Country

• Big environmental changes mean ever more Australians will confront the tough choice of whether to move home or risk staying put.
• Communities in the tropical north are losing residents as these regions become hotter and more humid.
• Others face rising bushfire risks that force them to weigh up the difficult decision to move home.

We’ve been slow to adapt to increasing impacts

• It is increasing the frequency and intensity of disasters and extreme weather events such as heatwaves, fires, storms and floods.
• It is also accelerating environmental changes such as soil erosion, salinisation of waterways, loss of biodiversity, and land and water degradation.
• Both sudden disruptions and gradual pervasive decline have impacts on the places where we live, work and play.

What factors affect the decision to stay or go?

• Systemic inequalities mean some people are more at risk from environmental change and have less capacity to respond than others.
• This makes it more likely to be owned or rented by people with fewer financial resources, compounding their disadvantage.
• For First Nations peoples and communities, connections to and responsibilities for places (Country) are intimately intertwined with identity.
• For them, the impacts of climate change, colonisation and resettlement interact, further complicating the question of relocation.

So who stays and who leaves?

• They nominated bushland, beaches, fauna and flora, and the climate/weather as characteristics they valued and feared changing or losing as climate change progressed.
• One study participant wrote:
  It would be hotter and much more unpleasant in summer.
• I would miss being able to cycle or walk to the local lakes to connect to nature and feel peaceful.
• We also found place attachment was associated with people acting to protect that place, such as protesting environmentally destructive policies.

Proper planning for adaptation is long overdue

• It causes significant economic and non-economic losses for both individuals and communities.
• A changing climate and inappropriately built or located housing interact to create conditions where some people can or should no longer stay.
• We need co-ordinated, well-governed, long-term planning for people to move in the face of environmental change to ensure equitable and positive transitions for individuals and communities.

Justine Dandy received funding for this work from the Centre for People, Place and Planet, Edith Cowan University. Zoe Leviston received funding for this work from the College of Health and Medicine, Australian National University

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• Our new research explored this opportunity by examining where Australia’s imperilled birds overlap with the Country of First Peoples.
• The includes but is not confined to Indigenous Protected Areas, native title land and areas controlled by Indigenous land councils.
• Our analysis found 64% of these, or about 130 species, occur on lands and waters to which First Peoples’ groups have a legal determination.

‘Threatened species’ is a Western concept

• In the decades since Australia’s threatened species legislation was passed in 1992, First Peoples have become key partners in conservation.
• For millennia, birds have been integral to the cultural practice and livelihoods of Australia’s First Peoples.
• The concept of “threatened species” is founded in Western science and is not necessarily a term First Peoples use.

What we found

• Under Australian law, First Peoples lack legal title to much of their ancestral lands.
• Regardless, connections to Country – and species that live there – remain.
• For example, the entire population of Australia’s rarest bird, the mukarrthippi grasswren, lives on Ngiyampaa Country in central NSW.
• And the entire range of three threatened species is on the Country of Tiwi Islander First Peoples.

How First Peoples can become more involved

• But it may help First Peoples know which threatened bird species occur on their Country.
• For example, First Peoples may seek expansion of Indigenous Protected Areas where the species occur.
• The monitoring of imperilled birds is another activity where First Peoples already contribute strongly but could be more involved.

Compensation for centuries of damage

• For example, Indigenous Protected Areas make up almost half of Australia’s conservation areas, yet receive just a fraction of funding for the federal conservation estate.
• Australia’s First Peoples were begrudgingly granted land rights after two centuries of having their ownership denied.
• They also have a right to compensation for the damage done.

Amanda Lilleyman is affiliated with BirdLife Australia. She works for and consults to Aboriginal ranger groups and Charles Darwin University. Jack Pascoe is affiliated with Back to Country and is Co-Chief Councilor of the Biodiversity Council. Stephen Garnett works for Charles Darwin University. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with BirdLife Australia.