Creating Spaces for Negotiation at the Environment And

i Creating spaces for negotiation at the environmental management and community development interface in Australia By Kirsten Marion Eileen Maclean Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Australian National University January 2007 ii Candidate's Declaration This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. To the best of the author’s knowledge, it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text. Kirsten Maclean Date: iii Acknowledgements This thesis is the product of time spent in Bristol (United Kingdom), Canberra, north central Victoria, Alice Springs and parts of the Tanami desert, Northern Territory, Australia. The conceptualisation, direction and depth of the research has been inspired, stimulated and nurtured by many people. I wish to thank my supervisors Richard Baker and Val Brown for their enthusiasm for this study. Their guidance and assistance in refining my arguments, engaging with written drafts and bringing the thesis full circle is so very much appreciated. In particular I am grateful to Richard Baker for having confidence in, and encouraging, my desire to begin fieldwork soon after my transferral from the University of Bristol to The Australian National University. Donna Craig from Charles Darwin University provided guidance in Alice Springs. My sincere thanks to Charles Tambiah for sharing his knowledge and thought- provoking experiences of community facilitation and participation processes. I wish to acknowledge the lasting influences of my supervisors Simon Naylor and Marcus Power, from the School of Geographical Sciences, the University of Bristol. I thank them for the rigorous discussions and exchanges that stimulated much of the theoretical grounding of the thesis. I also wish to acknowledge the academic staff and students from the Department of Geography, the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), where I completed my Masters of Philosophy, and the School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University (Australia), where I completed my Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science, for providing knowledge and experience that kindled my interest in the field of environment and development. The case studies that bring the thesis alive reflect the passion, dedication and energy of the many people involved in environmental management and community development in Victoria and the Northern Territory. I am indebted to the numerous people who spent time speaking of their personal experiences and showing me their land and their country. In Victoria, members of local landcare, field naturalist and environment groups, community facilitators and project officers from the catchment management authority, researchers, government officers from the Department of Sustainability and Environment, the local shire council and Parks Victoria provided insight into the workings of the threatened species project. In particular I wish to thank Jenni Thomas, Geoff Park and Julie Kirkwood for their initial enthusiasm and ongoing support and interest in the research. In the Northern Territory, the experiences shared by many Aboriginal people from the communities of Willowra, Nyirippi, Yuendumu and Lajamanu form a fundamental part of the thesis as do those of pastoralists and conservation land managers from the region and government officers based in Alice Springs. Research affiliation and the associated financial support from the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre greatly assisted the research work in the Northern Territory. I am particularly grateful to Craig James, Glenn Edwards, Alicia Boyle and Ruth Brown for their assistance in galvanising the affiliation and ongoing support. I am thankful to the Australian iv Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) and the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service for providing office space during my time in Alice Springs. Much of the fieldwork conducted in the Northern Territory was generously facilitated by members of the Desert Fire project, in particular: Grant Allan, Richard Tuckwell, Kasia Gabrys, Angus Duguid, Andrea Johnson and Chris Materne. I am also indebted to Jamie Moore of the Central Land Council, Rachel Paltridge, Consultant Wildlife Biologist and Shane Brumby of Bushfires, Northern Territory (formerly the Northern Territory Bushfires Council) for allowing me to join each of them on bush trips. In addition to the valuable fieldwork conducted during these various trips, the many conversations shared with all these individuals en route to, and in the Tanami greatly enriched my understanding of the social and cultural complexities of the central Australian landscape. I am very appreciative of the support of numerous members of the School of Resources, Environment and Society at The Australian National University. A dynamic and inclusive research community is essential for keeping one’s eye on the bigger picture. I am grateful for the creative direction of Clive Hilliker and the formatting skills of Steve Leahy. Thank you to Gail Craswell who imparted valuable strategies to improve the written text. Thanks also go to my old friend Rabi Thapa for his comments from a distance. This research study has benefited from the many hours of debate, dialogue and deliberation shared with colleagues and friends in the United Kingdom and Australia. In particular, I feel very lucky to have been part of vibrant student communities in Bristol and Canberra. In Bristol I wish to acknowledge Adeline Tay, Paul Duffus, Santhi Mathi A, Ming Hua Jen, Jessica Pykett, Jessica Sellick, Nils Lindahl Elliot, Simon Narbeth and Caroline Scarles. In Canberra I am grateful to Sue Feary, Stefan Kaufman, Geraldine Teakle, Bronwyn Dixon, Yohan and Loki Thiruchelvam, Rachel Funari, Ha Tran, Rory Eames, David Eastburn, Peter Dean, Kylie Carmen-Brown, Karen Fisher, Paul Cheeseman, Clare Lawlor and Catherine Gross. Thanks for the bushwalks and soirees that kept the humour and the spirit alive. My parents Rupert Maclean, Anne Warren, my step mother Michiko Inoue-Maclean, my sister Lisa Maclean, my grandmother Joan Maclean, and my cousin Janelle Cooper have provided endless intellectual and emotional support. Words cannot express my gratitude for their ongoing encouragement, faith, good humour and occasional chiding that have engendered in me the desire to pursue a path that sometimes feels overwhelming. I dedicate the thesis to my late grandfather Donald Maclean. v Abstract There are ongoing debates in the contemporary environment and development literature regarding the role of scientific, local and indigenous participation in sustainable development initiatives. The debates have been critical of the supremacy of western scientific knowledge in such initiatives, with some academics asserting that science can be imperialistic, and its application can sometimes lead to social inequity and exclusion. In response, local and Indigenous knowledges have been offered as providing a panacea for all environment and development problems. This thesis argues that in Australia the meta-narrative of ecologically sustainable development is in fact unsustainable because it perpetuates the intra- and inter- generational inequalities that it is supposedly meant to overcome. This is because the meta- narrative of ecologically sustainable development separates ways of knowing the world into dichotomies of self/other and universal scientific knowledge versus place-based local knowledge. The thesis argues that equitable and sustainable ecologically sustainable development is dependant upon moving beyond these dichotomies. The research questions what lies between the complex sets of knowledge of best practice environmental management at the local environmental management and community development interface in Australia. An investigation is conducted into the knowledge synergy that is, or indeed is not, occurring between government organisations, non-government organisations, local community groups and individuals involved with two environmental management and community development projects in Australia. One project works across interest groups to protect and enhance threatened species habitat in Victoria. The other project considers what it means to manage fire across different land tenures in the Northern Territory. These case studies act as points of access into the localised knowledge networks surrounding environmental governance and management in Australia. They give life to the thesis critique and relevance to the practical outcomes. Part 1 grounds the thesis within the discipline and practice of critical human geography. Part 2 locates the thesis within the contemporary environment and development literatures. It demonstrates an applied peoples’ geography to consider the power and the potential of local spaces of environmental management and community development. Part 3 practices this applied peoples’ geography. It illustrates how the political, cultural, knowledge and social landscapes of any environmental management and community development project reflect the diverse knowledges of the environment in Australia. Understanding these complex landscapes provides the means for moving beyond ‘them and us’ dichotomies inherent to the meta-narrative of ecologically sustainable development in Australia. Part 4 demonstrates that knowledge of best practice environmental management move across and between multiple,

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