Cynicism and sympathy: the politics of land and resource struggles in Australia.

In early 2011, after decades of battles over Tasmania’s old growth forests, the Tasmanian Labor-Green government announced a moratorium on the logging of all old growth forests and instead required all logging to come from plantation-based sources. An historic win for environmentalists and a crippling defeat for the forestry industry, historically one of the largest industries in Tasmania. Throughout ‘battle for the forests’ many rural communities, which had been built up around the forestry industry and still heavily relied the forests for the livelihoods, fiercely opposed the move to plantation-based forestry and claimed that their very cultural heritage was at stake, a message repeated in televised political adverts during lead-up to the 2010 election. However, such claims, especially among environmentalists, were widely met with cynicism as the campaign was largely financed by Tasmania’s second largest company and the largest exporter of woodchips in the Southern Hemisphere. This example has many similarities with the Wise-Use movement in the US, where communities protested against exclusion from the resources upon which their livelihoods depended spurred on by environmentally and conservation-minded groups and people mainly from urban areas (McCarthy 2002). This makes for a sharp contrast with the general sympathy shown towards the movements and struggles of rural, ‘local’ communities in the developing world against the appropriation of their resources and land, where their struggles are seen as more legitimate. Yet, in developed countries with indigenous populations such as Australia (and the United States, Canada and New Zealand), we can see that the public imaginations (and sympathies) of the marginalisation of different rural groups manifests itself in two very distinctly different ways. In the case of the rural forester communities, their claims are often met with cynicism; in the case of aboriginal communities losing rights over their lands, their claims are met with sympathy.

This is not to say that the two struggles are of equal value or concern (or even close!), but simply to make the point that who is involved in these struggles is fundamental. I think it essentially comes down to an issue of legitimacy. Why is a particular group’s struggle seen as legitimate, but another’s not? What is particularly interesting is that in Australia (and elsewhere), environmentalists are often also strong supporters of indigenous land rights claims. This is true in the case of the NT intervention that is discussed by Howitt (2010) and in the case where land owned by aboriginal communities under the ‘Native Title Act’ in Western Australia was seized through ‘compulsory acquisition’ by the State government in order to go ahead with a natural gas plant (New York Times 2011). Arguably such concerns are often underlined by a romanticised view of Aboriginal Australians as one with the land, yet what other factors may affect this apparent discrepancy in valuation between Tasmanian foresters and aboriginal’s claims to land and resource rights? Clearly the case of Tasmanian foresters being banned from accessing timber by the State of Tasmania and aboriginal land being compulsorily acquired by the State of Western Australia have some parallels, but is our cynicism with the former case and our sympathy with the latter justified?

I would argue that the claims of Aboriginal Australians are certainly more legitimate than the claims of Tasmanian foresters for a number of reasons. Firstly, the length of historic and cultural association with the land is scarcely comparable in the two cases - 200 years to 40,000. Secondly, the process via which Tasmanian foresters came to be in control of their land was historically the dispossession of aboriginal land. Thirdly, rarely do corporate interests side with aboriginal views in cases of land disputes (as the case of the natural gas plant in WA illustrates); whereas the forestry industry threw their influence and resouces behind the Tasmanian foresters. Whether correct or not, the support of a corporate lobby erodes legitimacy in the minds of the public. Finally, the relation to land and resources for aboriginal Australians is more deeply embedded within their culture and as such loss of their rights to the land would be more harmful. It is not just an economic tie to the land, but also a spiritual and ancestral tie and where a Tasmanian forester may lose their livelihoods and some emotional attachment to place and practice through the moratorium, an aboriginal Australian would also lose a part of themselves and their ancestors.

However, just because the claims of Tasmanian foresters have a weaker basis than aboriginal land right claims does not necessarily mean that their claims are baseless. They should be listened to and respected and not merely dismissed as the emotional face of a forestry industry with a vested interest. In doing so, perhaps more just and equitable outcomes can be achieved in cases such as the Tasmanian ‘battle for the forests’ and the ‘Wise Use’ movement.

Howitt R 2010, ‘Sustainable indigenous futures in remote indigenous areas: relationships, processes and failed state approaches’, Geojournal.

McCarthy J 2002, ‘First World political ecology: lessons from the Wise Use movement, Environment and Planning, vol. 34, pp. 1281-1302.

New York Times 2011, ‘Rich in Land, Aborigines Split on How to Use It’, Feb 12 2011, .