Maintaining customary harvesting of freshwater resources: sustainable Indigenous livelihoods in the floodplains of northern Australia

Abstract

Freshwater resources underpin multiple livelihood systems around the world, particularly in highly productive tropical floodplain regions. Sustaining Indigenous people's access to freshwater resources for customary harvesting, while developing alternative livelihood strategies can be challenging. The sustainable livelihoods approach was applied to examine the ways in which multiple livelihoods in the East Alligator River floodplain region in northern Australia influence Aboriginal people's access to freshwater resources for customary harvesting. Interviews with Aboriginal residents were conducted to understand changes to freshwater customary harvesting practices. The dominant floodplain-based livelihoods analysed were pastoralism, biodiversity conservation and tourism and they were found to generate both opportunities and constraints for sustaining freshwater customary harvesting. Opportunities were provided through facilitating regular access to floodplain country and opportunistic access for harvesting, which assists in sustaining bio-cultural knowledge. Partnerships developed through these mainstream livelihoods built human capacity that enhanced all livelihood resource capitals (natural, human, social, financial and physical). Three key ways the dominant livelihoods constrained access to key freshwater resources were identified. Tourism required sacrificing certain hunting places and had to accommodate recreational fishing pressure. The successful recovery of the saltwater crocodile population through biodiversity conservation policy has inadvertently reduced people's customary access to in-stream resources. Pastoralism on the floodplain had restricted traditional floodplain burning practices associated with accessing aestivating long-necked turtles, affecting access and abundance. These findings highlight the need for the development of remote Indigenous livelihood strategies to make explicit their influences on freshwater customary harvesting practices, to better support their maintenance amongst multiple, noncustomary floodplain livelihoods.

Conserving biodiversity and Indigenous bush tucker: Practical application of the strategic foresight framework to invasive alien species management planning

“…Kakadu's floodplains ( Figure 2) are inundated annually during the wet season (Ward et al, 2014) and support a diversity of species including fish, turtles, and waterbirds (Finlayson et al, 2006). Kakadu's Ramsar-listed floodplains provide Indigenous people with foods (plant and animal species native to Australia that are known locally as "bush tucker"), such as magpie goose, fish, and turtles and other materials used for weapons, utensils, weaving, and medicines (Ligtermoet, 2016;McGregor et al, 2010). In a manner common to the human ecology of many north Australian wetlands (Jackson, Finn, & Featherston, 2012), utilization of floodplains enables Kakadu's land-owners to maintain important communal aspects of social and economic life based on cultural continuities.…”

Wetlands need people: a framework for understanding and promoting Australian indigenous wetland management

“…2) and S2E. In this regard, others have found that customary use of natural resources is directly linked to maintaining cultural knowledge, institutions, and biodiversity (e.g., Singh et al 2013, Ligtermoet 2016, Paniagua-Zambrana et al 2016.…”

Towards deeper collaboration: stories of Indigenous interests, aspirations, partnerships and leadership in aquatic research and management

“…Five of the papers Gould (2016), Ligtermoet (2016), McMillan and Prosper (2016), Rose et al (2016), Schnierer and Egan (2016) focus on Indigenous livelihoods around fish or fisheries resources. All consider the challenges in undertaking traditional harvesting or fisheries management practices under contemporary management regimes, particularly those that give primacy to non-Indigenous fishers and fisheries management methods (Gould, McMillan and Prosper, Schnierer and Egan).…”

“…All of these papers describe the significant challenges for Indigenous people attempting to reinvigorate culturally appropriate fisheries activities under colonial systems of fisheries governance which have given legal rights to nonIndigenous fishers. Ligtermoet (2016) also explores the challenges of sustaining customary harvest of resources amid contemporary systems of governance. She identifies the circumstances under which livelihoods currently derived from non-customary use of floodplains-including tourism, cattle grazing and biodiversity conservation-support or constrain the maintenance of livelihoods based on the customary harvest of floodplain resources by Bininj in the East Alligator region of northern Australia.…”