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145356 - Australian Indigenous insights into ecosystem services.pdf (2.26 MB)

Australian Indigenous insights into ecosystem services: Beyond services towards connectedness - People, place and time

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 00:48 authored by Natalie StoecklNatalie Stoeckl, Jarvis, D, Larson, S, Larson, A, Grainger, D
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment focused attention on benefit flows from ecosystems to humans, although nowadays, ecosystem service (ES) researchers typically acknowledge reciprocal flows from humans to nature and there is growing recognition of the need to better incorporate insights from other cultures. We set out to do this, giving primacy to the voice of an Australian Aboriginal group during a workshop that developed an (Aboriginal) model of the nature-people relationship. ES were a component of the model, but the Aboriginal model was not 'atomistic' (with separable parcels of land, separable ES, or separable individuals who are not part of community); it focused primarily on connections between and within the human and natural systems. Temporal dimensions were considerably longer than those commonly considered by Western scientists, feelings and spirituality were central, and stewardship activities were highlighted as not only improving the environment but also directly improving wellbeing. Evidently, Country needs to be looked after the 'right way'; it is not enough to simply account for the ES values that are generated or the stewardship activities that are undertaken (e.g. controlling weeds); one also needs to record how this is done (e.g. with respect) and by whom (e.g. traditional owners).

History

Publication title

Ecosystem Services

Volume

50

Article number

101341

Number

101341

Pagination

1-10

ISSN

2212-0416

Department/School

College Office - College of Business and Economics

Publisher

Elsevier Science Bv

Place of publication

Netherlands

Rights statement

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Ecological economics; Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems