Towards a Carbon Constrained Future: Climate Change, Emissions Trading and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia

Abstract

Our traditional knowledge on sustainable use, conservation, protection of our territories has allowed us to maintain our ecosystems in equilibrium … Our cultures, and the territories under our stewardship, are now the last ecological mechanisms remaining in the struggle against climate devastation.All Peoples of the Earth truly owe a debt to Indigenous Peoples for the beneficial role our traditional subsistence economies play in the maintenance of planet's ecology.(Declaration of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change, 2000: Articles 2 and 3) Despite the turbulent evolution of climate change law and policy over recent years, the opportunities, issues and risks for Indigenous peoples arising from the use of market based mechanisms to address environmental issues remain relatively unchanged.The central theme of this paper (first drafted in 2008) also remains unchanged: the importance of early and meaningful engagement with, and respect for, Indigenous peoples and their rights, interests and knowledge in this rapidly evolving area of law and policy.Since the initial version of this paper in 2008, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme has been proposed and defeated and the political landscape has shifted to a minority Labor Government.There have been a number of climate change conferences and developments in greenhouse gas regulation, both nationally and internationally.This includes the recent Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 (Cth), which passed through the Australian Parliament on 23 August 2011.Key updates have been made to this paper to reflect the contemporary policy announcements and proposed regulatory instruments within Australia. 1 This paper was originally written subsequent to a presentation on climate change at the AIATSIS Native Title Conference in June 2007 (in part published as Gerrard, 2008).The reference list includes a number of works that are not cited in the text but form part of the background research for the original paper and the current work and are considered a useful resource for the reader.Maximising space for Indigenous participation and economic development in emerging law and policy relies on the recognition of fundamental rights and interests of Indigenous peoples.This includes the right to participate in development opportunities in accordance with Indigenous peoples' needs, interests and aspirations.It also includes the right to determine and realise meaningful opportunities based on their specialised knowledge and traditional practices.Indigenous peoples' rights and interests must be embedded in emerging climate change law and policy in Australia to avoid another frontier for assimilation and appropriation of country, knowledge and culture.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.