Innovation in Management Plans for Community Conserved Areas: Experiences from Australian Indigenous Protected Areas

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Increasing attention to formal recognition of indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs) as part of national and/or global protected area systems is generating novel encounters between the customary institutions through which indigenous peoples and local communities manage these traditional estates and the bureaucratic institutions of protected area management planning. Although management plans are widely considered to be important to effective management of protected areas, little guidance has been available about how their form and content can effectively reflect the distinctive socio-cultural and political characteristics of ICCAs. This gap has been particularly apparent in Australia where a trend to rapidly increased formal engagement of indigenous people in environmental management resulted, by 2012, in 50 indigenous groups voluntarily declaring their intent to manage all or part of their estates for conservation in perpetuity, as an indigenous protected area (IPA). Development and adoption of a management plan is central to the process through which the Australian Government recognizes these voluntary declarations and invests resources in IPA management. We identified four types of innovations, apparent in some recent IPA plans, which reflect the distinctive socio-cultural and political characteristics of ICCAs and support indigenous people as the primary decision makers and drivers of knowledge integration in IPAs. These are (1) a focus on customary institutions in governance; (2) strategic planning approaches that respond to interlinkages of stewardship between people, place, plants, and animals; (3) planning frameworks that bridge scales by considering values and issues across the whole of an indigenous people's territory; and (4) varied communication modes appropriate to varied audiences, including an emphasis on visual and spatial modes. Further research is warranted into how governance and management of IPAs, and the plans that support these processes, can best engender adaptive management and diverse strong partnerships while managing the risk of partners eroding local control.

Integrating Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Science in Natural Resource Management: Perspectives from Australia

“…The effectiveness of knowledge integration relied on boundary agents, people with the capacity to communicate equitably across knowledge systems. Davies et al (2013) also highlight the key role played by brokers in the development of IPA management plans that integrate knowledge.…”

“…Policy drivers for increased formal involvement have included the sheer extent of indigenous landholdings that has resulted from government actions since the 1960s to recognize indigenous land rights. Biodiversity and other environmental values ascribed to these lands by nonindigenous people (see Davies et al 2013), along with the low financial capital and lack of employment or enterprise opportunities amongst landowners, has driven government investment in indigenous environmental management. Other ultimate causes include international instruments, notably the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention on Biological Diversity's Article 8(j); and belated legal recognition since 1992 that indigenous native title survived colonization of Australia and continues to exist in some circumstances (Nettheim and Craig 2002).…”

“…For example, Prober et al (2011) draw attention to inadequate cross-cultural means to communicate IEK as limiting achievement of knowledge integration in NRM. Davies et al (2013) recount how the first generation of management plans for Indigenous-owned and managed protected areas maintained distinctions between nature and society, which are characteristic of dominant Australian ontologies but the antithesis of Indigenous world views. Gratani et al (2011) note that traditional owners in their study considered that NRM decisions do not always respect their cultural values or IEK, despite their comanagement role in their traditional country.…”

“…Examples of knowledge integration in Australia, our first aim, are presented most directly in three papers: Hill et al (2012) synthesize features of indigenous engagement in environmental management where IEK and science are being integrated, and others where there is little or no integration. Butler et al (2012) found that government managers and scientists considered IEK had been applied in management of four of seven fisheries in Torres Strait, and describe the types of knowledge concerned; and Davies et al (2013) examine recent management plans for Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs), which have integrated the ontologies and governance systems of Indigenous landowners with conservation objectives.…”

Indigenous Protected Areas and ICCAs – Commonalities, Contrasts and Confusions

“…Because of these shared characteristics, IPAs are sometimes characterized as Australian examples of ICCAs (BorriniFeyerabend, 2010;Davies et al, 2013), whereas a closer analysis reveals that significant differences between the two concepts have emerged as both have evolved over the last 10 to 15 years. This paper explores commonalities and contrasts between IPAs and ICCAs.…”