• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta June 29, 2022
London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty June 29, 2022
G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance June 29, 2022
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Jurisdictions Australia

Australian Indigenous Knowledge Holds Potential for Climate Mitigation, Economic Growth

January 22, 2020
Reading time: 3 minutes

Antarctic Fire Angels/Facebook

Antarctic Fire Angels/Facebook

1
SHARES
 

Australia’s Indigenous peoples have been living peaceably, and sustainably, with their fire-prone environment for 65,000 years, and so the nation at large—particularly the urban areas and the south, where fewer Indigenous people live—has much to learn from them about how to survive the bushfires of the 21st century.

 “Many of those commenting on the current bushfire crisis in Australia argue about fuel reduction, hazard reduction, use of aerial incendiaries, drip torches, ancient Indigenous techniques, and western forms of fire management,” writes Joe Morrison, an Indigenous business owner with 45 years’ experience helping Australia’s First Peoples with economic development, in a recent opinion piece for The Guardian. Now, “it’s time to ask us how it’s done.”

Fire “is, and always has been [for Australia’s First Peoples], part of the interwoven matrix of the relationships between people and the physical and spiritual world,” Morrison explains, in a post that describes how local weather conditions and plant and animal life cycles, not calendar dates, determine when, not if, small restorative fires should be lit. In western Arnhem Land, for example, “dryer cool air, combined with morning fog and flowering of the Woolybutt (Eucalyptus miniata), signal Yekke season.” That season is “the time to light small ‘cool’ fires to create a mosaic throughout the landscape that breaks up the country, reducing large, hot fires later in the year.”

Noting that the “bush” in Australia is frequently impenetrable, Morrison states that such burning “allows people to walk through country,” and that this walking, which “involves a spiritual element, as well as physical and mental,” is central to “a worldview where the land and sea and everything within it are to be respected and cared for.”

What is urgently needed, and what such “walkabouts” would help to inculcate, he says, is the understanding that “an unburnt country is not ‘wilderness’ and how country should be—but country desperately calling for fire to rejuvenate it and restore the balance of risks.” That means “not uncontrolled, damaging fires,” such as those that began devastating large parts of the country’s southeast in December, he adds, “but fires that are understood, planned, patchy, and regular.”

Urging non-Indigenous Australians to understand that “we have to live with our environment, not against it,” Morrison describes a “profound opportunity” to learn from Indigenous knowledge that has been 65 millennia in the making, and for Indigenous Australians to benefit economically and socially from their role as 21st-century teachers and guardians. 

“Savanna burning, local capacity, authority and control—hard-earned lessons from the north can provide immense opportunity in the south, aligning policy with employment and enterprise to bring benefit to Indigenous, local, and regional communities, and shift the way lands are used and the economy works,” he writes.

While Indigenous people comprise just 3% of the population of Australia, Morrison adds, they possess “unmatched and untapped capital to bring to any future discussions and actions relating to the future of living in Australia.” He asks, rhetorically: “Is yearly burning so incomprehensible?”

Morrison concludes that “the time for action is now,” since “we simply cannot let our kids’ future go up in smoke.”



in Australia, Drought, Famine & Wildfires, Ending Emissions, First Peoples, Jobs & Training, Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Keith Hirsche
Jobs & Training

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
346
London Eye UK England
Cities & Communities

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
103
Number 10/flickr
International Agencies & Studies

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
116

Comments 1

  1. John Englart says:
    2 years ago

    Yes, indigenous fire farming has it’s place in reducing fire risk, as a tool for reducing fuel load while still supporting wildlife diversity. But it cannot be applied uniformly across all Australian ecosystems. Many of the forest ecosystems are naturally wet at ground level with tree ferns and leaf litter providing a host of habitat for wildlife. Fires in these ecosystems are very rare.

    Increased temperatures driven by climate change and prolonged drought have made these rainforest ecosystems more receptive to fire.

    And in Australia most remote fires are started by thunderstorm generated lightning.

    Logging of native forests has also increased the fire severity risk, with the level of detrius left after logging providing abundant fuel, and regrowth increasing fire risk and flammability for up to 40 years or more.
    See this blog from 2011:
    https://takvera.blogspot.com/2011/10/logging-of-victorian-mountain-ash.html

    Hazard reduction burning (cool burning) is undertaken in most jurisdictions, usually on a risk management basis to protect human assets, but the period available to do this safely is shrinking as the fire season lengthens with global heating. It doesn’t help when governments, such as New South Wales, cut back on National Park employees thereby reducing resources to undertake hazard reduction burns in National Parks. There are substantial risks that need to be balanced with Hazard reduction, including risk of fires at times escaping control and causing major property loss or loss of life, bushfire pollution impacting health of residents. The scientific evidence clearly shows fuel reduction does little to stop extreme fires.
    https://theconversation.com/a-surprising-answer-to-a-hot-question-controlled-burns-often-fail-to-slow-a-bushfire-127022

    Most of the bushfires in Australia this season were so extreme that hazard reduction did little to prevent them. They were crown fires driven by extreme fire weather conditions (High temperatures, extreme low humidity, high winds) (climate change is making Australian fire weather conditions worse – long term trend see change in Forest Fire Danger Index time series) on top of climate induced drought conditions.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Keith Hirsche

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
346
François GOGLINS/wikimedia commons

Corrosion Problem Shutters Half of France’s Nuclear Reactors

June 29, 2022
131
David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1.2k
Number 10/flickr

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
116
London Eye UK England

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
103
Danielle Scott/flickr

Advocate Urges Ottawa to Intervene Before Ontario Builds Highway 413

June 29, 2022
87

Recent Posts

AJEL / Pixabay

Windfall Tax on Food, Fossil, Pharma Giants Would Raise $490B to Solve ‘Catastrophic’ Food Crisis: Oxfam

June 29, 2022
48
futureatlas.com/flickr

Ottawa Demands Deeper Fuel Emissions Cuts, Offers Fossils a Double-Dip on Tax Breaks

June 29, 2022
72
Province of B.C./flickr

Comox Joins Municipalities Seeking Ban on New Gas Stations

June 29, 2022
58
/Piqsels

Refocus Agriculture Spending to Cut Emissions, Boost Productivity, OECD Urges Governments

June 29, 2022
25
Jimmy Emerson, DVM/flickr

Public Vigilance Key to Protecting Greenbelts for Climate Resilience, Report Finds

June 29, 2022
29
Miguel V/Wikimedia Commons

Forests Fall Short of Full Carbon Storage Potential, Study Finds

June 29, 2022
46
Next Post
MinkS / Pixabay

Nottingham Delivers Home Comfort, Rooftop Solar in Drive to Be UK’s First Carbon-Neutral City

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}