Carbon Project

Photo David Hancock

The North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA) is currently developing four landscape-scale savanna fire management projects focused on pursuing carbon trading opportunities for Indigenous land managers. These projects build on the successful precedent set with the West Arnhem Fire Management Agreement (WAFMA) and subsequent work on the Western  Arnhem Land Fire Abatement project (WALFA).

The Carbon Project, initiated after the globally groundbreaking work of the West Arnhem Fire Management Agreement (WAFMA) strives to address several key issues:

• climate  change mitigation - enabling Indigenous peoples to reside on their country  through sustainable carbon reducing activity
  
  
• Opportunities for more Indigenous people to work on country. The Carbon Project supports on country livelihoods through engaging in an emerging Carbon market
  
  
• Carbon offsets from savanna fire management and other beneficial subsidiary projects such as biodiversity monitoring and management, open real and substantial opportunities for Indigenous peoples to develop independent projects and business entities for long term livelihoods on country

Pictured above right is Senior Ranger Otto Campion, a Rembarrnga man currently with the Gurruwilling Ranger Group.

Otto manages land around Ramingining, Murwangi and Maljarnanyak. He has extensive experience in formalised Indigenous land management and was one of the founding rangers of the Djelk Ranger group in Maningrida.

Otto is passionate about the benefits the Carbon Project has to offer to Indigenous people on country. Click the links to the right to hear him talk about this in language and in English.

Otto and many other rangers feel that:

• Indigenous people need opportunities to work on country
  
  
• Opportunities to work on country are core to a healthy and happy community
  
  
• Work involving traditional Indigenous land management combined with western science is extremely effective and environmentally sustainable
  
  
• Sustainable work on country must be nurtured for the generations ahead, and
  
  
• Fire management can and does do all and more of the above.

Read more on NAILSMA's Carbon Project.