Failure of mainstream well-being measures to appropriately reflect the well-being of Indigenous and local communities and its implications for welfare policies (original) (raw)
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Ecosystems and indigenous well-being: An integrated framework
In Australia, role of natural resources in Indigenous well-being is completely ignored to date which further leads to inappropriate and ineffective well-being policies. This research addresses the need to develop an appropriate indigenous well-being approach that incorporates indigenous values in relation to natural systems. It focuses on Indigenous people in Australia and examines the available well-being frameworks from global as well as from local (i.e. Australian and Indigenous), perspectives. It applies a holistic approach to assess the role of natural systems in indigenous well-being demonstrating how people's social, economic and cultural worlds, and how people's capabilities relate to their natural systems. It integrates various social, economic and ecological values through the application of Capability Approach and the Millennium Assessment Approach. The study proposes an integrated framework that focuses on people's belongingness to nature i.e. people's values and capabilities that link to well-being. It emphasises the importance of each connection that people may have with their country in terms of people's capabilities. The proposed framework can contribute to improved and better-informed policies on indigenous wellbeing as well as on the use, value and management of natural systems.
Natural Resource Management and Indigenous Well Being Brenda Dyack, CSIRO Land and Water, Australia
2006
This paper considers the usefulness of a range of analytical approaches to describing the impact of natural resource management on Indigenous people. Six approaches are reviewed here with examples from the literature. These include: a well-being index approach used recently by Greiner with the Australian Nywaigi people; a replacement value approach to valuing wild resource harvests for the Wallis Lake area of north eastern New South Wales; a bio-economic approach to Indigenous/Non-Indigenous fisheries management of the Ontario Great Lakes used by Dyack; a stated preference approach used in New Zealand; a Choice Experiment in northern Saskatchewan and Alberta; and, a Goal Programming/Multi-Criteria Analysis with the Wik People from the York Peninsula in north eastern Australia. The purpose of this review is to provide a discussion document for a new project. This project is developing as a collaboration in the Murray River Basin in south east Australia with the Ngarrindjeri People. E...
The well-being of Indigenous people in Australia and throughout the world is linked to the use and value of natural resources. This research analyses the current well-being approach applied to measure well-being of Indigenous Australians. It reports findings from three case studies in Queensland on Indigenous people's values and concerns and their capabilities in relation to natural systems. It applies a holistic approach based upon the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and Sen's capability approaches and proposes an integrated wellbeing model by incorporating intangible values such as cultural and identity values, that are linked to people's capabilities involving natural systems. It provides a novel way of understanding the role of natural resources in Indigenous well-being by associating natural resources with people's capabilities. The study suggests transforming the present concept of well-being and its measures for incorporating people's capabilities that can effectively inform future policy decision making.
Natural Resource Management and Indigenous Well-being
2006
This paper considers the usefulness of a range of analytical approaches to describing the impact of natural resource management on Indigenous people. Six approaches are reviewed here with examples from the literature. These include: a well-being index approach used recently by Greiner with the Australian Nywaigi people; a replacement value approach to valuing wild resource harvests for the Wallis Lake area of north eastern New South Wales; a bio-economic approach to Indigenous/Non-Indigenous fisheries management of the Ontario Great Lakes used by Dyack; a stated preference approach used in New Zealand; a Choice Experiment in northern Saskatchewan and Alberta; and, a Goal Programming/Multi-Criteria Analysis with the Wik People from the York Peninsula in north eastern Australia. The purpose of this review is to provide a discussion document for a new project. This project is developing as a collaboration in the Murray River Basin in south east Australia with the Ngarrindjeri People. E...
The livelihoods and well-being of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in remote and rural northern Australia are dependent upon the ecosystem services provided by tropical ecosystems. The well-being of all Australian citizens is measured by the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) using socio-economic indicators. In this study we investigated the importance of non-market benefits derived from ecosystem services for Aboriginal well-being. Through a case study with the Mullunburra-Yidinji people in the Wet Tropics, Queensland, we applied the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) framework to identify the links between ecosystem services and the MA's six constituents of human well-being. The study demonstrated that cultural and provisioning services were key determinants of community well-being, and these are not currently measured by the ABS. We adapt the MA framework to include the ABS indicators and explore the potential strengths and weaknesses of the approach for measuring the well-being of contemporary remote and rural Aboriginal communities.
One of the major tasks of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) following its establishment in 2000 has been to establish statistical profiles of the world's Indigenous peoples. As part of this broad task, it has recommended that the Millennium Development Goals and other global reporting frameworks should be assessed with a view to incorporating greater recognition of Indigenous concerns, interests, and interpretations of development and well-being. This article reviews the conceptual basis for this recommendation and compares the activities of the UNPFII towards the development of appropriate indicators with the practices of the Australian government in measuring disadvantage among Indigenous peoples in that country. Indigenous peoples' own perceptions and understandings of well-being are seen to extend beyond and sometimes conflict with conventional reporting frameworks with the latter constructed more around processes of governmentality than Indigenous priorities.
Indigenous Land and Sea Management Programs (ILSMPs) Enhance the Wellbeing of Indigenous Australians
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Conservation and environmental management have been reported as offering opportunities to substantially improve the wellbeing of Indigenous people. Using the holistic wellbeing impact evaluation (W-IE) approach—well suited for use in Indigenous communities—we interviewed 190 Indigenous Australians across four communities. All communities were involved in the Indigenous land and sea management programs (ILSMPs). Our study explored the conceptualisation of ‘wellbeing’ by participants. In particular, we were interested in the aspects of wellbeing perceived to be affected by ILSMPs. Out of the 26 wellbeing factors explored, ‘Health centres’; ‘Language’; ‘Schools’; and ‘Safe community’ emerged as being of highest importance to the largest percentage of the respondents. When grouped using principle components analysis (PCA), the ‘Community and society’ domain emerged as the most important; accounting for 52% of the overall importance of all wellbeing factors. The second most important dom...
Linking ecosystem services to human well-being: A case study of Aboriginal people in north Australia
We use the MEA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment) framework to explore linkages between ecosystem services and the well-being of Aboriginal people living in the tropical savannas of northern Australia. Both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities of this region are vitally dependent upon the ecosystem services available from savannas. Among these, only the monetary benefits such as from beef and mineral production are used to measure well-being by the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS). In this study, we gather evidence to support the proposition that non-monetary benefits are substantially more important for Aboriginal people, and highlight the drawbacks of the current approach to measure well-being by the ABS.