In October 2005, a landmark roundtable forum, the
Kimberley Appropriate Economies Roundtable, was held in Fitzroy
Crossing, West Kimberley, to explore the sorts of development
people saw as appropriate for the Canning Basin and Fitzroy Valley,
and for the region as a whole.
There were more than 100 people present, from the Fitzroy
Valley, the wider Kimberley, elsewhere in Australia and
overseas.
Participants included traditional owners, farmers, tourism
operators, training providers, small business people, academics,
representatives of government agencies, environmentalists,
pastoralists and other natural resource management
stakeholders.
The Roundtable idea came from the wish of Kimberley people to
assert their rights and set the agenda for the future development
of the region. The project organisers are the Kimberley Land
Council (KLC), Environs Kimberley (EK) and the Australian
Conservation Foundation (ACF).
The centerpiece of the forum was a series of workshops in which
Kimberley people who are engaged in sustainable development
activities made presentations about their enterprises and
projects.
Talks were given by traditional owners from the Fitzroy Valley
about the work they are doing on country to protect threatened
species (such as through the Yiriman Project), control feral
animals and other invasive threats, keep water healthy (the
Rivercare project), record information about plants, institute
plans of management and establish and manage protected areas.
Many of the activities that were presented and discussed at the
forum are based on partnerships and collaborations, and in all of
them people spoke about the importance of cultural knowledge being
recorded and taught, of senior and younger people working together
and of ‘back to country’ trips.Participants heard from
organisations and projects that are developing business plans with
the aim of becoming independent of government funding through
delivering land management and other fee for services.
The manager of Bohemia Downs Station, Alan Lawford, spoke about
his people’s efforts to establish and maintain two
communities and a viable cattle enterprise. There, new approaches
to fire management in the region have been initiated, such as a
fire warning system, and sustainable land management projects have
been built around the participation of young people learning from
their elders.
Sam Lovell, who established the first Aboriginal-owned tour
company in the Kimberley, spoke alongside Dillon Andrews and Laurie
Shaw, two Fitzroy Valley tour operators, about the key elements of
success in running cultural tourism enterprises.
The owners of a highly successful organic farming business
described their approach to small-scale agriculture and the
increasing demand for their produce from restaurants across the
country and national supermarket chains.In the plenary sessions,
participants heard from a range of national and overseas
speakers. These included representatives from Ecotrust
Canada, who spoke about the capacity-building support and advice,
information services and low-interest loans that their organization
provides to sustainable development enterprises and projects in
rural and remote Canadian communities, many of them First
Nations.
Across the two days of the forum, participants identified key
principles for appropriate development and a number of main actions
that need to happen for sustainable development to occur (see
below).
The Roundtable organisers are continuing the work towards the
implementation of these actions. The main project outcomes
include:
- sharing of information about options for sustainable
development in the region with a wide audience, including through
the production of two reports and a DVD (see link at bottom of
page);
- building of linkages between different people and organisations
including Traditional Owners, government agencies and local
businesses;
- engagement of state and federal policy-makers in discussions
about the sorts of sustainable activities Kimberley people are
engaged in, particularly on country, and the challenges they face,
and about the uptake of the Roundtable recommendations;
- undertaking of a collaborative research project on
sustainable development options and opportunities in the region by
KLC, ACF, EK, the Kimberley Development Commission and the
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies;
- and the documentation and analysis of policy and programs
(government and non-government) relevant to the recommendations
including a gap analysis.
