Risk assessment underpins decision making for vast aspects of society, and is at the core of Natural Resources Management (NRM) activities such as the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Based on an International Standard, risk assessment approaches for NRM emerge from western concepts of nature that consider people as separate and superior to a perceived ‘nature,’ which in turn provides services to humans.
This western framework fails to engage with Indigenous worldviews that focus on reproduction and interconnected benefit, effectively excluding Indigenous values and interests from core NRM decision making.
Recent Ngarrindjeri collaborations with Flinders University have supported the emergence of the Ngarrindjeri Yannarumi assessment process that enables health assessments based on Ngarrindjeri principles and philosophies. Flinders University, DEW and the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority are partnering in a new Goyder Research Institute project that seeks to translate Ngarrindjeri Yannarumi assessments into water resource risk assessments. This work looks to address a key Basin Plan requirement for jurisdictions to consider Aboriginal cultural values in water resource risk assessment and may inform broader aspects of NRM.
The project will seek to articulate the points of connection between the two processes and inform the necessary adaptations required to DEWNR’s current water risk assessment conceptual models to integrate Indigenous values. This aims to bring Indigenous science into a just relationship with western science. The outcomes of this project may have application across all aspects of natural resources management improving the recognition of Indigenous values and interests.