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Maintaining customary harvesting of freshwater resources: sustainable Indigenous livelihoods in the floodplains of northern Australia

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Abstract

Freshwater resources underpin multiple livelihood systems around the world, particularly in highly productive tropical floodplain regions. Sustaining Indigenous people’s access to freshwater resources for customary harvesting, while developing alternative livelihood strategies can be challenging. The sustainable livelihoods approach was applied to examine the ways in which multiple livelihoods in the East Alligator River floodplain region in northern Australia influence Aboriginal people’s access to freshwater resources for customary harvesting. Interviews with Aboriginal residents were conducted to understand changes to freshwater customary harvesting practices. The dominant floodplain-based livelihoods analysed were pastoralism, biodiversity conservation and tourism and they were found to generate both opportunities and constraints for sustaining freshwater customary harvesting. Opportunities were provided through facilitating regular access to floodplain country and opportunistic access for harvesting, which assists in sustaining bio-cultural knowledge. Partnerships developed through these mainstream livelihoods built human capacity that enhanced all livelihood resource capitals (natural, human, social, financial and physical). Three key ways the dominant livelihoods constrained access to key freshwater resources were identified. Tourism required sacrificing certain hunting places and had to accommodate recreational fishing pressure. The successful recovery of the saltwater crocodile population through biodiversity conservation policy has inadvertently reduced people’s customary access to in-stream resources. Pastoralism on the floodplain had restricted traditional floodplain burning practices associated with accessing aestivating long-necked turtles, affecting access and abundance. These findings highlight the need for the development of remote Indigenous livelihood strategies to make explicit their influences on freshwater customary harvesting practices, to better support their maintenance amongst multiple, non-customary floodplain livelihoods.

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Acknowledgments

This research was undertaken with ANU Human Research Ethics Approval (Protocol number 2011/532), research permits from the Northern Land Council (2012 ID:34349, 2013 ID:42093, 2014 ID:48079) and a Kakadu National Park research permit (RK 787). The author would like to thank the TAOs of clan estates spanning the East Alligator floodplain region, for their permission to engage in this research and for their patient teaching, their time and expert knowledge, as well as the Ardjumarllarl and Njanjma Ranger groups and those others who contributed their time and expert knowledge. The author thanks Parks Australia Kakadu staff for their support. This paper arose from research presented at the 2014 ASFB & ASL Congress, Darwin, in a forum on Indigenous people’s engagement in fisheries. Thank you to Alan Andersen, Richard Baker, Sue Jackson and Peter Novak for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript and to several anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. Thank you to Kelly Scheepers and Emma Woodward for their guidance and support in various stages of this research. This research was carried out with the assistance of funding from an Australian Postgraduate Award, a CSIRO PhD Top-Up Scholarship (Water for a Healthy Country Flagship), CSIRO ORCA funding and a NT government Research and Innovation Scholarship.

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  1. Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Acton, Australia

    Emma Ligtermoet

  2. CSIRO Land and Water Flagship, Darwin, NT, Australia

    Emma Ligtermoet

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Correspondence to Emma Ligtermoet.

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Ligtermoet, E. Maintaining customary harvesting of freshwater resources: sustainable Indigenous livelihoods in the floodplains of northern Australia. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 26, 649–678 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-016-9429-y

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