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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Australia, Climate Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.