Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Northern Australia In 2030

Ach! So! Other people think like me °^° ...

Northern Australia In 2030
Sustainable Development of Northern Australia
Land and Water Task Force
It is the year 2030 and the world's population is approaching 9 billion. While Australia's population has increased by only 8 million in the past 20 years, nearly 6 billion people live in neighboring Asian and South Pacific nations...

...While Indigenous people make up less than 3 percent of Australia's population in 2030, they compromise nearly 50 percent of the population in Northern Australia. In some areas, such as the Kimberley, Indigenous people represent nearly 60 percent of the population.


This PDF is about resource management, water resources and water management and stewardship of the land you live on. The question is should/do/can local people and local Indigenous populations landscape the environment and manage the resources? Why not!

The premise is that planning institutions thousands of miles away do not and cannot understand the local environment and its needs. The land is not only a 'resource' it is a dynamic living phenomenon. Something people have to get to know when they live in an area. For example, you need to know where to build and where not to build and in what style you have to build in order to adapt to the land and climate.

I was researching the history of Queensland floods and I came across the "Waters Futures Forum" .. Northern Australia Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance - NAILSMA

There are some interesting PDF files online, with a wealth of information and relevant proposals. It seems to be a question of regional management of resources and local knowledge of the area.

So What? People of The Eora Nation
In that country on the edge of Kakadu where the great rivers of the north make their way from the majestic Arnhemland escarpment across vast flood plains and on into the Arafura Sea, Aboriginal people are seeking to play their role in the sustaining of the resources that have been entrusted to them from their fathers and mothers and those before them.

Terra Nullius: Land Belonging To No One
In the context of Aboriginal people and government interaction assimilation is aimed at achieving the original colonial dream and assertion that Australia was terra nullius – land belonging to no one...

As a result Indigenous Australians have found themselves standing alongside a group of almost equally politically excluded Australians; those living in the Northern half of the Nation who are non-Indigenous but who have chosen to contribute to the future of the Nation by working for the development and sustaining of our deserts, our northern coastal regions and the pastoral regions of the Northern Territory, Western and South Australia and Queensland.

Recent amalgamations of Shires in Queensland and the creation of local government entities in the Northern Territory has seen the erosion of Aboriginal peoples capacity, in those regions, to have a say in the management of their communities to the same extent that they had hitherto enjoyed.

People in remote Australia, covering most of our continental land mass have found themselves more than ever subject to the decision making processes and priorities of governments authority in southern cities, far removed from the reality of the lives of those in the bush. We require regional empowerment as part of good governance of our regions and resources, especially water.