Aboriginal Cultural Land Management for transport resilience

Research designed to improve the resilience of the transport corridor network through the integration of Aboriginal Cultural Land Management (ACLM) practices. The research will be delivered in partnership with La Trobe University.

Background

TfNSW are looking to develop a framework to make transport corridors more resilient in the face of increasing catastrophic weather events. A critical piece of that Framework is how ACLM can be incorporated into vegetation management standards, policies, and practices.

At the same time TfNSW also seeks to take forward the key priorities of their Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), including:

  • meaningful and collaborative community engagement in planning and designing Transport’s infrastructure that values connecting to country and the unique lived experiences of Aboriginal people.
  • implementing and embedding Transport’s Aboriginal Cultural Learning Framework to enhance cultural safety, cultural awareness and learning outcomes, including truth telling.

Alongside the commitment to the RAP, TfNSW is also responding to the recommendations of the NSW Bushfire Inquiry 2020 which identified that there was value in developing opportunities for cultural landscape management, and outcomes-based vegetation management, to increase resilience of transport networks.

The Bushfire Inquiry Final Report states that we could learn more from Aboriginal people about how to care for country and build resilience to natural hazards.

This project will investigate ways in which cultural and traditional land and water management practices can be incorporated into TfNSW vegetation management assessment processes and management standards to achieve the dual aims of increasing resilience (decreasing vulnerability) of the transport corridor to natural hazards (notably bushfire) and incorporating Indigenous cultural values into management and practice more broadly.

The approach taken in this project will include engagement, listening and collaboration with local Indigenous groups in each of the three pilot study areas to:

  • ascertain local aspirations for incorporating cultural and traditional land and water management into vegetation management in the TfNSW transport corridor; and
  • develop a strategy (i.e., methodologies, structures and principles) for implementation of the ACLM (i.e., a framework), based on the pilot study experiences and extensive literature reviews.

Find more information on the broader Network Resilience Program.

Objectives

This project aims to meet the following objectives:

  1. identify if and how traditional and cultural land and water management can be used to build resilience into the transport network, and to natural hazards;
  2. enhance our understanding and approach to adopting traditional and cultural land and water management to support vegetation management;
  3. identify, demonstrate, or illustrate the opportunities, benefits, and tension in co-designing, accompanying, and supporting Aboriginal people and communities in this work; and
  4. identify opportunities, structures, investment, and collaboration required for a future initiative within TfNSW in developing a draft framework.

Further updates will be provided as this project progresses.

This research is being delivered in partnership with iMOVE CRC and supported by the Cooperative Research Centres program, an Australian Government initiative.