Conflicting discourses of knowledge: Understanding the policy adoption of pro-burning knowledge claims in Cape York Peninsula, Australia

Abstract

Using as a case study the dominant pro-burning policy paradigm in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia, this article examines how knowledge claims become adopted in environmental policy. Stakeholder views in Cape York are polarised between pro and anti discourses regarding anthropogenic burning, each with their own contested knowledge claims. This article carries out a discourse analysis of stakeholder views on the use of fire and enhances this with detailed stakeholder consultation and policy analysis. Through this it demonstrates how an examination of the discursive nature of the conflicts and alliances among different knowledge-holders within an environmental policy debate can provide a powerful heuristic approach to fully understanding how contested knowledge claims become accredited and established in policy.

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to Scudo PLC (managers of Wattle Hills), George Heinsohn and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service for their provision of information and to Gabriel Crowley for her invaluable help in providing relevant contacts. Sincere thanks also to Garry Crosley and Louise Sunderland for editing the original and final drafts respectively. The authors are also grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. David Ockwell gratefully acknowledges the Economic and Social Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Geographic Society for financial support.

Notes

1. Contemporary anthropologists and many Aboriginals themselves contest this euro-anthropocentric interpretation of Aboriginal burning – this is outlined further later in this article.

2. Approximately 1,950,000 hectares, or 14.2% of the total land area of Cape York in 2004 and increasing annually (Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, personal communication, 2005).

3. The Queensland Fire and Rescue Service has since released a Strategic Plan for 2003–2007 (QFRS 2003). There has not, however, been any update of the Rural Fire Service's 2001 Position Statement in response to this.

4. Wattle Hills is a 35,650 ha property in the northeast of Cape York which was once managed as a cattle property but taken over in 1986 by a group of people under the banner of a company named Scudo PLC. A community of Scudo PLC shareholders now live on Wattle Hills and manage the property on a self-sufficiency basis pursuing various sustainable forestry practices such as tree planting and seed harvesting. Their management practices include the routine exclusion of fire from the property through the upkeep of firebreaks and pro-active fire fighting (see Ockwell & Lovett, 2005). Wattle Hills tends to be viewed as ‘alternative’ by many other Cape York stakeholders.

5. Page references in brackets from hereon refer to the transcript of the ‘Tropics Under Fire’ seminar under analysis.