Australia’s path to fix the future is baked into its past: findings from new climate report

We learn little we didn’t already know about the dismal deterioration of the nation’s natural world from the state of the environment report released today by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

But it does conclude that we have much to learn from First Nations peoples. The sixth report in the series puts it bluntly: “The environment is poorer because of the lack of Indigenous leadership, knowledge and management.”

But in practical terms, how does that happen? Walbunga man and chair of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council Danny Chapman told Crikey that the Indigenous community can assist in a major way caring for country but has long been encumbered by government ignorance and red tape.

“We’ve been crying out for this for a long, long, long time,” he said. “A couple of years ago we couldn’t light a fire to do our traditional work that would care for country, that would limit the amount of damage that a bushfire would create. We weren’t allowed to do that.”

Although limitations on cultural burning have now changed, Indigenous fishing rights have not. “We’re still being prosecuted in water ways and oceans,” Chapman said.

Successive governments have long regulated Indigenous people out of their ability to care for country. Only now, when things have reached such dire levels, does there seem to be an enthusiasm to peel these restrictions back. It’s hard not to see why.

The 2021 state of the environment report (albeit released in 2022) presents 2000-plus pages of alarming findings on the marked decline of Australian ecosystems, biodiversity and cultural heritage.

Ten of the 11 categories under assessment are scored as “deteriorating”. The only environment with stable status is “urban”, but even this comes with the caveat of affordability and viability in the face of climate change.

In short: climate change is no longer a fast-approaching future. We’re in the grip of an extinction crisis abetted by extreme weather events and lax government regulation that has allowed degradation and decimation of land and habitat to occur with ease and speed.

For all its grim findings, the 2021 five-yearly report is the first of its kind to include Indigenous voices. In a letter to the minister, the report’s lead authors acknowledge that although the structure of the report “runs counter to the Indigenous holistic worldview where all aspects of the environment and culture are linked”, there is a concerted effort to put connection to country in conversation with climate change.

And so there should be: First Nations peoples have managed this country successfully for tens of thousands of years. Colonial management has produced rapid ecosystem decline in just a few hundred.

Professor Brendan Wintle from the University of Melbourne’s school of ecosystem and forest science is hopeful that proper resourcing of Indigenous knowledge and land management will help heal the dramatic decline of ecosystems under colonial management.

“There are tangible things we can do to empower traditional land managers, but also broader philosophical recognition about land management,” he said. “Maybe that can help us recover the position we as colonial land managers have created in such a short period of time.”

A key part of this is fire. As one of the world’s most fire-prone continents, wildfires will continue to be a major driver of change to Australian landscapes, plants and animals. And yet the strategies of dealing with fire the whitefella way are not only failing to prevent destruction of critical habitat, they’re accelerating it.

Professor Peter Kanowski from the Fenner school of environment and society at ANU, and one of the 2011 report authors, said that Australia needs to look beyond hazard reduction burning and land clearing to support Indigenous cultural burning — slow-moving, ecosystem-specific “cold” fire as opposed to mass uniform burns that Australia’s “official” fire practitioners employ. “That approach to restoration and reinterpretation of land rights was one of the positive consequences of the Black Summer fires,” he said.

The devastation wreaked by the 2019-20 bushfires forms a major part of the report. While extreme weather is only set to become more frequent and more ferocious, senior ecologist of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy Dr Jennifer Pierson explains that proper land and fire management are critical to addressing the other looming threat to biodiversity: invasive species. Feral animals are decimating native animal populations in Australia, and foreign plants outnumber native species.

“The interaction of threats is key,” she said. “Fires impact the amount of cover animals can access to hide from things like feral cats. This makes it easier for predators to move through landscapes and harder for prey to hide.”

Healthy forests are much more retardant to fire than those filled with weeds. Colonial land management has fostered the latter.

Plibersek assured that “I won’t be putting my head in the sand” over the contents of the report. But the extent to which she is willing to listen to First Nations peoples remains to be seen.

Chapman is clear: government must stop cherrypicking Indigenous culture and country when seeking solutions: “They either pick up all of our culture and all of our practices or none at all. We are up for this, but we require governments to sit down with us on an equal basis. Let’s get all of these regulations sorted and provide a whole lot of resources to enable us to do what we need to.”