Traditional Owner Aspirations Towards Co Operative Management Of The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area

Author : Melanie Zurba
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780494711194
Total Pages : 174 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (111 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book How Well is Co-management Working? written by Melanie Zurba and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Protected area management in Australia, as in Canada and elsewhere, has begun to focus on community-based management strategies. In response, governments and communities, including Indigenous groups, face the challenges of developing cooperative management arrangements with multiple interests potentially entering the appropriate arenas, and being incorporated into regional governance and management systems. The literature on co-management and participation in environmental management has been developed along with this movement in regional management, and has a series of associated typologies, as well as theoretical and practical implications. The overall direction of this research is directed by the questions ‘How well is co-management working?’ within the context of the arrangements between government agencies and an Indigenous organization. The Girringun Aboriginal Corporation (GAC) represents the interests of nine Traditional Owner groups and has been involved in working through regional natural resources and protected areas partnerships with government over many years. These partnerships include an Indigenous ranger unit, Australia’s first Traditional Use of Marine Resource Agreement, and the plans for an Indigenous Protected Area, which will be the first over a mainstream multi-tenure area, as well as the first to incorporate both land and sea country. Girringun country is located in Northern Queensland Australia, and is located at the coastal interface of the Wet Tropics and Great Barrier Reef eco regions, which are World Heritage Areas represented by their respective authorities. Other tenures include public freehold lands, State forest and reserves, and National parks. In order to answer the research question, I evaluated the partnerships between government senior managers from the departments involved in regional resources and protected areas management with the GAC. Qualitative methods in the form of document reviews and semi-structured interviews, as well as methods using a participatory approach such as participant observation, a focus group and creative workshop, were used to answer the research questions. I used an exploration of perspectives and the storyline form of discourse analysis to investigate perspectives on land and sea governance and management, past and current partnership arrangements, and how power is being shared amongst partners to the arrangements. The research is therefore divided into three main research objectives, plus one relating specifically to outcome for the GAC: 1) Explore Traditional Owner, Girringun Aboriginal Corporation, and government values and aspirations for country; 2) Identify and conceptually map the governance and management institutional arrangement on Girringun country and describe the integrity of the relationships among the different components of the arrangements; 3) Evaluate the experiences of the governance and management partners with an eye for ‘lessons learned’; and 4) Work within a mutually beneficial research arrangement with the GAC. Investigations of partnerships made it possible to consider the arrangement within the scope of typologies within the co-management literature. The mapped structure of the arrangements, in addition to the storylines indicating the levels of integrity within partnerships, and levels of power sharing made it possible to assert whether or not co-management was indeed occurring. It was determined that the Girringun case indeed a co-management within the given typologies in both theoretical and practical terms. The Girringun case is a good example of a grass-roots regional organization bridging mainstream and Indigenous aspirations for protected areas management, which in turn is translating into favourable on-the-ground outcomes and working arrangements for multi-party governance systems. The Girringun case demonstrates the importance of regional arrangements taking into account locally responsible management bodies, and reflects the journey that is co-management."--P. vii-viii.