Investor aspirations for Indigenous land and sea management in Australia

ABSTRACT

Partnerships between Indigenous peoples and non-local investors have been the source of significant innovation in environmental management across the globe. Indigenous land and sea management in Australia is a growing economic sector that has been used to create jobs, training and income in remote Indigenous Australia. While the aspirations of Indigenous people for Indigenous land and sea management have been reported widely, the aspirations of non-local investors are less clear. In this article, we present an analysis of the aspirations of investors and, in so doing, seek to strengthen partnerships between Indigenous peoples and investors globally. There can be an implicit assumption that investment in the sector is purely to achieve biophysical outcomes, such as increased protection of biodiversity in key bioregions. Our analysis suggests that this is partly true, though significantly underestimates the willingness of investors to contribute to the realisation of social, economic and cultural benefits. Based on these results, we offer two recommendations for advancing Indigenous land and sea manager-investor partnerships: (1) investors should identify and clearly communicate their aspirations for entering partnerships, and (2) Indigenous peoples should be supported to develop clear protocols for investment in their land sea management programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Natural resource management
• investment
• social license
• corporate social responsibility
• multiple benefits

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge and thank the participants in this study who gave their time generously.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use the term ‘investors’ to refer to all sources of financial capital mobilised for ILSM purposes. In line with Aichi Biodiversity Target 20 this includes governments, the private sector and non-governmental organisations. Though acknowledging the financial contributions of local Indigenous organisations, we use the terms ‘investors’ to refer mostly to non-local actors who currently represent an overwhelming majority of investment. However, care must be taken to differentiate local and non-local investment into the future as ILSM organisations grow endogenous financial resources.

2 We use the term ‘Indigenous estate’ to refer to (1) all of the lands and seas that Indigenous Australians have ownership or management rights over (as in Altman 2016); plus (2) all of the lands and seas in Australia that are seen as belonging to Country (regardless of formal rights or tenure to own, manage or access).

Additional information

Funding

The project was funded by a Linkage Grant from the Australian Research Council [grant number LP20200125].