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Climate Change, Mining and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in Australia

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Climate Change, Mining and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in Australia Social Inclusion (ISSN: 2183-2803) 2016, Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 92-101 Doi: 10.17645/si.v4i1.442 Article Climate Change, Mining and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in Australia Tony Birch Moondani Ballak Indigenous Unit, Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC 8001, Australia; E-Mail: [email protected] Submitted: 4 September 2015 | Accepted: 21 January 2016 | Published: 23 February 2016 Abstract Australia, in common with nations globally, faces an immediate and future environmental and economic challenge as an outcome of climate change. Indigenous communities in Australia, some who live a precarious economic and social existence, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Impacts are already being experienced through dramatic weather events such as floods and bushfires. Other, more gradual changes, such as rising sea levels in the north of Aus- tralia, will have long-term negative consequences on communities, including the possibility of forced relocation. Cli- mate change is also a historical phenomenon, and Indigenous communities hold a depth of knowledge of climate change and its impact on local ecologies of benefit to the wider community when policies to deal with an increasingly warmer world are considered. Non-Indigenous society must respect this knowledge and facilitate alliances with Indige- nous communities based on a greater recognition of traditional knowledge systems. Keywords Australia; climate change; indigenous knowledge; interconnection; two-way learning; wellbeing Issue This article is part of the issue “Social Inclusion and Indigenous Peoples”, edited by Pat Dudgeon (University of Western Australia, Australia), Waikaremoana Waitoki (University of Waikato, New Zealand), Rose LeMay (Wharerātā Group, Canada) and Linda Waimarie Nikora (University of Waikato, New Zealand). © 2016 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu- tion 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. Slow Violence the nineteenth century. (Altman, 2009, p. 17) In Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisa- The history of colonial expansion is a key contributor to tion (2004), Deborah Bird Rose writes that ‘Settler so- climate change (Lewis & Maslin, 2015; Weizman & cieties are built on a dual war: a war against Nature Sheikh, 2015), producing catastrophic economic and and a war against the natives.’ From the early years of social impacts on Indigenous communities. Recent European occupation of Indigenous Country in Austral- scholarship also links climate change to wider concerns ia, both land and the environment have been degraded of human rights and economic and social justice by a multitude of forces underpinning colonization, in- (Green, 2014; Klein, 2014; Nixon, 2011; Shue, 2014). cluding key aspects of agricultural practice (Muir, Greater recognition of the knowledge maintained with- 2014), and mining (Altman & Martin, 2009). Historical- in Indigenous communities relative to localized ecolo- ly, development in Australia has come at the expense gies and the affects of climate change would go some of Indigenous wellbeing to the advantage of a society way to addressing injustice by configuring Indigenous born out of colonial exploitation: people globally as valuable arbiters of change rather than the helpless victims of the First World: Wealth creation for most Australians has been predicated on expropriation of Aboriginal lands, ini- When considering climkleinate change, indigenous tially for agriculture and then also for mining from peoples and marginalized populations warrant par- Social Inclusion, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 92-101 92 ticular attention. Impacts on their territories and 2015. He labeled the Australian government “public communities are anticipated to be both early and enemy number one” with regard its carbon emissions severe due to their location in vulnerable environ- policy (or lack of it). He also attacked the government ments….Indigenous and marginalized peoples, over an absence of productive negotiations with other however, are not just victims of climate change. nations on climate change (Davey, 2015). This is an Their accumulated knowledge makes them excel- alarming conclusion considering that the renowned lent observers of environmental change and related climate researcher, Professor Will Steffen, of the inde- impacts. (Degawan & Krupnik, 2011) pendent Climate Council of Australia, wrote in the Council’s most recent report, Quantifying the Impact of During the recent United Nations Paris climate change Climate Change on Extreme Heat in Australia, that conference, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Tru- 2013 had been Australia’s hottest year on record; a sit- deau, requested that the formal recognition of Indige- uation, he concluded, that would have been “virtually nous rights be included in the final accord document impossible without climate change” (Steffen, 2015, p. (Prystupa, 2015). Both his, and the position of Indige- 1). While the new Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnball, is nous activists attending the Paris gathering were un- regarded as being somewhat ‘friendlier’ to the envi- dermined by representatives of the United States, the ronment, thus far he has not shifted government policy EU and Australia (amongst others) in order to safe- on climate change. He recently approved the contro- guard against any resultant “legal liabilities” to Indige- versial ‘mega’ Carmichael coal mine in Queensland nous communities (although the specifics of such liabil- (Taylor, 2015b), even though multinational mining ities were not outlined—“Climate talks”, 2015). companies, including BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto are Recalcitrant First World attitudes such as this need “quietly exiting coal” (Grigg, 2015) and its value to the change, and with a sense of urgency. Australian community, in both an economic and envi- Prior to his removal as prime minister of Australia in ronmental sense is heavily contested (Cleary, 2015). September 2015, Tony Abbott had adopted a conserva- Turnball’s position on climate change is also under tive, or even regressive approach to climate change. question due to the Australian government’s refusal to The absence of an assertive policy let alone genuine ac- sign a joint communique at that Paris summit, to phase tion on climate change met strong criticism. The Com- out fossil fuel subsidies (Coorey, 2015). monwealth’s formal statement, presented in its 2015 While Australia’s searing summer heat has histori- energy paper (Australian Government, 2015a), was cally produced catastrophic weather events such as the poorly received by institutions with relevant expertise. Victorian Black Saturday bushfires of 2009, resulting in The chief executive of Australia’s Climate Institute, 173 direct deaths, Steffen reminds us that ‘more Aus- John Connor, noting that the energy paper document- tralians die every year from extreme heat than from ed “the risk Australia’s fossil fuel industry posed in an any type of natural disaster’ (such people, often the el- emissions constrained future’’, concluded that the re- derly and the sick, are likely to die from respiratory ill- port produced no substantial policy to deal with an in- ness and disease, heart failure and other conditions creasingly unstable climate, leaving Connor to conclude bought on by heat exhaustion and dehydration— that the report was dominated by a troubling “fantasy Steffen, 2015, p. 2). Although deaths resulting from of climate ignorance” (Cox, 2015). In a similar criticism, heat associated conditions largely escape the eye of Lenore Taylor, political editor for the Australian arm of media headlines, they represent a strain on general Britain’s Guardian newspaper, commented that in the wellbeing in the community and a prohibitive cost to months prior to the release of the energy paper the the health system. In the future heat exposure will Commonwealth had relied on little more than a “rhe- cause many more deaths than bushfires. If we do need torical smokescreen” to deflect criticism of its inaction reminding, billions of people will live with climate on climate change, observing that government policy change in the future and suffer injustice as a result had been advanced no further in the energy paper it- (Green, 2014; Jeromack, 2014; Shue, 2014). self. She further noted that the Intergenerational Re- Indigenous communities in Australia are particularly port (Australian Government, 2015b), released around vulnerable to a range of impacts of climate change that the same time as the energy paper, and being “sup- threaten the cultural, spiritual, physical and general posedly an economic and planning document for the wellbeing within communities: next 40 years” was “largely silent on the economic con- sequences of climate change” (Taylor, 2015a). Because land and sea are inextricably linked with The government faced scrutiny at a national and in- Indigenous cultural identities, a changing climate ternational level over its position on climate change threatens ceremony, hunting practices, sacred and environmental policy more generally. The eminent sites, bush tucker and bush medicine, which in turn Australian scientist and Nobel laureate, Peter Doherty, affects law, home, health, education livelihood and criticized the government during an international sym- purpose. (Van Neerven, 2015) posium on sustainability held in Hong Kong earlier in Social Inclusion, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 92-101 93 Potential disruptions will include restricted access to ness to country
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