Rights or containment? The politics of Aboriginal cultural heritage in Victoria

Aboriginal cultural heritage protection, and the legislative regimes that underpin it, constitute important mechanisms for Aboriginal people to assert their rights and responsibilities. This is especially so in Victoria, where legislation vests wide-ranging powers and control of cultural heritage with Aboriginal communities. However, the politics of cultural heritage, including its institutionalisation as a scientific body of knowledge within the state, can also result in a powerful limiting of Aboriginal rights and responsibilities. This paper examines the politics of cultural heritage through a case study of a small forest in north-west Victoria. Here, a dispute about logging has pivoted around differing conceptualisations of Aboriginal cultural heritage values and their management. Cultural heritage, in this case, is both a powerful tool for the assertion of Aboriginal rights and interests, but simultaneously a set of boundaries within which the state operates to limit and manage the challenge those assertions pose. The paper will argue that Aboriginal cultural heritage is a politically contested and shifting domain structured around Aboriginal law and politics, Australian statute and the legacy of colonial history

A sustainable agricultural landscape for Australia: A review of interlacing carbon sequestration, biodiversity and salinity management in agroforestry systems

Transformation of the south-western Australian landscape from deep-rooted woody vegetation systems to shallow-rooted annual cropping systems has resulted in the severe loss of biodiversity and this loss has been exacerbated by rising ground waters that have mobilised stored salts causing extensive dry land salinity. Since the original plant communities were mostly perennial and deep rooted, the model for sustainable agriculture and landscape water management invariably includes deep rooted trees. Commercial forestry is however only economical in higher rainfall (>700 mm yr(-1)) areas whereas much of the area where biodiversity is threatened has lower rainfall (300-700 mm yr(-1)). Agroforestry may provide the opportunity to develop new agricultural landscapes that interlace ecosystem services such as carbon mitigation via carbon sequestration and biofuels, biodiversity restoration, watershed management while maintaining food production. Active markets are developing for some of these ecosystem services, however a lack of predictive metrics and the regulatory environment are impeding the adoption of several ecosystem services. Nonetheless, a clear opportunity exists for four major issues - the maintenance of food and fibre production, salinisation, biodiversity decline and climate change mitigation - to be managed at a meaningful scale and a new, sustainable agricultural landscape to be develope