Native Notes

We received this note a week ago from our colleagues at the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre. We think it’s worth a read.

As climate change menaces the world with spreading drought, Australia – a continent that is almost three quarters desert – is pioneering a new kind of global science: the science of desert living.

“Living in deserts is about much more than just managing the natural resources,” say four of the pioneers of the new science. It is also about desert livelihoods, sustainable settlements, social empowerment, novel technologies and how these things interplay.

In an article introducing a special issue of The Rangeland Journal, Dr. Mark Stafford Smith, Craig James, Murray McGregor and Jan Ferguson of the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (DKCRC) argue that people living in Australia’s and the world’s dry places obey the same basic rules for survival as the animals and plants of the desert.

Understanding these rules, and adapting them to human needs, will be critical in the dry times that face the world under climate change – but also in developing sustainably and wisely using the vast arid lands of Australia.

“Deserts are different. They are highly unpredictable places – things which live there must adapt to this variability if they are to survive and thrive,” says Dr. Mark Stafford Smith.

“That’s one reason why populations of both humans and animals are small and widely scattered, so as not to over-use scarce resources. But this also creates isolation – and desert communities are often physically far from the main society, remote from markets and the places where the big decisions are made.”

The challenges that face desert communities in areas such as healthcare, education, law and order, access to jobs, technology, markets or opportunities reflect this isolation – and the difficulty experienced by desert people in getting their views heard and understood by policymakers.

“It has been clear for some time that policies developed for large, settled populations living in stable conditions along the coast, close to markets and government often don’t to work so well when translated to regions which have the opposite characteristics,” says DKCRC Managing Director Jan Ferguson.

“This has practical implications for the livelihoods and jobs of desert people, the sustainability of their settlements, how they get their services, how the region is governed and how its economics function.

“To give just one example, many government policies are delivered via the internet, and assume everyone has access to it – but many desert communities have only a single public phone and often not even that, certainly no community accessible internet,” she says.

“For many policymakers, despite its size and the contribution it makes to our national wealth, desert Australia simply doesn’t seem to be on their radar. They don’t see it. They don’t attribute a value to the Bush, but operate off a deficit model where ‘it has to be fixed because it’s broke’.”

“Australia needs to see the desert differently. The desert is very rich and it is also very beautiful and diverse. It is clean and healthy – more so than the cities. It is a place of opportunity, ideas and creativity. We need a positive model of our deserts – not a deficit model,” Jan says.

Desert science is demonstrating with increasing clarity that the desert contributes far beyond the scale of its population to national wellbeing – and it is time that policies were designed to reflect this for the sake of both, the team argues.

Desert populations, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal are highly mobile – responding to one of the most basic imperatives of desert life: to follow the resources. Yet most policies are geared for a static lifestyle, a permanent house located close to services, with easy communication and transport. In fact so mobile are desert people that many escape the four-yearly census altogether, and their needs are therefore overlooked – as Australians, they remain uncounted.

Desert science is bringing fresh perspectives to the greater part of Australia, the team says. And it is also trailblazing a new understanding of how the dry areas of the world contribute directly to global society, its economy and its sustainability even though they seem remote and far away.

Being an old pinko, anarcho-communist type of bloke I tend to think there is a sameness about Australian politics that reminds me of beige upon beige.

There is a lot of icing sugar in Rudd’s pronouncements at this time but no real substance.

The unfortunate thing is that Rudd is still rolling out the intervention in the Northern Territory despite calls from people wanting it to stop or at least be changed.

At this time the Chair of the Central Health Service, an Aboriginal medical service that oversees approx. $100 million in funds is still caught up in that mess. She still has a part of her pension taken from her each fortnight and is given vouchers which can only be spent at certain food stores. She has no choice and the intervention and most of the worst aspects are still being undertaken in a racist manner. The very fact that Howard waived the racial discrimination act just to get the intervention going and Rudd has not thought fit to rectify that indicates where he might be going in the future.

Howard was disastrous for Aboriginal Australia and, as we are now seeing for all Australia in many ways. Rudd, at least, does have a few members of his cabinet who are dedicated to Aboriginal issues and equity.

However, a report released today indicates that from 1971 to 2006, although there has been some improvement in death rates, employment, education, etc. for Aboriginal people, in many respects we have gone backwards. To the point that this research indicates that, for some issues, it might take as much as 100 (yes, 100) years for Aboriginal Australia to achieve equity.

We are a very lucky country in so many ways. It is unfortunate that so many of us have a conservative bent that, to me, is due to the fact that we have never had any kind of revolution - not necessarily the bloody kind, but a revolution of minds and thoughts.

Babana, for instance, though new is one of the most successful men’s groups in NSW at least. However, it is still trying to scratch funds to pay for an office, perhaps a men’s shed and definitely a paid manager to keep things going. They keep trying to make the organization play to their tune, when it is shown so often to be not working. It, and its members will survive but it will not necessarily be thanks to the bureaucracy.

The Babana website will soon be putting up some of the things that the organization has been doing lately, just to let people know its members are alive and well.