Recognizing culturally significant species and Indigenous‐led management is key to meeting international biodiversity obligations

Abstract

Increasingly the importance of Indigenous participation is acknowledged as central to effective biodiversity conservation. Traditional management emphasizes the importance of a holistic, integrated approach to safeguard species and ecological communities of cultural significance. This is discordant with many instruments for biodiversity conservation. Indigenous Australians have consistently lobbied for domestic laws to be amended to establish comanagement as the preferred approach to managing significant species and ecological communities -an approach that aligns with international obligations such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We describe amendments to Australia's biodiversity legislation and the use of biocultural indicators that would support Traditional management of Culturally Significant Entities (species and ecological communities), and in turn, assist Australia to effectively conserve biodiversity and meet international obligations. The ongoing challenge will be in empowering Indigenous peoples and their governance structures to implement enduring change.

Australia's biodiversity crisis and the need for the Biodiversity Council

“…The Council is politically neutral and works in a cross-partisan way to promote evidencebased policies and solutions that will help halt nationwide biodiversity loss. Initial policy-related priorities include providing scrutiny and evidence-based recommendations regarding the reform of national environmental laws, including the need for culturally-significant species and places to be recognised to ensure that Traditional Custodians can fulfil their ongoing connection with, and care for, species (Goolmeer et al 2022); holding the Australian Government accountable to internationally agreed commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity's Global Biodiversity Framework; reducing the threats of invasive species, inappropriate water resource developments, land clearing, degradation and climate change; and drawing attention to the current inadequacy of funding to solve Australia's biodiversity crisis.…”

‘Out of sight, out of mind’ - towards a greater acknowledgment of submerged prehistoric resources in Australian science-policy as part of a common heritage

“…Whilst based on terrestrial forest management with the Xáxli'p community in British Columbia, Diver (2017) nevertheless provides an excellent example of the mutual benefits of integrating Indigenous knowledge in science-policy that can be easily translated to the marine environment. Amongst the things that Diver (2017) (Weiss et al, 2013;Davies et al, 2020;Goolmeer et al, 2021;Macpherson et al, 2021), and this simply needs to be extended to include historic and prehistoric marine cultural heritage, such as in the community-led archaeological research program in the Recherche Archipelago (see Box 1 -Recherche Archipelago). As Guilfoyle et al,(2019) notes, the strength of this program is that the researchers, traditional owners and volunteers involved all bring different perspectives while sharing the same goal: to learn how best to understand, manage and protect these shared natural and cultural landscapes.…”

Mepimbat tedul proujek: Indigenous knowledge of culturally significant freshwater turtles addresses species knowledge gaps in Northern Australia

“…Australia is a global leader of biocultural diversity decline, with the greatest number of mammal extinctions (Woinarski et al, 2015) and major losses of Australian Aboriginal languages since European colonization in 1788 (Marmion et al, 2014;Simpson & Wigglesworth, 2019). Linguistic/cultural and biological diversity are tightly coupled, and a reduction in one may drive a reduction in the other and vice versa (Gorenflo et al, 2011).…”

“…Freshwater turtles meet the criteria for cultural keystone species including use, naming, role in narrative, ceremony or symbolism, persistence in memory of use in relation to cultural change, as well as occupying a unique position in culture and customary resource use (Garibaldi & Turner, 2004). In the Australian context, freshwater turtles meet the three interconnected domains for assessing culturally significant entities including aspects of Country, kin and culture (Goolmeer et al, 2022). They weave through cultural landscapes and have traditional management and practices, people have cultural authority and custodianship and hold traditional ecological knowledge of them, and they are harvested for customary resource use (Fordham et al, 2004(Fordham et al, , 2008Goolmeer et al, 2022).…”

“…In the Australian context, freshwater turtles meet the three interconnected domains for assessing culturally significant entities including aspects of Country, kin and culture (Goolmeer et al, 2022). They weave through cultural landscapes and have traditional management and practices, people have cultural authority and custodianship and hold traditional ecological knowledge of them, and they are harvested for customary resource use (Fordham et al, 2004(Fordham et al, , 2008Goolmeer et al, 2022).…”