Carbon projects and Indigenous land in northern Australia

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Dore ◽  
Christine Michael ◽  
Jeremy Russell-Smith ◽  
Maureen Tehan ◽  
Lisa Caripis
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Sequestration ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Emissions Reduction ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Native Title ◽  
Indigenous Land

Land activities contribute ~18% of total greenhouse gas emissions produced in Australia. To help reduce these emissions, the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) was implemented in 2011 to encourage land projects, which reduce the production of greenhouse gases and/or sequester carbon in the land. Prospective projects include savanna fire management and rangelands management, which have high relevance in northern Australia where Indigenous landholding is strong. This paper explores the land-tenure requirements necessary for these kinds of carbon projects to be approved by the Clean Energy Regulator. It provides an introduction to the CFI before discussing the land tenure requirements in the states of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia with respect to both emissions reduction and carbon sequestration projects. Potential issues with the current framework are highlighted, especially in relation to native title.

Carbon Accounting and Savanna Fire Management

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fire Management ◽  
Carbon Accounting ◽  
Emissions Reduction ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Relevant Case ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Integrated Approaches ◽  
Scientific Arguments ◽  
Carbon Economy

In the context of Australia’s developing carbon economy, fire management helps to abate emissions of greenhouse gases and is an important means of generating carbon credits. The vast high-rainfall savannas of northern Australia are one of the world’s most flammable landscapes. Management of fires in this region has the potential to assist with meeting emissions reduction targets, as well as conserving biodiversity and providing employment for Indigenous people in remote parts of Australia’s north. This comprehensive volume brings together recent research from northern Australian savannas to provide an internationally relevant case study for applying greenhouse gas accounting methodologies to the practice of fire management. It provides scientific arguments for enlarging the area of fire-prone land managed for emissions abatement. The book also charts the progress towards development of a savanna fire bio-sequestration methodology. The future of integrated approaches to emissions abatement and bio-sequestration is also discussed.

scholarly journals Electricity production from biogas in Serbia: Assessment of emissions reduction

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1333-1344
Author(s):  
Slobodan Cvetkovic ◽  
Tatjana Kaludjerovic-Radoicic ◽  
Rastislav Kragic ◽  
Mirjana Kijevcanin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
Annual Production ◽  
Electricity Production ◽  
Emissions Reduction ◽  
Biogas Plants ◽  
Total Capacity ◽  
Promising Source

Biogas represents a promising source for the production of clean energy. The objective of this paper was to quantify the potential for the reduction of emissions to the environment during the production of electricity from biogas in comparison with environmental effects of the production of the same amount of electricity from fossil resources (coal from Kolubara basin and natural gas). Basis for comparison of environmental impacts in this work was the annual production of electricity in biogas plants of the total capacity of 80 MW. This study has shown that the annual production of electricity from biogas power plants of 80 MW results in: substitution of up to 840 kt of coal from Kolubara basin and 123.2 million m3 of natural gas; reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases in the range of 491.16 kt - 604.97 kt CO2-eq, depending on the energy efficiency of the process of electricity production from biogas; reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases up to 92.37 kt CO2-eq compared to the use of natural gas for electricity generation.

Monitored Lives: Writing Indigenous Land Management and the State (Part One)

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-35
Author(s):  
Jim Birckhead
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Contract Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Indigenous Land Management ◽  
Expert Input ◽  
Management Issues ◽  
Indigenous Land

Anthropologists in Australia are becoming increasingly involved in government contract work on Indigenous land tenure and management issues, most of which require some ‘expert’ input to help authenticate cultural identity and establish connection to ‘country’. In this paper I have reviewed some issues and themes drawn from my uneven and serendipitous work as an anthropologist. This work has been done as both an academic and practitioner, over the past couple of decades on Indigenous land tenure, hunting, management, and ranger training at this dynamic and contentious interface between Indigenous cultural processes and government agencies. My aim is to raise questions of both ethics and epistemology and to reflect on the work of the anthropologist in these domains, without attempting to systematically cover all of the possible issues.

The Terms of Our Surrender: Colonialism, Dispossession and the Resistance of the Innu

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cassell
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Eastern Canada ◽  
Nations People ◽  
Natural Land ◽  
First Nations People ◽  
Indigenous Land

Based on extensive fieldwork and oral history, The Terms of Our Surrender is a powerful critical appraisal of unceded indigenous land ownership in eastern Canada. Set against an ethnographic, historical and legal framework, the book traces the myriad ways the Canadian state has successfully evaded the 1763 Royal Proclamation that guaranteed First Nations people a right to their land and way of life. Focusing on the Innu of Quebec and Labrador, whose land has been taken for resource extraction and development, the book strips back the fiduciary duty to its origins, challenging the inroads which have been made on the nature and extent of indigenous land tenure—arguing for preservation of land ownership and positioning First Nations people as natural land defenders amidst a devastating climate crisis. It offers a voice to the Innu people, detailing the spirituality practices, culture and values that make it impossible for them to willingly cede their land. The text is intended to bridge the gap in knowledge between legal practitioners and those working at the intersections of human rights, social work and public policy. The book offers a potent template for how we can use the law to fight back against the indignities suffered by all indigenous peoples.

Ecological thresholds and the status of fire-sensitive vegetation in western Arnhem Land, northern Australia: implications for management

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Edwards ◽  
Jeremy Russell-Smith
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Vegetation Types ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Ecological Thresholds ◽  
Arnhem Land ◽  
The Status

The paper examines the application of the ecological thresholds concept to fire management issues concerning fire-sensitive vegetation types associated with the remote, biodiversity-rich, sandstone Arnhem Plateau, in western Arnhem Land, monsoonal northern Australia. In the absence of detailed assessments of fire regime impacts on component biota such as exist for adjoining Nitmiluk and World Heritage Kakadu National Parks, the paper builds on validated 16-year fire history and vegetation structural mapping products derived principally from Landsat-scale imagery, to apply critical ecological thresholds criteria as defined by fire regime parameters for assessing the status of fire-sensitive habitat and species elements. Assembled data indicate that the 24 000 km2 study region today experiences fire regimes characterised generally by high annual frequencies (mean = 36.6%) of large (>10 km2) fires that occur mostly in the late dry season under severe fire-weather conditions. Collectively, such conditions substantially exceed defined ecological thresholds for significant proportions of fire-sensitive indicator rain forest and heath vegetation types, and the long-lived obligate seeder conifer tree species, Callitris intratropica. Thresholds criteria are recognised as an effective tool for informing ecological fire management in a variety of geographic settings.

scholarly journals The Concept of “Indigenous Land Tenure” Surfaces in Namibia: A Comparative Overview ‒ Agnes Kahimbi Kashela v Katima Mulilo Town Council (SA 15/2017) [2018] NASC 409 (16 November 2018)

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-185
Author(s):  
George Barrie
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
The State ◽  
Traditional Authority ◽  
South West ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Communal Land ◽  
South West Africa ◽  
Communal Lands ◽  
Indigenous Land

The facts in this case, which fell to be decided by the Supreme Court of Namibia in November 2018, can be succinctly put: in 1985, Ms Kashela’s late father was allocated a piece of land as part of communal land by the Mafwe Traditional Authority (MTA) in the Caprivi region of the then-South West Africa (now Namibia). In 1985, the Caprivi region fell under the then-South West Africa Administration. Following the independence of Namibia on 21 March 1990, all communal lands became property of the state of Namibia by virtue of section 124 of the Constitution of Namibia Act 1 of 1990, read with Schedule 5 of the Constitution. Paragraph (3) of Schedule 5 of the Constitution states that the afore-mentioned communal lands became property of the state “subject to any existing right, charge, obligation or trust existing on or over such property”.

scholarly journals Spinifex People as Cold War Moderns

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Greg Castillo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Western Australia ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Nuclear Testing ◽  
Atomic Age ◽  
Native Title ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Government

Aboriginal Australian contemporary artists create works that express indigenous traditions as well as the unprecedented conditions of global modernity. This is especially true for the founders of the Spinifex Arts Project, a collective established in 1997 to create so-called “government paintings”: the large-scale canvases produced as documents of land tenure used in negotiations with the government of Western Australia to reclaim expropriated desert homelands. British and Australian nuclear testing in the 1950s displaced the Anangu juta pila nguru, now known to us as the Spinifex people, from their nomadic lifeworld. Exodus and the subsequent struggle to regain lost homelands through paintings created as corroborating evidence for native title claims make Spinifex canvases not simply expressions of Tjukurpa, or “Dreamings,” but also artifacts of the atomic age and its impact on a culture seemingly far from the front lines of cold war conflict.

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