Arts and Social Sciences

Fresh and Salt: Water and Border debates in Australia and Asia - abstracts

Inland Rivers

Tony MacAvoy

There is no place in modern river management systems for the protection of Indigenous spiritual values. Indigenous people must continue to use the mechanisms at hand, but real impact on the commercial market in water and therefore river management will only occur when Indigenous people are water owners themselves. The paper examines the development of Indigenous participation in the water economy and the potential for Indigenous people to influence river management decisions which may breath renewed spiritual life into a tired Rainbow Serpent.

Turning Water Into Wine, Beef And Vegetables: Material Transformations Along The Brisbane River

Veronica Strang (Auckland University of Technology)

The Brisbane River starts high in the Jimna Ranges in a network of small streams that are often no more than a thread of green in the dusty hills. By the time it reaches the Port of Brisbane, it has been captured, used and turned into many things: beef and vegetables, fruit and wine - things that can be bundled into containers and shipped to the trading partners on which Australia relies.
This paper is concerned with the transformations through which 'natural' resources are acculturated and commodified, in the process becoming not only economic resources, but also material expressions of human agency and identity. As the most basic and most vital ingredient of all organic products, water can 'become' almost anything. It is therefore, like money, broadly perceived as an abstract symbol of wealth and power, defining the relationships between those who have access to and control of water, and the wider populations whose material needs they supply.
In Queensland, as in other parts of Australia, there are growing political and economic tensions between rural communities and the enlarging urban populations who now compete for increasingly scarce water resources while also demanding that environmental health should not be sacrificed for economic gains. The implications of this shift have been severe: farmers who formerly enjoyed a primary social and economic position as 'primary producers' now feel beleaguered, undervalued, and resentful of the loss of control implied in newly competitive water allocation processes. A wider shift from farming into residential development or recreational use of land is also reframing Australia's economic relationships with other countries, introducing new forms of 'productivity'and empowering different groups of people. This paper considers how these changing patterns of commodification are changing the social and cultural landscape along the Brisbane  river.

For Whom The River Flows: ambiguous borders, differentiated commons

Sandy Toussaint (Anthropology, University of Western Australia)

Borders, like waters, come in many different forms.  Depending on one's vantage point and experience, a border may demarcate a landscape, provide protection or symbolise state authority and disciplinary expertise.  A disputed border may also be the source of conflict for war.  Similarly, salt-water oceans, fresh-water rivers and cognate water ways have the capacity to define environments, embody both safety and danger or provide a threshold for complex expressions of conflict, power and control.  This paper explores some of these issues via an ethnographic focus on the Kimberley region's Fitzroy River in northern Western Australia.  Beginning with an incremental sovereignty framework, ideas connected to how the River  is conceptualised and embedded with meaning by various groups who have immediate and vicarious relationships with it will be contemplated, alongside the view that what constitutes a border and the commons often remain ambiguous.

Oceanic Imaginaries

Conquering Australia's Northern Seas:  Mare Nullius and the Making of a White Ocean Policy.

Ruth Balint

The expansion of Australia's maritime borders in the twentieth century took the Australian state to the doorstep of its neighbouring countries, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and added millions of square kilometres of seaspace to its national territory.  The myth of Australian expansion, that said it occurred legally and without incident, masked the brutal process of eviction and dispossession of the traditional Indonesian fishermen from Australia's northern waters. The idea that the seas were empty and that therefore noone suffered the loss of them underpinned the conquest and occupation of Australia's seas and has informed the practice of Australia's maritime sovereignty. The pervasive doctrine of mare nullius, or empty sea, washed away the history of a far older presence in the Timor and Arafura Seas, one that predated the European by centuries. This paper explores the idea and history of mare nullius and the creation of a white ocean policy in Australia's northern seas.  I argue that the doctrine of mare nullius has particular historical resonance for these waters, and for the racial geographics of the Australian imagination.  I also hope to make reference to the way islands situated in these waters have been similarly imagined and positioned in the Australian psyche in relation to their maritime geography.

Paul D'Arcy (James Cook University)

This paper explores the historical validity of Epeli Hau'ofa's expansive vision of the pre-colonial Pacific in his seminal 'Sea of Islands' article. Many refer to this article, but none have explored its validity.   Critics accuse Hau'ofa of presenting an unsubstantiated, romantic image of the pre-colonial past.  This paper  argues that his vision is closer to reality than other scholars admit.  Few Island communities were restricted to one island.  They often travelled by sea, and knew or suspected worlds beyond their usual voyaging range. Expectations of forces from beyond the horizon were deeply embedded in their worldviews long before the tall ships sailed into view.  Centuries of experience had taught them that new lands, new opportunities and new and old threats hovered just beyond the walls of heaven.
Hau'ofa's other vision of Islanders' deep affinity with the sea is also borne out by an examination of the historical record.  The paper details a variety of ways in which the oceanic environment shaped Islander societies, and Islanders shaped the sea. Most felt at home in the water.  The waters of the Pacific were cultural seascapes rich in symbolic meaning; crowded with navigational markers, symbols of tenure, fishing and surfing sites, and reminders of gods and spirits in the form of maritime familiars and sites of their exploits.  These seascapes altered as territories changed hands, navigational knowledge expanded and contracted, and storms and climate effected reef and shore configurations, and the distribution of species.

Water as the defining parameter of an atoll existence in Micronesia

Dirk Spennemann (Charles Sturt University)

Life on coral atolls is precarious. The sand cay islets are low-lying (in the main less than 2 m above high water) and small in size. Only the larger  islands (over 500m by 1000m) are suitable for permanent human habitation, as they possess a fragile lens of round water floating onto of a salt water base . It is this fresh water that allows for a variety of plant life, and it is that lens of groundwater that allows humans to exist. Environmental disasters, such as typhoons with waves of over 10m washing across an entire islet, can swamp the groundwater lens with saltwater, causing salinisation and thus imperil human survival. Traditionally, it was these factors that regulated the size of an atoll population.
Today, population growth on some atolls, for example Majuro in the Marshall Islands, has far exceeded the natural carrying capacity and has placed a strain on the water resources. Excessive pumping of the freshwater lens can lead to the salinisation of the freshwater. Water will became the single determinant for the viability of atoll nations once sea-level rise starts to become fully felt: the fragile groundwater lenses will start to shrink.
This paper will describe the traditional parameters of human settlement in the Marshall Islands and will show how water is still a limiting factor for human existence today.

Fresh and Salt in the Indian Ocean

Devleena Ghosh and Stephen Muecke (Indian Ocean Project, UTS)

The empirical detail of our paper will focus on specific interplays between sea and hinterland; between farmers (fresh water) and fisher folk (salt).  Trade, seasonal transhumance and management of riverine and tidal estuararies is documented in Claude Alvarez (Goan region) and Rita Astuti (South-West Madagascar). 'Modern' exploitations of coastal environments seem to operate on land or sea, ignoring the rich ambiguites and interplays between salt and fresh environments. The more general reflections of the paper centre on transitions from nature to culture, eventually to 'post-nature' (Latour's nature-culture).

Water: Borders and Sovereignty

Watering China: Reform, Demand And Technology

Jon Barnett*, Brian Finlayson*, Mark Wang*, Michael Webber+

(* School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, The University of Melbourne
+ School of International Development, Melbourne University Private)

Water is arguably China's most critical natural resource, and it is widely recognised that China has problems with water. In addition to problems with flooding, in some places water is scarce, and in many places water is polluted. Given the amount of concern and hyperbole about China's water problems, study of China's water problems is surprisingly piecemeal. Studies have tended to focus on discrete water problems at discrete scales of analysis or in discrete locations. Much of what is known about China's water problems is not the product of specific investigations of water issues, but is rather the product of investigations of China's environmental, or agricultural problems in general.
So, while it is generally recognised that China faces some serious water problems, understanding of China's water problems is nevertheless fragmented and incomplete. In this paper we offer a systematic account of the ways in which economic reforms since 1978 have been an important cause of China's water problems. There is yet to be a systematic explanation of the many ways in which transition is an important cause of China's otherwise seemingly disparate water problems. We seek here to begin such an explanation. This is important because in the absence of the kind of larger structural analysis we offer here, discussions of solutions are not as well informed as they might be. Indeed, as discussed later, we suggest that thinking about solutions to China's water problems may need to be more circumspect.
Reform (and the changes that it has induced) have:

Led to changes in the manner in which water supplies and demands - and conflicts over them - are managed

The Politics of Water in South Asia: Riparian and Coastal dimensions.

Douglas Hill (University of Wollongong)

Disputes over water are central to the political economy of development in South Asia. At the broadest level, the management and utilisation of water resources is pivotal in the geopolitics of the South Asia region. Ongoing trans-border disagreements related to water frame the relationships between the countries of both the Indus River Basin (India and Pakistan) and the Ganges River Basin (India, Bangladesh and Nepal). In addition to these international conflicts, there are also significant intra-national clashes over the management of water resources in each of these countries. Indeed, unequal access to water remains one of the most significant factors in perpetuating uneven development, resource scarcity and poverty. These distributional conflicts have geographical, cultural, class and gender dimensions.
The coastal areas of South Asia are also subject to significant changes, suggesting a further way to conceptualise contestations over water. As the region becomes more integrated into the global economy, increased attention is directed to developing the port sector and its related infrastructure. The globalisation of maritime trade is the impetus behind much of this renewed emphasis, since it has increased competition between ports within the region. At the same time, the development of the port sector is increasingly linked to projects aimed at restoring the vibrancy of inland waterways, integrating the poor regions of the hinterland to the more dynamic coastal regions. An understanding of the contestations occurring over water in the region is therefore central to understanding the contemporary period. The paper utilises examples drawn from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal to illustrate some of these issues.

Boundaries Across Rivers

Biama Kanasa (University of Papua New Guinea)

An international boundary across navigable rivers can naturally create a great potential for international conflict. In New Guinea, the officials of Anglo-German colonial authorities seemed to have overlooked this problem when they first decided to lay down their common boundary in 1885 across Gira, Eia, Wuwu and Waria Rivers at eight parallel on the South latitude. This paper attempts to discuss how the colonial officials of the two very powerful countries at the time (1885-1909) tried to make decisions in such a way to prevent or avoid an international conflict with the navigation of rivers across their common boundaries. It involved the parliamentarians of newly federated Commonwealth of Australia.

Water and Salt: Bio-physical and Conceptual Boundaries

Katrina Proust (The Australian National University)

From the 1880s issues of water conservation and irrigation were on the minds of governments in south-eastern Australia. The desire to make 'a brown land green', 'to tame the land', and to increase agricultural production had major influences on water resources policies in New South Wales. However, policy makers failed to take account of local bio-physical conditions when planning for intensive irrigation, and many boundary issues were neglected.
I will present an overview of some of the issues that surrounded irrigation development in the late 19th and early 20th century in New South Wales. It will include:

The problem of knowledge boundaries exists just as much today in NRM. Integrated approaches are needed, capable of dealing with the complex human-environment relationships that characterise current NRM problems (e.g., fisheries and property rights instruments, native and plantation forests, coast management). I will mention briefly an approach that I have recently developed to address this situation.

Water as Commons

The forms of water: in the land and in the soul

Jeff Malpas University of Tasmania

A central theme in my work is the essential entanglement of human life in the life of place and places. Who and what we are is fundamentally determined, in my view, by the places in which we live, even while those places are also shaped by the lives that are formed within them. I have used the 'topography' to describe the particular mode of inquiry, as well as method, that takes such constitution of the human in relation to place as a central theme. The idea of topography itself calls upon the notion of place, of course, the notion of topos, and so my claim is not only that we are ourselves constituted in and through place, but that the relations involved here are themselves essentially the relations exemplified in the structure of place. Place thus provides a twofold key understanding the constitution of human life, and, more broadly, the world within that life appears. But how does place appear, in what forms, and how do places themselves structure themselves? These sorts of question can be addressed at a number of different levels. For, at one level, a more abstract level, I would argue that places are structured and articulated in and through narrative - though I would need to say a fair bit about what narrative means here. At another level, places are essentially understood through ideas of pathway and track, of border and crossing, of site and situation. And at yet another level again, our thinking about place takes shape in our thinking about various 'features' or 'elements' of place - building and street, bridge and road, earth and sky, hill and mountain, valley and plain, river and lake, swamp and floodplain, estuary, coast and sea. It is of course, these latter elements, and so especially the role of water in place, that are of special interest in the discussions today. Indeed, I find it intriguing, once we look to the way water figures in the constitution of places - both as presence or absence, and whether in the formation of the land or as a feature of the air and sky - to discover just how much the character a place is shaped by its relation to water and the mode of its appearance. Of course, since I hold that the world, and so also human life within it, is essentially determined by in and through place, so in investigating the role of water in place, what is also at issue is our own relation to water, and its significance to us, in a way that is not a matter either of health or of economics. Significantly, once we look to the way places are formed in relation to the interplay of water with other elements and with the forms of water, then we find that thoseother levels of topographical articulation that involve narrativity, as well as pathway and track, border and crossing, site and situation, themselves appear in relation to this interplay, and so in relation to river, lake, swamp, floodplain, estuary and sea. I want briefly to explore some of what is at issue here, and so to explore the structure of place and places through the various forms of water in place, as well as the significance of those forms, as they arise within both 'European' and 'Indigenous' thinking. Part of my argument will be that the experience of water, or of the forms of water, and of the relation between water and the other elements of place, is a central element in the experience of place as such, and so also of the experience of ourselves and the world. Water is a an increasingly important focus for political and environmental concerns, but water is not merely a commodity or a resource to be used and managed - not even when the management is ecologically sensitive. Water is more than just a commodity or resource. To attune ourselves to our essential inter-relatedness to place, and our own entanglement in it, to attune ourselves to the 'spirit' of place, is to attune ourselves to the 'spirit' of water and to its forms.

Water Commons: Local or Global?

Andrew Biro (Acadia University)

This paper discusses water as a commons resource in the context of issues of scale. Trends towards privatization and commodification are largely driven by actors and institutions operating at global or continental scales (IMF, NAFTA, water MNCs, and so on), while countermovements towards the regulation of water as a commons, are generally driven by actors and institutions at lower scales. In spite this, however, we should avoid the temptation to cast these as  "global vs. local" struggles. Scalar governance structures should be as born out of particular and contingent political struggles, than reified categories. Drawing largely on the case of the (North American) Great Lakes basin, I argue that watershed or basin-level governance structures are politically constituted, rather than inherently ecologically benign "natural" governance scales. Bioregions are constructed and contestable rather than naturally given. In the Canadian context, I argue, a constructivist bioregionalism that is articulated with nationalist discourses, may ultimately provide more traction in resisting American imperialism than localizing struggles. While water's density makes it difficult to conceptualize its governance as a global scale commons, an analysis of how the social distribution of water is implicated in the Washington Consensus' ongoing processes of massive economic restructuring, demonstrates the importance of globalizing analysis.

Water and Border debates in Australia and Asia

Janice Gray (UNSW)

In NSW legislation has caused the separation of rights in water from rights in land. Such separation of rights permits the tradeability of water, yet the commodification of water may not necessarily achieve the goals outlined by its proponents.  Accordingly, this paper seeks to examine whether or not it is advantageous to convert water into an independent, tradeable property right. In doing so, the paper  examines issues such as : the nature of water rights; the impact of international trade agreements on water and; the impact of tradeability on water usage and the goal of sustainability.  

Governing water as a common good in the Mekong River Basin: issues of scale

Philip Hirsch (University of Sydney)

Transboundary water governance has received special attention in the wake of the World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin's famous prediction in 1995 that, "if the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water".  The water wars scenario ensures that in the world's more than 260 river basins that flow across national boundaries, primary attention is given to managing water as an international commons.  A framework for such transboundary management has been in place more or less continuously in the Mekong for half a century, and it would appear that water has indeed been a force for cooperation even when brutal conflict has torn the region.
Despite the appearance of successful basin-scale management, inter-governmental management of water as an international commons in an transboundary river basin context can also hide some troubling ways in which water as a commons is eroded in the process of development.  This paper considers common property dimensions of water and the livelihood systems that it supports at multiple scales within the Mekong.  It goes on to look at ways in which these are impacted by bureaucratization, infrastructure and commodification processes.  Ironically, basin organizations can both enhance and undermine governance for the common good, depending on how they deal with commonality of interest in freshwater at various scales.  The paper draws on brief case studies of current trends in water governance including river basin organizations in the Mekong (the Mekong River Commission and River Basin Committees at national levels), of infrastructure (Thailand's proposed Water Grid and Laos' Nam Theun 2 dam) and of commodified notions of water (as a development resource and as a scarce commodity to be managed through market mechanisms).

Post-Graduate Papers

Marcus Barber

PhD Scholar, Australian National University

I have been researching and writing about the relationship between human beings and water throughout my PhD research. I am an anthropology student and during 2000-2002 I undertook extended fieldwork at the remote Aboriginal community of Yilpara (Baaniyala) on the shores of Blue Mud Bay in northeast Arnhem Land. In my thesis I explore how Yolngu people experience, use, move around in, and think about the coastal environment, emphasising water as a critical element in shaping the engagements between people and the world in which they live. Drawing on my previous training in both marine biology and social science, I conducted an extended resource use survey over a 12 month seasonal cycle, going out on daily hunting and fishing trips with all the regular members of the community. This provided detailed information about the land and seascapes, resource use, resource sharing, ecological knowledge, the movement of people, and the way that the Dreaming articulates with, informs, and shapes everyday life. I recorded oral histories to explore how engagements with coastal space have changed in living memory, and also investigated Yolngu personal names and how they reflect the importance of water and place in Yolngu thinking. Finally, I examined recent interactions between Yolngu hunters and professional fishermen who have begun operating in the area.

My thesis is due to be submitted in June 2005. 'Flow', 'movement', and 'place' are important tropes throughout the work. It begins with a description of 'coastal flows', of the water movements and environmental cycles within Blue Mud Bay, emphasising the dynamic relationship between fresh and saltwater and how it erodes the distinction between land and sea so fundamental to Western understandings of coastal space. This is followed by an exploration of the historical origins of Western notions of sea space and how they have changed over time, revealing the contingency of the seemingly 'natural' division between land and sea. These two elements (environmental description and historical exploration) provide the basic reorientation necessary as a first step in  understanding how people relate to water and place in Blue Mud Bay.

Subsequent chapters use 'flow' and 'movement' as glosses to discuss a range of aspects of life that relate to water and the coastal environment. These chapters include the narrative of a turtle hunt, a description of how hunting resources are shared, and two chapters that chart people flows over the country in both contemporary life and in the remembered past. I then examine the importance of water and place as it emerges in Yolngu personal names, and review how thoughts of 'spirits' and the Dreaming further affect peoples' behaviour and movement in contemporary life. Finally I examine how these life 'flows' are being shaped, changed, and reaffirmed in the face of the incursion of professional fishermen into the area. The interactions between these two groups, both positive and negative, reflect the complex dynamics of contemporary colonisation, and the continuing struggle by Yolngu people to assert their ownership of coastal space, both land and sea.

My research has had an applied component in that it was used to assist in the preparation of a Native Title claim over the sea. The Northern Land Council was an industry partner in the research, and I was present at many meetings that discussed how indigenous rights to sea space in this area could be promoted. The case was heard in the Federal Court in 2004 and the decision, which is likely to be appealed, was handed down in March 2005.

Immigration detention and the securing of littoral borders

Julie Browning

"I cannot telephone my family …So I take medicine ..its name is Xanax. I always think for my family. I have dream my wife. She asked me where you were long time. When we get up to my bed but I didn't see anyone. I cried too much... I think refugee is very hard". ((A fragment of a letter written nearly two years after the first group of asylum seekers trying to reach Australia were taken and detained on the equatorial island of Nauru).

_____________

For generations Australia's vast littoral borders have been an extensive buffer to 'unauthorised' arrivals seeking to enter Australia. But in the late 1990's there was a significant increase in the numbers of asylum seekers permeating the liquid barrier and reaching the nation. The failure to absolutely control this flotilla came in spite of the nation's geography and despite the multidimensional governing systems already in place to deter 'unauthorised' arrivals, including on-shore mandatory detention and the temporary protection visa system.

Under international law asylum seekers have the right to leave the place of persecution and seek protection interstate. Although Australia is a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and therefore obliged to hear asylum seekers claims for protection, the federal government looked for water tight regulation and resistance to these 'unauthorised' border crossers.

In September 2001 the federal government introduced legislation that would physically excise the body of these boat arrivals from the nation. The legislation added repellence to Australia's watery barriers.

The so called 'Pacific Solution' emerged in the wake of the sea rescue by a Norwegian cargo ship, the MV Tampa. The crew of the MV Tampa rescued over 430 people from a sinking fishing boat that was heading for Australia. The sinking vessel was carrying 369 men, 26 women and 43 children, all but 5 were asylum seekers. As the MV Tampa neared Christmas Island the Australian governmentcalled in the military to stop the Tampa from entering Australian territory. When it came within four nautical miles of Christmas Island, the container ship was boarded by 45 Special Air Services (SAS) troops, who took control of the ship. The asylum seekers were transferred to the Australian naval vessel the HMAS Manoora. The unprecedented action of declaring a high-seas de-facto 'war' against asylum seekers made explicit the government's intention to stop not only this boatload of asylum seekers but future unauthorised boats.

The legislation was introduced as the asylum seekers were held in the tank deck of the HMAS Manoora and included the concept of 'excised offshore places' and 'offshore entry persons'. Under the 'Migration Amendment (Excision from Migration zone) Act 2001', people coming ashore at Ashmore Reef, on the Keeling or Cocos islands or on Christmas Island were now deemed not to have entered Australia's migration zone for the purpose of making an application for an Australian visa. These boat people now fell outside Australia's refugee protection system and had no right to access Australia's tribunals. The 'Pacific Solution' was a war cry where the enemy was not so much dealt a mortal blow, as condemned to a becalmed legal limbo. 

My work interrogates the impact of this action and asks how offshore detention in the Pacific altered the workings of Australia's immigration detention regime. By setting asylum seekers adrift in the Pacific how did it alter the systems of refugee procedure and the system of detention? It makes comparisons between the detention systems operating on terra firma to that of the excised system created on the island of Nauru. Through interviews with onshore refugees and accessing hundreds of letters written by asylum seekers it explores the experiences of detention within Australian territory to that of being detained, as it were, at sea.

Hastily built camps were erected on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and on the small Pacific island of Nauru. Over 1,500 people would be detained in these two places. The majority of these asylum seekers were held at Topside Camp on Nauru. As Nauru is not a signatory of the United Nations Convention the refugees claims by these asylum seekers were processed by either the United Nations or Australian immigration officials. The detained had no access to tribunals in Australia or Nauru. They were no longer juridical subjects, without any legal claim to appeal decisions by bureaucrats. On terra firma asylum seekers have their applications determined by the Department of Immigration but have the right to access tribunals if appealing against a negative decisions.

My work explores experiences of detention - the daily routine, bureaucratic systems of control and the varying reactions to this closed system. It interrogates the methods adopted to isolate and excise the detained. What emerges are narratives of two systems whose differences are conditioned by one having emerged from the salty depths of the Pacific Solution and the other owing its identity to its location on terra firma. 

While the research reveals distinct differences both systems are marked by obfuscation, threats and enforced idleness. These are systems that function to disable the transgressive border crosser.  Whether excised to the Pacific or within Australia, immigration detention is a closed system - one which operates without scrutiny and to assist the bureaucratic imperative to speedily resettle or repatriate the aberrant asylum seeker. The workings of detention are hidden from public view be it through the system of electrified fences or by the physical removal of people to remote islands.

Woomera is like a jail, all fence, no trees, some persons sick. After three weeks no news for my visa I got headache and got sick in stomach because I was confused as to why I didn't get my visa. I saw some people, one years, two years no visa, in jail, in Woomera jail.

The research raises critical questions as to the bureaucratic methods used to process applications for refugee protection and the systems employed to ensure the permanent repulsion of these transgressive bodies.

But incarcerated asylum seekers, be they held at on or offshore centres, are tenacious. Within the limits of detention attempts are made to reassert their agenda. Despite the partial and restricted choices, individual and group strategies emerged which reiterated their primary objective: permanent protection. Detainees have protested through hunger strikes and break outs. Yet the most usual method to resist or protest the bureaucratic imperative was/is to wait

By September 2002 the majority of Afghan detainees at Topside had failed in their attempts for protection and were told they had two options: either to agree to 'voluntary' repatriation which included a financial payment or wait to be removed at a later date. Hundreds of people did return to Afghanistan but many others decided to remain - frustrating bureaucratic attempts to rid the camp of detainees. Asylum seekers sat it out in the hope that cases for refugee determination may be reopened and they would succeed. In December 2003, their cases were reopened and by 2005 the majority of those who had refused to leave Topside Camp had been resettled. Most now live on temporary protection visas in Australia or with permanent protection in New Zealand. As Foucault's suggests history does not happen as one dominant group wills it, but rather as a result of the interaction of human wills.

Although many people within detention resisted the moves to permanently excise them through repatriation, the strategy to defensively protect Australia's littoral borders has been effective. Since late 2001few asylum seekers have bordered a boat in the attempt to make a journey across the seas. In this sense the Pacific Solution has temporarily at least secured Australia's littoral borders.  

Rivers and reproduction: creativity on an urban river

Allison Cadzow (UTS)

The paper discusses the Georges River (southwest Sydney) as both a meeting place of salt and fresh water as well as numerous cultural groups who live on its banks. It arises from research conducted by Heather Goodall, Denis Byrne of NPWS, Stephen Wearing, Jo Kijas and more recently myself on this urban river and parklands around it. The Georges River project looks at how Arabic, Anglo, Vietnamese and indigenous Australian people in particular use, know and relate to these places and how cultural diversity shapes understandings of rivers and parks.

This paper suggests that by pairing ideas of reproduction and creativity with rivers, fertile associations between the natural and social life of the river become apparent.

The paper will look at the Georges River as an important place of conception/life generation as suggested by indigenous interviewees. This forms part of rich understanding of the creative power of river itself and holistic knowledge of it. The birth and rearing of children will be considered here too as a vital part of forming connections to country and sustaining intergenerational knowledge. Ingenious strategies of people living at Salt Pan Creek in fostering political activism, community (Goodall, 1988 & Goodall 1996) and resisting suburban squeeze in the 1920s -30s is another vital part of indigenous peoples knowledge of their river.

The uses of river banks after dark by gay men and straight-acting (often married) men as beats /meeting points can be seen to sustain and reproduce subcultural life in the suburbs. The river has also served as a place of romantic rendezvous for straight people since the turn of the century with pleasure grounds and later 'parking', part of Anglo peoples memories of the river especially.

More recently, the creative act of making identities by Vietnamese Australian and Arabic Australian young people offers another area of exploration. Interviews with these young people showed that the rivers and parks were at once places of strengthening of family bonds and ethnic identity. Yet, they were also places where some felt they could challenge parental and prescriptive cultural expectations by seeking out and adopting activities with ethnically mixed groups, such as student bushwalks and barbecues.

Using historical, cultural and narrative analysis, the paper argues for a dynamic approach to rivers and social history. Considering the river as a meeting place for diverse social and natural life and the exchange of ideas and practices enables recognition of the creative uses of urban rivers.

Meinung Anti- Dam Movement

Hsiu-mei Chung

The paper aims to retrace the story of the Meinung Anti-dam movement, which was created by five components that would be defined as significant characters for vigorously shaping the movement since 1991 in Taiwan. The grass-rooted movement , the net-working society, the river campaign, the cultural resistance and the alternative development became the main dimensions of the movements.

These dimensions that were practiced by committed actors who were located both in the rural and urban with alliances of alternative development, having created implications for Taiwanese social movements since the 1990s. It is not merely in one direction. In fact, it creates diversified strategies and creates innovations with actions, dialogues and public forums. What are the positive and negative impacts of these five components? How did they create characters of these resistances?   

Development, governance and municipal water supply: the case of Tagbilaran City, the Philippines

Karen T Fisher (Australian National University)

Introduction

It is estimated that more than 1 billion people worldwide currently lack access to safe water supplies; most of these people inhabit developing countries.  It is expected that water challenges will intensify in the future as a consequence of population growth, changes in consumption patterns and increases in demand (UNDP, 2004; Winpenny, 2003).  UNDP (2004:2) contends that the 'impending water crisis' has come about as a result of "...profound failures in water governance, i.e. the ways in which individuals and societies have made decisions about, and managed the water resources available to them." 

Solutions to problems of water increasingly look beyond technology and engineering towards governance and institutional arrangements particularly in light of the Millennium Development Goals and the target of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation by 2015 (UNDP, 2004).  Debates currently rage over who is better suited to provide water for domestic consumers-the public sector or the private sector- the merits and shortcomings of treating water as an economic good, the commodification of water, the neoliberalisation of development and water governance, and the demise of the public good/common pool qualities of water (Budds and McGranahan, 2003; Gleick, Wolff, Chalecki and Reyes, 2002; Shiva, 2002; Swyngedouw, 2005; WMO, 1992).

My PhD research is a critical examination of development that seeks to tease out the links between development theory and water policy in the Philippines.  I consider the influence of trends in international development and resource management on water governance in the Philippines as well as national mandates and objectives for development, sub-national implementation and the lived experiences of household consumers.  I concentrate on municipal water for domestic household consumption; in particular, water that is provided via a reticulated network operated by waterworks utilities.  Notions of ownership, rights and responsibilities as they are attached to common pool resources are scrutinised by way of literature on property and institutions in resource management and water resource management.  Additionally, water as a commodity and commodification of water are also considered.

Research methodology and methods

The research was undertaken as an inductive, qualitative enquiry to consider the links between development and the provision of water for municipal uses within a developing country context.  The research comprised a case study in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, the Philippines.  My fieldwork incorporated ethnographic, interpretive techniques to distil perceptions regarding municipal water use.  These included participant observation, semi-structured interviews with government employees and officials as well as key informants from other organisations, structured household surveys, and documentary sources.  Empirical material is used to examine the concept of property held by household users (Humphrey and Verdey, 2004), which is juxtaposed with official discourses that bear upon development and water resources policy. 

Perceptions and 'realities' in the transformation from public to private water

Tagbilaran is a small sized city with a population of approximately 87,000 people that is experiencing relatively rapid population growth along with urban development and expansion.  In this setting, demand for water is forecast to increase while supplies from groundwater are already threatened due to over-extraction and potential for contamination.  The provision of municipal water is shared between public and private utilities.  The public utility, Tagbilaran City Waterworks System (TCWS) is owned and operated by the Tagbilaran City Government and has a coverage area representing approximately 20 percent of households in the city.  The private utility, Bohol Water Utility Inc., (BWUI) is a joint venture company formed as a result of a partial divestiture of a public utility that was owned and operated by the Provincial Government.  The Provincial Government of Bohol retains a 30 percent equity stake in BWUI.  BWUI has a coverage area representing approximately 60 percent of the households in the city.  The remaining households are not connected to a reticulated system.

Water governance in Tagbilaran is complex.  Firstly, government functions and responsibilities have been devolved to local and provincial government bodies as the result of decentralisation.  As a consequence, these bodies are responsible for the formulation and implementation of policies in keeping with national policy objectives while seeking to facilitate economic and social development.  Secondly, operation of waterworks in Tagbilaran requires inter-jurisdictional management and negotiation since both local government (City of Tagbilaran) and Provincial Government (Provincial Government of Bohol) are key players in the provision of water in Tagbilaran.  Thirdly, a significant quantity of water for supply in Tagbilaran City (nearly half) is sourced in a neighbouring municipality, Corella.  This has precipitated the need for negotiation between government bodies and the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement to enable access for water to supply Tagbilaran.  Lastly, the divestiture of the public utility and subsequent formation of a joint venture company has changed the landscape of water provision in Tagbilaran from a solely public to a public-private undertaking.

Findings and conclusions

The case study enabled an examination of water governance as a local, provincial and national practice, which are in turn influenced by international discourses concerned with development and environmental governance.  I traced the relationships between different government and non-government bodies in the implementation of policy in the context of water and environmental governance.  In addition, I demonstrated how the privatisation of the public utility can be seen as an outcome of neoliberal influences on development and water policy in the Philippines.  While the privatisation can be viewed as a process embedded in the development legacy in the Philippines, the case presented by Tagbilaran can also be located within the broader development debate regarding water and privatisation whereby Tagbilaran is a microcosm of larger issues and competing ideologies.  However, as Budds and McGranahan (2003) suggest, the polemical debate surrounding privatisation is somewhat of a red herring. The presence of a second, publicly owned and operated water utility in Tagbilaran provided the opportunity to contrast and compare public versus private provision within the same context.  The research revealed that perceptions regarding property relations to water, and what such relations entailed, were complex and overlapping, often divorced from formal legal notions of property.  Additionally, for households at least, water remained a social good to be shared by all and not an economic good as advocated in development and water policy.  In this regard, the transformation of water from natural resource to 'commodity' can be traced to the neoliberalisation of the environment more generally through Philippine development policies and not privatisation of water utilities per se. 

References

Budds, J. and McGranahan, G. (2003): Are the debates on water privatization missing the point?  Experiences from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Environment and Urbanization, 15(2):87-113.

Gleick, P. H., Wolff, G., Chalecki, E. L. and Reyes, R. (2002): The New Economy of Water: The Risks and Benefits of Globalization and Privatization of Fresh Water. Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, Oakland.

Humphrey, C. and Verdey, K. (2004): Introduction: raising questions about property. In Verdey, K. and Humphrey, C. (Eds.) Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy. Berg Publishers, New York, pp. 1-25.

Shiva, V. (2002): Water Wars: Privatization, pollution, and profit. South End Press, Cambridge.

Swyngedouw, E. (2005): Dispossessing H20: The contested terrain of water privatization. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 16(1):81-98.

UNDP (2004): Water Governance for Poverty Reduction: Key Issues and the UNDP Response to Millennium Development Goals. UNDP, New York.

Winpenny, J., (2003):Financing water for all. World Water Council; 3rd World Water Forum; Global Water Partnership,

WMO (1992): International Conference on Water and the Environment: Development Issues for the 21st Century: The Dublin Statement and Report of the Conference. World Meteorological Organization. Geneva

An interplay between land and sea; an environmental history of Corner Inlet

PhD topic by Cheryl Glowrey, Monash University Gippsland

Corner Inlet, the most southerly marine embayment and tidal mudflat system of mainland Australia, is located 180 kilometres east of Melbourne. The inlet and its coastal flats are encircled by the blue mountains of Wilsons Promontory to the south, the Yanakie isthmus rising to the Hoddle Range in the west, and foothills of the Strzelecki Range to the north. Snake Island, the largest of a series of barrier islands extending eastwards along the Ninety Mile Beach to the Gippsland Lakes, lies in the entrance, forming a border between the waters of the inlet and Bass Strait.

As an estuary Corner Inlet, covers about 500 square kilometres of water, with a dendritic, or fan shaped, channel system, in what resembles a shallow geomorphic basin. Water depth varies in the channels from 40 metres at the entrance to Corner Inlet and 20 metres in the Franklin Channel, although the shallower channels may be as low as one metre. The inlet has an extensive area of up to 360 square kilometres of mudflats at low tide with an intertidal zone of 180 kilometres.

The Agnes and Franklin Rivers, Stockyard Creek, Deep Creek, Muddy Creek, Shady Creek and Nine Mile Creek and numerous man-made channels draining the flats flow into Corner Inlet, linking the farming hinterland with the sea. After heavy rains the run-off from the surrounding hills swells the rivers and creeks, and when the freshwater floods meet the sea, brown soil-laden water from the hills is forced back over the flats. Corner Inlet and the coastal flat merge as one continuous sheet of water, brown becoming the sea-green of the inlet along an indeterminate coastline.

The metaphor of an indeterminate coastline aptly fits the story of Corner Inlet and the relationships between its people and nature over time. Early settlers on the land were economically dependent on Snake Island. The hill farms, marginal from the beginning, provided insufficient nutrition in the long and cold winters to sustain cows for the spring milking season. In 1908 the Lands Department finally acceded to local pressure for land to graze dairy cows in winter. In contrast to the pastoral grazing leases of the high country, Snake Island was set up as a commons for selector farmers with a bailiff employed to oversee the scheme. Under the leadership of an elected "pilot" as guide, farmers drove their cows across the mudflats of Corner Inlet on horseback, crossing the sea at low tide, swimming cows through the channels and keeping to a narrow path of firm sand through the sinking mud. The choice of a seafaring title for the pilot was no accident; he needed to know the tides, the channels, and be able to read the coastal weather to cross 300 or more cows and their owners safely against the rising tide. This tradition continues, although today's cattlemen maintain an uneasy relationship with the authorities and have increasingly lost the power to freely use the island for their own purposes.

In the 1900s, technology increasingly enabled farmers to clear and drain the lowland coastal fringe around the inlet. Construction of seawalls between the Agnes River and Black Swamp, to reclaim saltmarshes in the 1920s, highlights an interesting interplay between land and sea, when construction workers had to contend with sharks swimming in with the tide as the gap between the two ends of the sea wall at Black Swamp narrowed to eighty metres and the pressure of salt water from the inlet seeking its normal course increased. In time, fresh water from rain and creeks flushed the salt from the enclosed saltmarshes, allowing European grasses to establish across large areas of peaty soil on the lowland flats. Clearing in the hills and on the coastal flats exposed soils to the impact of the district's high rainfall and seasonal floods. Silting in the rivers, creeks and the inlet increased the area of white mangrove (Avicennia marina) forests, which grow to the southern extreme of their habitat in Corner Inlet. Today, the inlet and Nooramunga Marine and Coastal Park, which extends east of the inlet along the coast, includes 5060 hectares of saltmarsh habitat and 2572 hectares of white mangroves.

Corner Inlet is the third largest bay and inlet fishery in Victoria. It is now the only inlet in Victoria where broad-leaved seagrass (Posidonia australis) grows in large meadows. Narrow leaved seagrasses (Heterzostera tasmanica and Zostera capricorni) grow extensively across the mudflats, and together these seagrass meadows are the breeding grounds of many fish species, including young King George whiting, southern garfish, greenback flounder, rock flathead, calamari, silver trevally and gummy shark. The estuarine environment attracts numerous species of wading birds, including pied oystercatchers, bar-tailed godwits, plovers, curlews and stints. Who owns the rights to this environment, the water, islands, shores, the fish and the seagrass meadows?

At the time of European arrival in 1841, the waters of the inlet were regarded as a commons, according to the conventions of British law. Oyster beds were rapidly stripped for the Melbourne market, the first example of over-fishing in the inlet. By the 1860s, a small commercial fishery existed as Chinese fish driers set up camps around the inlet providing fish for the goldfields. Railway transport and ice-making machines improved the viability of a commercial fishery and communities at Port Franklin and Port Welshpool attracted experienced fishermen from the Shetland Islands and Sweden.  Like the Scottish settlers in Gippsland before them, these families identified a similarity between the land and seascape of Corner Inlet and their homeland, suggesting deep links between people and place in settlement history.

Two distinct fisheries developed in the twentieth century, those who primarily fished inside the inlet based at Port Franklin, and those who fished in Bass Strait, based at Port Welshpool. Despite restrictions and regular monitoring of catches, the basic understanding of the sea as a commons remained unaltered until the mid-1960s, when external factors forced a change. The exploration and discovery of oil in Bass Strait led to the establishment of Barry Beach Marine Terminal in the inlet in 1964, and a much improved road link from Melbourne into the district, opening up this previously isolated part of the coast. People from outside discovered the inlet and by 1984 the recreational fishing catch was equal to that of the commercial industry. Recreational fishing and lifestylers seeking a place away from the city have become a major economic force in the district, replacing income derived from declining farming and mining industries and bringing new attitudes to the Corner Inlet environment.

In the same period, environmental legislation responded to shifts in the national conscience and acted to protect environments with largely natural habitats still intact. Under the Ramsar Convention, Corner Inlet was recognised as a wetland of international significance in 1982, protecting the habitat of up to fifty percent of Victoria's migratory wading species and almost a quarter of the wading bird population. The Land Conservation Council (LCC) recommended the establishment of the Corner Inlet and Nooramunga Marine and Coastal parks, including Snake Island, implemented in 1984.  Controls over large areas of water and coastal land by government authorities intensified, causing occasional conflict with local inhabitants. Wilsons Promontory, protected as a national park from 1908, increasingly symbolised the concept of 'the people's park', and although few visited its northern reaches, State-wide protests against private developers in 1996 re-defined the role of government as custodians rather than economic managers of environment.

In April 2004, 1,550 hectares in the south-east waters of the inlet along the Wilsons Promontory coast were protected as marine national park, with controversial no-take fishing zones. The campaign to introduce this park was long, disputed by a commercial fishing industry proficient in the politics of environment. The formation of the Corner Inlet Fisheries Habitat Association (CIFHA) conducted research based studies to counter those produced by the government, arguing that the fishing industry was self-regulatory and that haul seine nets had minimal impact on seagrass meadows. Neither side denied the ecological importance of the inlet. In a deal that excluded the recreational fishermen, a larger compensation payout to the twenty-two commercial fishermen involved and altered boundaries for the marine park eased the transfer of fishing rights and effectively created a cultural commons.

Modern claims on the environment overlay deeper indigenous links to the waters of Corner Inlet. The Kut Wut group of the Brataualung, members of the Ganai-Kurnai people, fished in canoes, lighting fires at night to bring the fish to the surface, used hooks and traps, hunted fish towards the shallows for easier spearing and lived along the shores of Corner Inlet between the Agnes River and Port Albert.  The river floodplains and forests on the coastal flats enriched a well-resourced lifestyle. Sites around the inlet shore suggest Brataualung territory encompassed the waters of Corner Inlet. Wilsons Promontory is home to Loan, a protecting spirit, young men were taught medicine on Yiruk  (the northern land of the promontory), pipe-clay was found on the cliffs along the Yanakie shore, Snake Island was a cultural retreat for runaway couples, and ceremonial sites have been identified near the Franklin River.

Indigenous Dreaming stories map cultural, economic and spiritual relationships with country and sea. Stories of Brataualung from Corner Inlet indicate they were custodians of a large saltwater territory. Bunjil Borun, the Pelican, was the first of the Ganai-Kurnai to walk into Gippsland, carrying his canoe on his head. Borun the Pelican died while rescuing his people from the waters of Bass Strait when the land bridge to Tasmania flooded. Borun wanted to rescue the girl he fell in love with last of all, but she tricked him and swam ashore. Borun painted himself with white pipe-clay in anger, but was seen by another pelican, who killed him, thus giving all pelicans their distinctive colouring. Borun's body became White Rock, a granite island visible from Wilsons Promontory and one of the Seal Group, located about seventeen kilometres off Rabbit Island. At the time of European settlement, the Brataualung destroyed huts on Rabbit Island and chased the settlers off the island, claiming back their territory. It is highly possible that White Rock, located on the outer edge of the tidal zone of Corner Inlet, marks a different border to the inlet than the European land-defined one. This border acknowledges the deep time link between the inlet and Bass Strait, manifested today in granite rock, vegetation and enduring bonds between the Bass Strait islanders and the fishermen of Corner Inlet.

Nicole Haley

In 1990, the Porgera Gold Mine, operated by the Porgera Joint Venture (PJV), commenced operations in Enga Province, PNG. Since then treated tailings have been released into the Lagaip-Stricklands River system on an almost daily basis. As a result both rivers have, by all accounts, noticeably changed colour. They are now periodically red, due to the iron oxide which results from the mine's tailing neutralization process. These changes have generated much concern amongst the peoples of the riverine corridor. I propose in the first instance to situate the Lagaip and Stickland Rivers within local cosmologies and to examine how local people have interpreted and talked about the changes to the river system, and the meanings attached to them (this would tie in with the water as a focus of environmental conservation efforts and water as a source of identity themes). I shall then turn my attention to the water use payments that are now received by way of "compensation" for the changes to the river. The payment of these monies has not been without dispute. For the most part, though, the disputes which emerged in the context of the water use payment negotiations were of the PJV's making, having to do with the manner in which the PJV determined to make the payments, and in particular the politics of exclusion the PJV sought to employ. Against advice, PJV management determined to make the prescribed water use payments only to those groups owing land adjacent to the Lagaip and Strickland Rivers, using the same formula they had previously used along the Porgera River. Groups were therefore paid according to the extent (in meters) of their river frontage. This proved problematic for several reasons. The process failed to take account of the cosmological significance of the Strickland Gorge area, failed to recognise the reciprocal use rights which operate between riverine groups and those further afield, and mistakenly equated river frontage with custodianship. Amongst the groups living within the riverine corridor, river frontage does not signify ownership of the river nor exclusive rights to riverine resources. In the second part of the paper then I shall outline the range of customary land and water-use rights operating within the riverine corridor, and provide and account of the disputes which emerged and the creative ways in which they have been resolved by the rivers' customary owners.


Shifting Currents: A history of rivers, control and change

Damian Lucas

The benefits and costs of controlling rivers - building dams, controlling floods, extracting water - are constantly contested.

Modifying rivers has brought great benefit to communities, fulfilling important community goals - supporting profitable commercial activities and providing a basis for vibrant communities. However modifying rivers has also had negative consequences - in particular, a decline in the quality and quantity of water. These impacts have undermined valued aspects of rivers (such as fish habitat) and have also caused decline in commercial activities (such as fishing and floodplain grazing).

This thesis explores the ways that these contending perceptions of modification work out on the ground in rural communities. How are the benefits of modification recognised? How are the negative consequences of modification noticed and measured? Under what conditions are the benefits of modification reassessed? These are important questions in the current moment as our society reassesses the past modification of rivers and attempts to move towards more sustainable use of natural resources.

This thesis explores this topic by undertaking in depth case-studies of two distinctive riverine environments: one coastal, the Clarence River in luscious coastal northern New South Wales; and one inland, the Balonne River, at the top of the Murray-Darling Basin, in semi-arid south-west Queensland. The case studies explore responses to modification of the rivers in two periods: the post-war decades - a time of widespread support for modification, and recent decades - a time of widespread recognition of the negative consequences of development.

The thesis investigates perceptions of modification at three different scales: (i) groups within localities - the ways that modification is perceived by local groups with contrasting physical and conceptual interactions with the rivers (such as graziers, fishers, irrigators, Aboriginal people, ecologists and engineers); (ii) regional communities - which are constituted by groups with differing interests, and (iii) governments - which have the role of managing the long-term health of the economy and the environment, despite the long-term goals often being contested.

This thesis provides insights into the ways that our complex society grapples with the possibility, and effects, of modifying the natural environment. This thesis suggests that local conditions - the actual local physical environment and local social conditions - shape the ways that modification of rivers is supported, challenged and reassessed. However, both local social conditions and the environment are constantly changing, often in surprising ways. Therefore outcomes are always an interaction between different levels of interest groups and the environment itself.

Drinking in Beijing:  local knowledge and critical education for water in China's capital

Jane Sayers

Water resources in China are in a desperate state. Water is scarce and what there is to be found is generally seriously polluted. Further to this, in major cities such as Beijing, water consumption is unsustainable. Water is cheap, and the population, even the educated, urban population, is generally unaware of the need to conserve water resources and how to do this. Education programs are desperately needed, and fortunately such programs are beginning to emerge.

One such program is run by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). The Environmental Educators' Initiative for China is a major activity focus for WWF in China and involves training and supporting teachers, developing curricula and developing graduate degrees in environmental education. As a part of this initiative, the Beijing Environmental Education Training Centre was established at the Beijing Normal University, and one of their key priorities has been to establish and support eight pilot schools throughout Beijing municipality in which teachers who have received specialised training implement environmental education programs focused on water. In each of these schools the environmental education modules are adapted to suit local conditions.

One of these pilot schools is the Miyun Number One Primary School, situated just outside Beijing city where the Miyun Reservoir, one of Beijing's principle sources of drinking water, is located. The educational activities in this school focus on issues related to Miyun Reservoir, and critically engage the students in the political, social and economic contexts that impact on this water that is vital not just to the township, but to the municipality as a whole. Throughout the last decade Miyun Reservoir has struggled to meet the demand placed upon it - it is regularly reported to hold only around one third its capacity, which means drinking water supplies for Beijing cannot be assured for longer than ten months in advance. The political, social and economic context for this state of affairs is complex and multifaceted, and students at the Miyun Number One Primary School engage with these issues through a range of investigative activities.

This paper will explore the importance of local geography and local knowledge in building environmental understanding and concern, and will argue that a localised focus in environmental education serves to strengthen not only the immediate community but  can ultimately also be understood as a vital building block in the development of national sovereignty. The political localism that is a cornerstone of WWF activism is evident in the Miyun environmental education program that will be discussed in detail. The ways in which the water education these students receive engage and develop their sense of agency and responsibility in and for their community will be examined, and the relationship between strong local identity and national identity as a precondition for sovereignty and stewardship will be discussed.

WATER, KNOWLEDGE AND THE SWAN RIVER IN URBAN PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA: A WORK IN PROGRESS

Marie Seeman

Perth is located on the Swan Coastal Plain within the South West of Western Australia.  Perth's urban residential and industrial areas encompass a sandy basin that connects different types of water environments.  These come in both natural and constructed forms.  A Western Australian icon, the Swan River meanders through the city of Perth to the river mouth at the port city of Fremantle before entering the Indian Ocean.  The Swan River is a major water feature and a focal point for multiple human activities.

Early stage research is starting to reveal that knowledge, perceptions and activities relating to the Swan River and connecting water environments often differ according to how people interact with these water sources.

A range of responses emphasise beliefs associated with different parts of the Swan River with its complex ecological and constructed system of connecting water environments such as catchments, drains, underground water, lakes, springs, wetlands and tributaries.  Human/water relationships and associated beliefs are as diverse as the various connecting water environments. Presenting case study material based on research among persons working with government, environmental, indigenous and art, I will discuss how and why the Swan River is variously perceived as beautiful, precious, relaxing, cool, calm, choppy, fun, social, feminine, created, spiritual, taboo, living, sustaining, natural, freshwater, saline, old, managed, manicured, reclaimed, constructed, polluted and dying.  My concern is to contextualise this range of responses to and perceptions of the Swan River, as well as to invite comparison with other urban river environments. 

Conceptualising / re-conceptualising water: testing the waters of the Daly

Danielle Spruyt (University of Sydney)

Fresh water is increasingly being redefined as a scarce resource, with recognised limits to water supply and awareness of the vulnerability of water systems to human activity.  The recognised potential for water scarcity, and the perceived need to determine allocation between competing users, has established water as an economic concern.  Economic theory and instruments are increasingly being applied to questions of water management.  However, the relationship of water with the economy is more complex than attempting to incorporate water into pre-existing economic categories (commodity or capital) allows.  In addition, defining water in economic terms is an extension and prioritisation of a specific conception of water, and will have practical repercussions.  The relationship of water to the economy needs to be reconceptualised to incorporate these considerations.

Water use is structurally defined(1).  It is determined by current and projected human consumption patterns, technological capacity, political systems of ownership and distribution, state/private investment in water infrastructure, and consideration of environmental needs.  Systems of water use are in turn framed within the institutional and ideological framework of human society and the ways in which political, economic, social and cultural structures and ideologies determine how water is valued, accessed, distributed and used.

Water management strategies increasingly conceptualise water as scarce.  Water scarcity is also a relative construct, suggesting the inability of water supplies to meet human and environmental demands.  The problem of water scarcity is a manifestation of general natural resource management concerns in advanced capitalism.  Contemporary water use has been identified as broaching the limits of available supply, with relative water scarcity causing conflict between competing economic interests, and absolute water scarcity posed as a threat to current economic activity and projected economic growth. Realised (actual), projected or manipulated water scarcity, combined with a government prioritisation of economic solutions to questions of water management, and private/corporate interests in establishing ownership of water resources, has seen the status of water change from being a public good to an economic resource(2).  Such steps involve the legal and informal contesting of regional water rights and responsibilities. 

Water is an integral provider of services and utility to economic systems, providing (as does the environment generally) inputs to productive activity, assimilating waste and providing essential life support services.  However, the characteristics of water challenge the interpretations of water that are typically associated with stationary or quantifiable stocks or that fail to recognise natural resources in the context of ecological and hydrologic systems.  Water presents unique challenges.  It defies simple categorisation both in its physical properties and in its economic characteristics.  It exists in different forms - ice, liquid and vapour.  It exists as both a stock and a flow.  Hydrological systems cross political borders.  Water supply is variable and uncertain, and extreme water supply variations (floods, droughts) cannot be controlled.

The economic character of water is complex.  Water is both a production and consumption item(3).  The registration of water within an economy is subject to the ways in which water, and the contributions and impacts of its use, are incorporated into market systems and economic accounting. Water use has environmental impacts, the economic costs of which are dependant upon the steps taken to remedy degradation.  Additionally, water uses may have costs and benefits (of a social/cultural dimension) that are not typically incorporated into market processes or resource accounting systems.  As a complex resource, water is neither only commodity nor capital. Economic understandings of water need to be broadened to incorporate the distinct character of water within ecological systems and within social/cultural systems.

Importantly, water management is more than a purely technical exercise.  Political-economic processes determine water use.  A range of interests are embodied in water use and ownership. Contest over the use and definitions of water resources(4), reflects the different interests of a range of stakeholders. Private/corporate interests can be seen to promote the interpretation of resources as economic goods to be privately owned or corporately managed.  Economic interests are embodied in the ensemble of state apparatus, thereby limiting the array of ideas/policies that can be posited, and marginalising proposed solutions to the economic/environmental problematic that challenge existing power relations and social structures.  These concerns call for critical reflection as to why economic considerations are presented as pre-eminent, what are the dominant economic policies that follow from this, and how such policies affect water allocation and use.  With water use driven by economic forces, and economic considerations prominent in policy responses to water concerns, economic activity and theory become a concern for water management.

The Daly River basin, Northern Territory, in is a comparatively small catchment, contained within the political borders of the Northern Territory of Australia.  It is an emerging focus of concern for appropriate land and water policy and management planning and is therefore both the subject of a government sponsored reference group process and of a variety of research projects that seek to understand the status and contributions of the river to the human community and to the ecological system.

The Daly region provides example of different and competing uses of water and illustrates the complex relationship of water to a (regional) economy.  The rivers of the Daly Basin flow across a range of land tenures, including Freehold, Pastoral Lease, Aboriginal Freehold, Aboriginal Land and National Park(5).  As such, the Daly Basin includes a range of stakeholders and interests in water use.  Agricultural, pastoral and some industrial development, as well as traditional sustenance and recreational activity, and Indigenous commercial interests, depend upon the maintenance of river and other hydrological systems. NT economic ambitions, a stated policy of sustainable development, environmental interests, and Indigenous assertion of a voice in water management seek accommodation in the process of water management. Various demands on, and interpretations of water, generate tensions. Underlying this situation is the relatively untested question of Indigenous freshwater rights(6). The process of regional planning development for the Daly Basin Region reflects a range of values vested in water - environmental(7), social(8) and cultural(9) - that necessitate a re-examination of economic understandings of water and the economics of water use. 

Establishing the role of water in the regional economy of the Daly River Basin requires understanding how water defines the regional economy, the ways in which water systems are used and valued by local communities, the contribution of water systems to customary(10) and market economies, the (potential) costs of water system maintenance and repair, and the potential of river degradation and water scarcity to undermine customary and market economies. Understanding water as an economic resource requires recognition of the range of interests and rights vested in water use and the way in which these interests determine water management strategies and economic outcomes.

A comprehensive analysis of water in the economy provides opportunity to reflect upon the relevance and repercussions of economic analysis and response to questions of water management.  This approach enables the testing of conceptions of water as commodity or as capital but aims for a broadened understanding of the economic character of water. This is an inductive rather than deductive approach, influenced by Institutionalist method that examines the role of economic players in determining the character of economies, and that seeks a detailed understanding of economic systems through empirical analysis.

 

1 Johnstone, B. (2003) 'The Political Ecology of Water: An Introduction' Capitalism, Nature,

Socialism  14 (3) September, P80.

2 Ingle Smith, D. (1998) Water in Australia: Resources and Management Oxford University Press, Melbourne

3 Stroshane, T. (2003) 'Water and Technological Politics in California'  Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 14 (2), June 2003, pp34-76

4 See Howitt, R. (2001) Rethinking Resource Management: Justice, Sustainability and Indigenous Peoples Routledge, London & New York for discussion on resource contest.

5 Conservation and Natural Resources Group, Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment, Northern Territory of Australia 2002 Location of the Daly River Catchment

6 for brief discussion of Indigenous interests in water, see

Altman, J. and Cochrane, M. (2003) Indigenous Interests in Water: A Comment on the 'Water Property Rights - Report to COAG from the Water CEOs Group' Discussion Paper, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, The Australian National University, Canberra, 21 February 2003

7 Erskine WD, Begg GW, Jolly P, Georges A, O'Grady A, Eamus D, Rea N, Dostine P, Townsend S & Padovan A (2003) Recommended environmental water requirements for the Daly River, Northern Territory, based on ecological, hydrological and biological principles.  Supervising Scientist Report 175 ( National River Health Program, Environmental Flows Initiative, Technical Report 4), Supervising Scientist, Darwin NT

8 Young,M. (2004) Social Values of the Daly Region: A Preliminary Assessment, Draft Report to the CRG, School for Social and Policy Research, Charles Darwin University

9 Jackson, S. (2004) Preliminary report on Aboriginal perspectives on land-use and water management in the Daly River region, Northern Territory  A report to the Northern Land Council CSIRO

10 for definition and discussion of customary economies, see Altman, J. (2003) 'People on country, healthy landscapes and sustainable Indigenous economic futures: The Arnhem Land case' The Drawing Board: An Australian Review of Public Affairs, Volume 4, Number 2, November 2003, 65-82

Water and its spiritual/religious relationships within two indigenous communities

N.Dixon (University of Waikato)

Within our indigenous Maori traditions many rivers and coastline waters of New Zealand are linked us spiritually and religiously.  These waterways are also personified, given spiritual qualities and are revered by tribal groups living within their parameters.

The coastal Tauranga waters on New Zealand's eastern coastline, and the Waikato River for examples are sites and locations for tribal spiritual, cultural and religious activities.

They are also sites of tension between ourselves and mainstream organizations such as central government because of the cultural/spiritual/religious recognition/nonrecognition of these waterways.

My paper will examine the conflicts and tensions linked to the 'ownership/guardianship issues of Tauranga coastline, an area of New Zealand's North Island permanently settled by three related Maori tribal groups. Central government has disregarded our spiritual/cultural/religious roles by passing legislation and assuming 'ownership' of these waters with the entire population of New Zealand, but with restricted consultation with us as traditional guardians of those waters. This authoritarian view has ignored one of the central elements of our identity, a connection with the particular environment such as the sea, which has given us our heritage and sense of belonging. Disregard of our views signals to us as indigenes that our cultural/spiritual/religious views are of little consequence, and it is this assumed view that I will be contrasting with that of Maori linked to this national issue of waterways.

Contested boundaries or yawning gap?

Annie Bolitho

My doctoral research was in the context of a Doctorate of Creative Arts, and out with what seemed a straightforward interest. In 1999, I set out to do a community-based culturally-oriented project, with the support of the Rivers regional bulk water supplier, Rous Water. This project 'New Dimensions in Water Conversation', aimed to highlight a broad commitment to through attention to water at the tap, as well as water tastings, to water treatment works, dialogue, discussion and water writing. The project revealed and grew the research question, namely: What does it take to articulate a broader cultural view on water in the face of specialised techno-scientific approaches? The only path open to me was  to  step up and examine tensions and misunderstandings which arose at the interface of our different disciplinary views, broadly speaking humanities science. I searched for a telling and friendly way of accommodating the perspectives and vulnerabilities involved. To my surprise, A Mermaid and Flow Engineer came forward to represent ecological and instrumentalist views. This trope drew me towards the philosophy of science and subversive theoretical perspectives on rationality and time, as approaches to exploring normative crisis-driven strategies in the management of water. In crossing disciplinary boundaries and creating a concrete record of the interplay between water users and water specialists, I wanted to suggest links not have been anticipated, rather than dead ends. Thus neither the Flow Engineer or the Mermaid is ever fully spelt out in my thesis; I did not want to put them dualistically at odds.

My current work in a National Action Plan on Salinity and Water Quality (NAP) project in Catchment Management deepens my interest in those questions. My questions are based in the humanities. Rather than scientifically 'disenchanting the world' as the social sciences set out to do, the humanities is in a position to query and enchant. The Flow Engineer represents a broader epistemological trend in data driven managerialism, accelerated by technological devices. What opportunities exist to the yawning gap that arises with data in the driving seat, and paradoxical accounts of work and progress on remediation initiatives drying up?

Annie Pfingst

Palestine - Israel and the Occupation of Water

Approximately 40% of the ground water upon which the State of Israel is dependent and more than a quarter of its sustainable annual water yield originate in the West Bank.(1)  The Palestinian annual per capita consumption of 35-80l/day is far below the WHO standards, which assign a daily consumption of 100l/capital/day. Israeli per capita consumption exceeds 300l/day.(2) Together with the use of water from the Jordan River, most of Israel's water comes from rivers that originate outside the border, or from disputed lands.(3)

In 1998 B'tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reported on Israel's responsibility for the water shortage in the Occupied Territories and noted in the introduction that 'the severe water shortage, a direct result of Israel's policy since 1967, violates the basic right of Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories to minimal living conditions.'(4) The report goes on to outline the restrictions on the use and digging of wells, quotas imposed by Israel limiting the amount of water Palestinians can draw from each well, the difficulty of obtaining permits to repair and dig wells, the expropriation of wells under military orders and the 'absentee property' provision declared by Israel shortly after occupying the territory in 1967, the lack of water in refugee camps and the impact of that shortage on health.

While Israeli's on average use 5 times more water than Palestinians, water consumption in the settlements is even higher. A European Union report of 2001 notes that only 5% of the lands exploited by the Palestinians are irrigated as opposed to 69% for the Israeli settlers even though agriculture accounts for more than 30% of the Palestinian GDP as opposed to 5% only of the Israeli GDP.(5)

This situation has only become worse. Wells and cisterns have been isolated and wells and irrigation systems destroyed by the construction of the Wall. According to PENGON (6) the first phase of the construction of the Wall will locate all important water zones within the Wall's boundaries. In fact, the Wall places a boundary around the western aquifer and secures a water source for Israel.

All the conditions of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip - closure, expropriation of land and resources, restrictions on movement, checkpoints, demolitions - affect Palestinian access to water for domestic, social and agricultural use. The Wall, deep inside Palestinian lands, divides the once rich and self-sufficient Palestinian agricultural communities. To go from their villages to their fields, farmers have to pass through gates in the Wall manned by IDF soldiers and open for short periods at set times of the day. The 2003 report on 'The Right to Food' of the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Jean Ziegler's mission to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, noted the seriousness of water shortages, 'with the system of checkpoints and road closures in place ... leaving communities without water for days on end'. He highlighted the seriousness for the 280 rural communities without access to wells or running water, noting that trucked water quality no longer met WHO standards, and that  'the expropriation and confiscation of vast swathes of Palestinian agricultural land and water sources is also threatening the right to food'.(7)

According to B'Tselem, the establishment of the settlements violates international humanitarian law (which applies the principles applying during war and occupation) and leads to the infringement of the rights of the Palestinians as enshrined in international human rights law. Among other violations, the settlements infringe the right to self-determination, equality, property, an adequate standard of living, and freedom of movement.(8)  Israel disputes the application of international humanitarian law (including the Geneva Convention) and human rights law to its jurisdiction, and rejected the recent ICJ ruling on the construction of the Wall.

The current destruction of houses, olive groves, wells and agricultural land to make way for the construction of the Wall echoes the destruction of Palestinian villages following the expulsion during the war of 1948.  Such destruction and control embeds power in the materiality of the land - military occupation shapes geography and geography in turn becomes a tool of power. The geography of occupation reroutes watercourses, irrigates the lawns of settlements, acquires and controls water aquifers and determines the meaning or definition of borders and of sovereignty.

The sea bordering the length of the Gaza Strip is increasingly closed to Palestinians and access denied or curtailed. Movement and dreams are restricted - life is lived in refugee camps, under curfew, within barbed wire borders and under military occupation.  The sea at Gaza is no longer a sea of dreams, of fishing and swimming, of identity.  The sea is viewed through wire and broken structures.

The war for Palestine/Israel is replete with water as metaphor, particularly in the arid land, and water places - the wadi's, the wells and irrigation systems, the Galilee, the city of Jaffa, the sea at Gaza - are contested symbolically, imaginatively and politically. Water and water places carry historical and cultural meaning and contain the conflict over Palestinian/Israeli sovereignty, land use, national aspirations, and sense of place. Water and water places are integral to the stories of the creation of the state of Israel and the Palestinian nakba, simultaneous victory and loss, both in the same moment and in the same place. Water places embody the same potent meaning as the keys that Palestinian refugees carry to the houses they left in 1948.

The names (and renaming) of places, known through biblical reference, or Jewish mythology, or stories of the creation of the State of Israel, or through Palestinian cultural knowledge, narrative, place names and song, contain a politics of power and a poetry of loss. Everything is contested: names and narratives; meanings and ownership; facts about events; sovereignty and borders; the status of refugees; ownership and access to water. Within these complex and interconnected narratives are located the lived experiences and meanings of conflict.

A Jewish feminist conversation with Palestinian Right of Return turns on the embodiment of power and violence, the lived experience of Occupation, and a Jewish engagement with the human rights of Palestinians in both the Occupied Territories and in the Diaspora. It turns on dialogue with the multi-voiced, contradictory and overlapping realities that define conflict between peoples.  In this context, water provides a salient and powerful nexus for unearthing a number of mirroring reflections:

As I finalise the writing of this abstract, I receive notification of an Amnesty International Report(9) highlighting the current disproportionate impact of the Occupation on the well being of Palestinian women. A gender reading of water, and of water under occupation, offers an overarching frame for seeing/hearing embodied conflict and dislocation.

Endnotes:

1 Fadia Daibes Murad. Water Resources in Palestine A Fact Sheet and Basic Analysis of the Legal Status 2004

2 Ibid p 2

3 ibid. p 2

4 B'Tselem Disputed Waters Israel's Responsibility for the Water Shortage in the Occupied Territories. Information Sheet, September 1998

5 European Institute for Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation. www.medea.be Accessed 15/03/05

6 Palestinian Environmental NGO's Network. The Wall in Palestine June 2003.

7 United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Rights The Right to Food report by the Special rapporteur, Jean Ziegler 2003. pp8/9

8 B'Tselem Land expropriation and settlements : International Law www.btselem.org/english/Settlements/International_Law.asp Accessed 15/03/05

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the occupying power to transfer citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Article 49). The Hague Regulations prohibit the occupying power to undertake permanent changes in the occupied area, unless these are due to military needs in the narrow sense of the term, or unless they are undertaken for the benefit of the local population.

9 Amnesty International Israel and the Occupied Territories: Conflict, occupation and patriarchy. Women carry the burden. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde150162005
Accessed 3/4/05

From compensation to development: Involuntary Resettlement in the People's Republic of China

Brooke McDonald (The University of Melbourne)

Sponsored by the ARC: Asia Pacific Futures Network, China Node.

In the past, the restoration of livelihoods in the event of involuntary resettlement has been based purely on providing compensation to those who are displaced.  The outcomes of these resettlements have been well documented around the world and provide a serial of recurring horror stories.  With a view to improve this record, the concept of Resettlement with Development (RwD) was envisaged and is now generally heralded as the means to mitigate the catastrophic failures of the past.  RwD is considered the ideal way to undertake resettlement throughout the developing world.  However, few developing countries have included the concept of RwD into their national policies.  The People's Republic of China is an exception and has begun to consider the importance of RwD, including the concept in its national policy.  However, it is yet to be widely applied. 

The resettlement related to the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China is the first test case of RwD.  The Chinese Government created a national policy that specifically promotes the use of RwD in resettlement operations.  Moreover, specific practical measures have been undertaken to translate RwD from policy into a series of programs.  However, time and time again policies created in good faith do not generate the anticipated benefits for local people.  For this reason, the capacity of this policy to create sustainable livelihood outcomes for displacees is of critical importance to this thesis.  I ask the question: Can RwD lead to sustainable livelihood outcomes for resettlers?  

In answering this question, a year was spent in the resettlement region of the Three Gorges Dam, visiting resettler households and undertaking questionnaires, interviews and policy analysis.  Although the effects of the dam extended through both Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality, the fieldwork was restricted to Hubei Province.  As the practical application of RwD was decentralised to the County level, two Counties were chosen for comparison - Badong County and Zigui County (see figure 1)(1).  The application of RwD in the two locales was variable, with an uneven level of development intervention.  The investment environment and County policy of Zigui attracted greater degrees of investment and related development than that of Badong.  However, regional development does not necessarily generate sustainable livelihoods for locals.  Hence, the capacity of these development initiatives to generate sustainable livelihood outcomes for the resettlers was central to this research.

Figure 1: Location of Three Gorges Dam highlighting inundated areas - note the location of Badong and Zigui County
Source: Duan and Steil, 2003, p423

The sustainable livelihoods model created by Scoones (1999) and adapted by McDowell (2002) to the context of resettlement was used to assess whether the livelihood outcomes created for the resettlers were sustainable (see figure 2).  Under the McDowell (2002) model, a number of factors were considered including: contexts, trends and conditions, impoverishment risks, livelihood resources, institutional processes and organisational structures and livelihood strategies.  The particular sustainable livelihood outcomes that were investigated included: 1) more income; 2) creation of working days (at least 200 per year), 3) poverty reduction, 4) improved well-being and capabilities, 5) livelihood adaptation, vulnerability and resilience; 6) natural resource base sustainability; and 7) improved food security. 

Presently, I have completed an assessment of these livelihood outcomes and I am in the process of interpreting these findings - briefly summarised in table 1.  Simply put, RwD did not generate the anticipated benefits for the resettlers.  Instead, their livelihoods, as assessed by the seven sustainable livelihood outcomes, were found to be unsustainable.  In many locales the condition of the resettlers' livelihoods declined after resettlement - resettlers earned less income, were often underemployed, experienced increased inequality within their community and the incidence of absolute poverty increased.  In addition, well-being and capabilities declined, vulnerability increased and resilience decreased - despite signs of livelihood adaptation, the natural resource base became less sustainable and food security did not improve.

Table 1: Summary of findings
Sustainable Livelihood Outcome Achieved

DOWNLOAD WORD TABLE

 

 

Endnote:

(1) With respect to investment and GDP per capita both counties were at similar levels of development before the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.

References:

Duan, Y. and S. Steil (2003). "China Three Gorges Project: Policy, Planning and Implementation." Journal of Refugee Studies 16(4): 422-443.

McDowell, C. (2001). Impovershment Risks, and Livelihoods: Towards a framework for research. International Symposium on Resettlement and Social Development, Nanjing, unpublished.

Scoones, I. (1998). "Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: A Framework for Analysis." IDS Working Paper No.72.

Mike Fabinyi

Introduction

My intended research aims to understand the nature of disputes about access to marine resources at different levels of social and political organization in Papua New Guinea (PNG). In doing so, I hope to contribute to a broader understanding of the dynamics surrounding marine resource use and ownership in PNG. This understanding will be of benefit to those trying to implement sustainable and practical marine resource management programs.

The fisheries sector is one of Papua New Guinea’s most valuable sources of income, providing a total revenue of approximately K350-K400 million each year (PNG National Fisheries Authority Website, www.fisheries.gov.pg). In Milne Bay Province (MBP) especially, being a predominantly maritime province, fishing is particularly important as both a commercial industry and as a livelihood for many rural communities. The beche-de-mer fishery in MBP is the largest in PNG, and has expanded rapidly since the 1990s (Kinch 2002: 4).

Any attempt at management of the fisheries of MBP however must clearly take into account the fact that it is local landowners who claim ownership over the coastal waters and control access. For reasons that will be outlined below, disputes over who actually holds ownership rights have occurred with increasing frequency and intensity throughout many coastal areas of PNG, and in particular MBP. A greater understanding of the dynamics surrounding these disputes is necessary for any attempts at management.

Project Proposal - “Contested access to marine resources in Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea”

My research will aim to answer the following question: What determines the frequency, intensity, form, content, outcome and effect of disputes about access to marine resources at different levels of social and political organization in PNG? Put differently, my research will aim to identify and analyse the causes, content, effects and outcomes (successful or otherwise) of different types of marine tenure disputes. How are the nature of disputes different within particular socio-political frameworks?

Within scales of socio-political organization such as the Bwanabwana Local Level Government (LLG), the Bwanabwana language group, and communities/wards within the Bwanabwana language group, different types of disputes will include:

While the nature of specific disputes may be quite complicated and involve several parties, it should be possible to recognise what the dispute is predominantly about, using the basic classification above.

The commodification of marine resources appears to be the primary driver of disputes about access to these resources in PNG.  As Kinch has noted with regard to Milne Bay, increasing opportunities to make money out of marine resources through the expanding export market has resulted in increasing territoriality between communities (Kinch 2003). The increase in perceived value of marine resources can also be seen in disputes where there is involvement of an external agent such as a commercial fishing vessel or a non-government organization (NGO). The breakdown of tabu systems, traditional authority structures and dispute mechanisms, population pressure, marine resource degradation and unclear tenure records are all interlinked factors with the commodification of resources behind the development of disputes about marine tenure. The proposed research would aim to identify how certain factors underlying the disputes manifest themselves in particular instances, and examine how it is that particular causes of disputes occur within certain socio-political frameworks and spaces.

The specific content of these disputes will be dependent on which particular disputes I will be looking at, but in all disputes I will be trying to examine what the historical claims for tenure in the area are, and how people are making their claims for tenure. What arguments they will be using to frame their claims – mythological, historical, residential, ethnic/cultural or legal – will determine much of the character of specific disputes.

The effects and outcomes of disputes over marine tenure will also be observed. The research will analyse the costs of disputes, especially in terms of the social relations within and between communities involved. I will attempt to investigate the outcomes of disputes and the ways in which people try to deal with them – to what extent does utilising traditional dispute mechanisms and authority structures or taking action through the courts actually successfully resolve or otherwise intensify disputes? I will be trying to identify certain factors that may lead to the resolution of disputes or otherwise.

Details of Research Methodology and Timetable

When researching disputes at the level of communities, the method of participant observation will be used. I propose to conduct the bulk of my research on disputes at this level within the Bwanabwana language group, predominantly on Ware Island. There are several disputes within this region that make it a relevant area for the proposed research. I will work on learning the Bwanabwana language as much as is practically possible before I begin fieldwork, with the intention of firstly basing myself at Ware Island and then moving between different islands in the area.

When researching disputes at higher scales, such as those between different communities or those between different organizations, I will aim to be located in the provincial capital Alotau. Instead of adopting a method of participant observation for this section of fieldwork, most of this research will be based on interviewing relevant stakeholders in the disputes such as local councillors and village magistrates. This will be an ongoing process, depending on factors such as when I am able to obtain transport back to Alotau, and when the people I wish to interview are actually stationed in Alotau themselves. It may be necessary to make some trips out into the broader region of the Bwanabwana LLG where the disputes are located if it is not possible to cover all this research in Alotau.

I aim to have several distinct periods of fieldwork, based approximately upon the following timetable:

August 2005 – December 2005:

January 2006 - May 2006:

June – August 2006:

September – December 2006:

I aim to conduct ongoing research into disputes at broader scales by making trips into Alotau and possibly to other wards of the Bwanabwana LLG through the course of my fieldwork.

References

Kinch, J. (2002). The Beche-de-mer Fishery in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Port Moresby, National Fisheries Authority/CSIRO.

Kinch, J. (2003). Marine Tenure and Rights to Resources in the Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. Paper prepared for the International Association for the Study of Common Property. Brisbane, 7th-9th September 2003.