Co-management and Conservation Below Water in Australia

Abstract

Co-management is a process that involves two or more social actors who work together to agree among themselves how to share responsibilities over a particular region. In Australia one term for such a region is “sea country” which is used to describe Indigenous estates that reflect the land, islands, and sea areas that belong to a certain group. Sea country encapsulates the knowledge about that area, that has been developed and maintained for millennia, and with which the Indigenous peoples of that country are affiliated and related. Kinship systems, sovereign ownership, governance, and resource rights are all held by the Indigenous groups that identify with that estate. Indigenous peoples in Australia have occupied it for at least 65,000 years which means that in some places, cultural connection to sea country can extend far out to seas (to the ancient previous coastline).