Scoping Tropical Knowledge and its Potential to Contribute to the Economy of the Northern Territory
Project team: Stephen Garnett, Kristal Coe
Funding: Department of Business, Economic and Regional Development, NT Research and Innovation Board
This project will evaluate and identify:
- The scope of tropical knowledge, particularly as it relates to the NT
- Potential benefits from tropical knowledge to the Territory economy
- Pathways to benefit for the Territory from tropical knowledge
Review of Regulations and Legislation Regarding Feral Camel Management
Project team: Stephen Garnett, Gill Ainsworth, Rachel Carey, Michael O’Donnell, Greg Williams, Helen Haritos
Funding: Desert Knowledge CRC
This project is a review of the current legislation, regulations and policies at both federal and state/territory levels, relating to consumptive and non-consumptive management approaches to feral camel management. The review includes current legislative documentation on feral animals particularly focused on feral camels, Aboriginal land management, firearm management, pet meat, game meat, international animal trading (live export, meat export), animal welfare, movement including transportation, and other related documentation.
The review will highlight similarities and differences between the relevant jurisdictions – Commonwealth, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory governments - and identify the changes that would be required for future cross-jurisdictional cooperative actions.
Analysis of NT Legislation for the Protection of Threatened Species
Project team: Stephen Garnett, Gill Ainsworth, Rachel Carey
Funding: WWF
This project undertook a critical analysis of threatened species provisions within legislation in the Northern Territory and other jurisdictions around Australia. Analyses of key threats to threatened species and IUCN Red List criteria were also conducted. Recommended changes to Northern Territory threatened species legislation have been made which are affordable and workable within the Northern Territory’s geographic context.
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Quantification of the environmental and control costs of weeds
Project team: Sam Setterfield, Keith Ferdinands, Adam Drucker, Kerstin Zander
Funding: LWA
The purpose of this project is to fill two key knowledge gaps in Australia’s Post-border WRM system, that is to quantify (a) the environmental impacts and (b) the relative benefits and costs of control measures of two invasive grasses within a case study context. The outcomes of the research proposal are: 1) a review of existing material and a synthesis related to the environmental impact of weeds, in order to identify the main impacts that should form the focus of the economic analysis; 2) the development/adaptation of a framework for assessing the relative cost-effectiveness of alternative control measures; 3) the development/adaptation of a framework for assessing the benefits of control of conflict of interest weed.
Optimizing weed risk management investment through improved spatial distribution and benefit cost analysis modelling.
Project team: Keith Ferdinands, Samantha Setterfield, Michael Douglas, Adam Drucker, Kerstin Zander
Partners: NRETA, DBERD, Australian Weeds Committee
Funding: CERF
This project is one of four linked projects, forming a program of R&D activities embedded within a nationally recognised Weed Risk Management framework. The project will address the following key issues: (1) developing decision support tools and methods capable of modelling invasion pathways (spread) and identifying invasion vectors; (2) developing guidelines and tools for incorporating benefit-cost modelling into a WRM system; (3) using the improved spatial modelling capability to improve key decision points within a WRM system - in particular - potential distribution & habitats at risk, feasibility of control assessments and benefit-cost analysis modelling, and development of management plans e.g. identifying high priority areas for control/measures or monitoring.
Strategic Management of Tropical Invasive Grasses in Tropical Australia
Project team: Keith Ferdinands, Samantha Setterfield, Michael Douglas, Adam Drucker, Kerstin Zander
Partners: Dept Agriculture and Food, WA; Biosecurity Queensland, University Maryland
Funding: NHT
This project represents a proof of concept for a Weed Risk Management (WRM) system by demonstrating the strategic advantages of using a WRM system to inform weed management policy and prioritise on-ground weed control activities. It aims to:
(1) identify priority invasive grass species and an appropriate management response;
(2) establish a northern Australian taskforce to improve cross-jurisdictional cooperation in relation to invasive grassy weeds;
(3) improve the capability of existing WRM systems via a review and preliminary development of decision support tools relating to a) predicting the potential distribution of invasive plants and b) cost benefit analyses of “conflict species”.
Analysis of Legislation and Policies Affecting the Development of Indigenous Wildlife-based Enterprises
Project team: Stephen Garnett, Bruce Campbell, Donna Craig, Peter Whitehead, Sean Kerins, Beau Austin
Partners: NT Department of Business, Economic and Regional Development, NT Department of Environment, Heritage and the Arts, NT Research and Innovation Board, Northern Land Council Caring for Country Unit
Funding: ARC
Wildlife-based enterprise development is subject to a range of regulatory constraints. This project seeks support for an APAI to analyse the legal and policy framework governing such enterprises, which are the only realistic potential source of income for many remote Indigenous communities. Northern Territory, Commonwealth and International law and policy will be reviewed broadly and then their implications tested in two case studies, one based on products derived from a protected animal, the estuarine crocodile, the other on an endemic plant, the Kakadu plum. Top-down and bottom-up analysis will be integrated into recommendations to governments on maximising legal consistency and streamlining such enterprise development.
Review of Threats to Biodiversity in the Northern Territory
Project team: Owen Price, Jeremy Russell-Smith, Alice Beilby, Alaric Fisher, Glenn Edwards, Anna Straton, Sue Jackson, Adam Drucker
Partners: NT Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts, CSIRO
Funding: Natural Heritage Trust
This project will derive an objective prioritisation of major threatening processes in NT bioregions by estimating the magnitude of the impacts and costs and benefits of management to control each threat. Five threats will be considered: bushfire, weeds, exotic animals, grazing and vegetation clearing, plus how climate change will affect these costs. To produce the best results, each threat will be examined by a recognised NT expert in that threat. These collaborators will be assisted in their task by a resource economist and social scientist both of which will work across all threats to calculate economic and social costs and benefits. Read report>>
An assessment of sustainabilty in northern Australia using the ecological footprint with reference to Indigenous populations and remoteness
Project team: Stephen Garnett, Richard Wood
Funding: CDU
Nearly a third of the population of the Northern Territory of Australia is Indigenous and the Northern Territory environment has sustained Indigenous cultures for millennia. Under traditional management the land area used per person was relatively large but few resources were imported. Although the reliance on local resources has declined through interactions with Western society, at least some exploitation of the natural environment remains. This means that higher-density urban populations, which are largely non-Indigenous, have larger ecological footprints than rural and remote populations, which are largely Indigenous. This work is developing a set of quantitive indicators of sustainability of indigenous and non-indigenous populations across urban, regional and remote areas.
Recently completed research programmes
Economics of Camel Control in the Central Region of the Northern Territory
Project team: Adam Drucker
Funding: Desert Knowledge CRC
River Catchments and Marine Productivity and Upland and Coastal Community Institutional Interactions in Timor-Leste
Project team: Robert Wasson, Merrilyn Wasson, Frank Tirendi (AIMS), Dan Alongi (AIMS) Andrew MacWilliam ( ANU)
Partners: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Government of the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste, Australian Institute of Marine Science, Australian National University
Funding: Arafura Timor Sea Experts Forum, United Nations Development Programme
The purpose of the project is to assist the development of Timor-Leste’s food and water security in a time of climate change and variability.
The central tenet of this two phase project is to test the concern that upland land use in river catchments is resulting in serious erosion, downstream sedimentation and coastal sediment deposits. The purpose is to find upland land uses that are acceptable to the upland communities, but which do not result in sedimentation of water needed for consumption, or the pollution of coastal areas that would be otherwise suited for aquaculture.
A possible return to customary forms of land management in upland and coastal communities is being discussed with the communities and the feasibility of the systems analysed.
North Australian Water-use Summit
Project leader: Merrilyn Wasson
Funding: Under negotiation
Freshwater is the critical natural resource for the survival of humans and terrestrial biodiversity. With climate change altering rainfall and temperatures on a global scale, water security has become a paramount concern to Governments and citizens. Australia is no exception, with evidence of decreasing rainfall south of the Tropic of Capricorn, while domestic, industrial and agricultural demand for water escalates.
In comparison, Northern Australia is perceived to have a secure and abundant water supply from the seasonal monsoon's replenishment of river catchments. However, the gradient of water availability and water security from the coasts to the desert interior of Northern Australia is steep and poses problems for water use policies that are acute for the Governments, communities and industry. The uses of tropical rivers are the focus of policy reviews in the northern States of Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
The purpose of the Northern Australian Water Use Summit is to combine the collective policy experience and knowledge of the Ministers responsible for water use strategies and the environment, senior government officials in charge of implementing water use strategies, indigenous Australians and scientific experts, with the aim of presenting solutions to complex water use issues.
The Summit will focus on the following water use priorities:
Balancing environmental, community, agricultural and industrial requirements for water;
The role of indigenous land managers in protecting water sources and sites, many of which have cultural as well as survival significance;
The sustainable use of aquifers in the deserts and coasts of Northern Australia;
Equity issues and water pricing;
Protecting water bodies from invasive species;
Effect of climate change and sea level rise on estuaries and wetlands; and
Dealing with southern Australian perspectives that northern rivers are a solution to southern water scarcity. It is expected that the Summit will result in more effective water use strategies across Northern Australia, potentially including Intergovernmental and trans-boundary strategies.
Family-based Business Governance Structures
Project team: Debbie Hall, Stephen Garnett and Ian Thynne
Funding: Internal funds
Indigenous groups in the Northern Territory have expressed interest in establishing family micro-businesses on their traditional homelands. Such micro businesses ideally need to have governance structures that enable family-based systems of governance to co-exist and interrelate with those of the broader economy. The structures are necessary to support Indigenous groups in their quest for degrees of economic and social independence, to enable them to contribute to tropical or desert knowledge economies, to provide a basis on which they can bid for investment finance, and to allow them to contribute to the development of shared responsibility agreements as instruments of interaction between government and Indigenous groups.
This project aims to provide a thorough analysis of family governance models used here and in other parts of the world. Against this theoretical background, governance structures used by Indigenous businesses that are, or have recently been, operating in the Northern Territory will be evaluated. The research overall will contribute to knowledge about the forms and substance of Indigenous governance in the context of families and small businesses.
Interaction between Northern Territory Fisheries Legislation and Commonwealth Oceans Policy in Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone
Project team: Merrilyn Wasson, Karen Edyvane
Partners: NT Department of Environment, Heritage and the Arts, NT Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries and the NT Research and Innovation Board
Funding: Under negotiation
A number of sectors ‘compete’ for the use or conservation of the living resources of Australia’s EEZ in the Arafura and Timor Seas. They are the commercial fishing sector, indigenous coastal communities, coastal and marine NGO’s and recreational sector comprising recreational fishers and fishing tour operators.
The purpose of this project is to examine the interaction between NT Fisheries Legislation, NT environmental and natural resource policies and Commonwealth fisheries and oceans policies, and the impact of the legislation and policies on the four sectors.
Access and Benefit Sharing Policies and Legislation for Genetic Resources from the Biodiversity of Timor-Leste
Project team: Merrilyn Wasson
Partners: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
Funding: Government of Timor-Leste
Lack of policies and legislation concerning biodiversity and bio-prospecting in Timor-Leste create a situation where the nation’s biodiversity and the genetic resources from it are vulnerable to expropriation. The purpose of this project is to device policies that ensure Timor-Leste extracts the maximum benefit from its genetic resources and biodiversity.
‘Blue Genes’: Aquatic Genetic Resource Ownership and Intellectual Property Issues in Northern Australia
Project team: Merrilyn Wasson
Partners: CRC for Reef Research
Funding: CRC for Reef Research
The 1994 Convention on Biodiversity changed genetic resources from being a common pool resource to a resource owned by the country of origin of the biodiversity from which the gene is isolated . Conversely, the 1995 World Trade Organizations TRIPS agreement attempts to ensure that intellectual property rights accrue to the person/company who isolates the gene for use. This has become one of the most complex institutional and policy issues for mega-diverse nations such as Australia, which have the scientific capacity to utilize the abundance of their genetic resources.
Adding to the complexity is the global problem that traditional ecological knowledge, which often acts as a conduit to species with potentially valuable genetic resource, is not acknowledged as intellectual property.
The focus of this project is on the wealth of genetic resources in the tropical seas and estuaries of Northern Australia, the problems created by multiple jurisdictions and on the issue of indigenous access and benefit sharing arrangements and whether they are an appropriate substitute for recognising where appropriate, traditional knowledge as intellectual property.
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