Color Blind

Abstract

The dominant approach to environmental management in Australia involves the decentralization of authority and resources to regionally organized citizen boards or statutory committees. The article examines Australian Indigenous participation in a national environmental management program— the Natural Heritage Trust. This program emphasizes regionally scaled implementation and community engagement and ownership. The management of Indigenous lands is of increasing importance in Australia because of the size of this estate, its environmental value, and its role in Indigenous community and economic development. Programmatic efforts to assist Indigenous landowners manage their lands have been largely unsuccessful. This research is concerned with understanding whether regionally scaled, civic approaches to environmental management enable improved levels of Indigenous participation. Results show that this regional environmental management program achieved poor levels of Indigenous participation. This finding, the authors suggest, has important implications for the optimistic claims made about regional environmental management.