in Indigenous Peoples being dispossessed of their land and waterways, disrupting cultural, spiritual and material relationships with rivers [82].…”

Section: The Climate As a Powerful Actor In Human Affairsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indigenous communities are deeply concerned by riverine degradation and the way these problems are exacerbated by climate change and neoliberal water reforms [82]. Indigenous People have over 65,000 years of knowledge and experience of Australia's water and waterways, having occupied all the continent's climatic zones [83]. In this long history, they not only adapted to significant climatic changes, including several ice ages, but learnt much that could be of value to contemporary management of water [83].…”

Section: The Climate As a Powerful Actor In Human Affairsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indigenous People have over 65,000 years of knowledge and experience of Australia's water and waterways, having occupied all the continent's climatic zones [83]. In this long history, they not only adapted to significant climatic changes, including several ice ages, but learnt much that could be of value to contemporary management of water [83]. However, for modern water resource management to be more inclusive of Indigenous knowledge, fundamental changes to policy governance and institutions are required [82,83].…”

Section: The Climate As a Powerful Actor In Human Affairsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this long history, they not only adapted to significant climatic changes, including several ice ages, but learnt much that could be of value to contemporary management of water [83]. However, for modern water resource management to be more inclusive of Indigenous knowledge, fundamental changes to policy governance and institutions are required [82,83]. Recognition and inclusion of this knowledge is a cultural challenge for the nation, and its water governance institutions.…”

Section: The Climate As a Powerful Actor In Human Affairsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Do the Cultural Dimensions of Climate Shape Our Understanding of Climate Change?

Alexandra

2021

Climate

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Climatic events express the dynamics of the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, but are profoundly personal and social in their impacts, representation and comprehension. This paper explores how knowledge of the climate has multiple scales and dimensions that intersect in our experience of the climate. The climate is objective and subjective, scientific and cultural, local and global, and personal and political. These divergent dimensions of the climate frame the philosophical and cultural challenges of a dynamic climate. Drawing on research into the adaptation in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin, this paper outlines the significance of understanding the cultural dimensions of the changing climate. This paper argues for greater recognition of the ways in which cultures co-create the climate and, therefore, that the climate needs to be recognised as a socio-natural hybrid. Given the climate’s hybrid nature, research should aim to integrate our understanding of the social and the natural dimensions of our relationships to a changing climate.

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Using palaeolimnology to guide rehabilitation of a culturally significant lake in New Zealand

Short

Tibby

Vandergoes

et al. 2022

Aquatic Conservation

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Lakes are becoming degraded at an accelerating rate owing to human activity, and understanding their past ecology is necessary for lake management and rehabilitation. Palaeolimnology provides numerous methods that enable the historical state of lakes to be determined. New Zealand provides an ideal setting in which to do this as human modification of the landscape occurred later here than in most regions of the world (approx. 1300 CE). Lake Oporoa is a shallow lake that is highly significant to the local indigenous Māori community. This study used multiple proxy palaeolimnology to explore how lake ecology shifted following Māori and European settlement in the catchment, and how palaeolimnological data can be used to inform lake rehabilitation and conservation measures, alongside the desires of the indigenous community. Sedimentary pollen, diatoms, bacterial communities, and elemental and hyperspectral imaging scanning were used to infer ecological changes in the lake and catchment from pre‐human times to present. Following Māori settlement (approx. 1620 CE) there was gradual vegetation change and a rapid shift in diatom and bacterial assemblages, but not in phytoplankton pigments or sediment geochemistry. An increasing abundance of diatom taxa Discostella stelligera and Staurosirella cf. ovata indicates early nutrient enrichment. European pastoralism from approximately 1840 CE resulted in further deforestation, and all proxies show evidence for enhanced primary productivity driven by a combination of nutrient enrichment and changing lake levels, particularly since the 1960s. This has caused degradation in water quality and is likely to have contributed to the decline in populations of tuna (eel, Anguilla spp.). Conversations with local Māori, together with the palaeolimnological results, indicate that a culturally acceptable and realistic rehabilitation target for Lake Oporoa aligns with ecological conditions in the 1950s. The palaeoecological data provide information to guide catchment and lake revegetation and other methods of nutrient abatement, with the eventual aim of restoring culturally important tuna and native fish populations.

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Cultural value of water and western water management: an Australian Indigenous perspective

Cited by 41 publications

References 22 publications

Rethinking Condition: Measuring and Evaluating Wetland Vegetation Responses to Water Management

Rethinking Condition: Measuring and Evaluating Wetland Vegetation Responses to Water Management

How Do the Cultural Dimensions of Climate Shape Our Understanding of Climate Change?

Using palaeolimnology to guide rehabilitation of a culturally significant lake in New Zealand

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